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MG MGA - MGA heater control panel - early?

Good evening,
Sorry these are upside down (??) It was suggested that I share these photos with the group. We have an MGA from October 1955 and some of the hardware and equipment MAY be original. The heater control panel illustrated is stamped steel, made in 2 pieces, the inner section welded or brazed in.

The air control is labeled PUSH, rather than PUSH and TURN, and its cable does not have the additional switch function that is described in Barney Gaylord's article. I think he describes this as the early version. So the on-off switch is integral with the temperature control.

I have been dissatisfied with the plastic repros I got from 2 major suppliers simply because the internal space for the switch to function does not allow enough room for the switch to be pulled out, ie, turned on. However, I have not heard of a better repro or a restoration service for such a minor part.

I have solved that problem with a Dremel and am satisfied with the result, but I wonder if anyone else has (1) a metal face plate and (2) if anyone has a comment as to how they did it or how I should have done it.

Best wishes and Happy New Year,
Thad's Dad





John Bissett

Looks the right way up from down here

lol
willy

William Revit

Glad to know the world is still round. Is it in fact New Years, even in Tasmania?

Happy, Happy,
JB
John Bissett

Since our Australian assembled MGA's weren't fitted with heaters, I had to start from scratch. I bought a used but very salvageable heater and some related fittings from Vancouver, Canada, and purchased all the other components from a Moss reseller.
The fascia panel came from a UK supplier, but probably sourced from the same Asian maker as everybody else's, including the one you bought.

I found exactly the same problem as you did, with both the old original switch that came with the heater and the reproduction switch. The arc of the fascia panel is incorrect.
For me it would bind both the original and the reproduction switches in their arc of travel as well as obstructing pulling the switch buttons out to work the fan.
In my case, I could ultimately get the switch to move through most of its arc, almost but not completely freely, but no matter how much I ground off the back of the panel, neither switch would allow the button to come out far enough to activate the fan.
It's been a few years ago now, so my memory is a little sketchy, but ultimately a very handy neighbour of mine drilled out the tack welds in the original switch and retacked it, allowing the switch to move through its arc freely, and to activate the fan.
I did at the time send the details to Barney Gaylord. The information and photos might still be there somewhere on his MGA Guru site.

Clearly the profile of the reproduction heater fascia panel is wrong, and what's more it obviously has been wrong for years. Surely this would by now be known by the maker/s and the various suppliers of this part. Yet they keep turning out and reselling the same faulty part year after year after year.
Just as is the case with all the other known to be incorrect parts they sell, and leave us purchasers with the time consuming frustration of trying to modify their parts to fit.
T Aczel

Hi John
Not sure if you were asking a question, but yes we are roughly 16 hours ahead of you in the day
The timeline is out East of NZ so they get the new day first then we get it and if it looks like being a nice day we pass it on, actually even if it's a crap day you can have that as well-----lol
It used to be a bit of a confusion for the guys not all that far away from you when i was heavily involved in circletrack racing--we could race and crash on Saturday night here, get home in the early hours of Sunday then ring howe's to order parts as they were getting to work early Saturday morning---it worked really good for us with parts arriving mid week, but I don't think the guys there ever got their head around the time difference thing specially when we mentioned it was Sunday here but still Sat. morning there--
end of trivia---
willy
William Revit

Wait for Giovanni Delicio to respond - he has a very early car and knows about the heater controls
Dominic Clancy

Nice to hear from all of you, and to get some verification that I am not just imagining this. I was able to dremel an angle cut below the inside of the switch slot, so it looks normal but the switch can move side to side and also pull out to turn it on.

I have had enough of this heater!

Best to all,
JB
John Bissett

This thread was discussed between 31/12/2022 and 14/01/2023

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