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MG MGB GT V8 Factory Originals Technical - Concours Standards

I have just purchased a factory 73 MGB GT V8 and would like to find out details regarding the concours standards. I also have a 59 MGA roadster. When I first purchased my roadster I found the concours standards for it posted on the MGA Register Holland's web site. Is there a good souce for the GT V8's standards?

Thank's for your time.
Gary
Gary Fraipont

As far as concourse is concerned I thought the only standard was 'as it came out of the factory'. In practice winners have the fit and finish better than factory standard.
Paul Hunt

Your right about being fit & finish better than factory standard however I am looking for the details as to what this standard is. For instance my car has a black vertical firewall in the engine compartment however I have see others that were body colour. Does anyone out there know of such a summary as to detailing what the factory standard was? As I have said there is a complete list for the MGA on the Holland MGA Club's site, it would be sure nice to find one for the MGB GT V8. I wonder if there is a show judge out there from the UK that can shed some light on this subject?
Gary Fraipont

Gary,
Clausagers book on the MGB, C, and V8 in "The Original" series from Bay Books is a good place to start.
Another thought is the MGOC in England and see if they have a list and contacting any MG clubs in the local area may be fruitful.
Good Luck, Pete, Queensland, Australia.
Peter Thomas

Gary, you need to contact Paul Kile in Sacramento. He has just finished a concours rebuild of same. email me offline and I should be able to put you in touch - unless he seet his in which case he may beat me to it...
David

Beat you to it, David! Cheers...

Gary,
I have just completed a full restoration on a 1974 Factory GT V-8, and tried to get it as close to factory as possible. I can say that there are no formal lists of standards that I know about. The closest info of this type was published in the book "MG V-8 25 Years On", by David Knowles. He included a section on concours preparation written by John Heagren in the UK, who owns a prize winning chrome bumper example. Getting everything right involves a lot of detective work, searching out factory photos and looking at original examples (pretty hard here in North America, but I was able to take a look at both Paul Hunt's and David in Berkshire's cars while in the UK in 1997). I also referred to several magazine articles from publications like MG Magazine and Enjoying MG.

I had some additional challenges in my restoration, as the guy who imported the car to the USA in 1986 made a lot of non-standard mods to get the car through Customs. He scabbed in a collapsible steering column from a US-spec MGB, and a dual circuit brake system. I managed to get everything back to original, having to source a NOS steering column and figure out how the original brake lines were routed. The steering column replacement required a new cone shaped fairing at the firewall, since the original had been hacked away to accommodate the later style column. I found a fellow in the UK who was parting out a chrome bumper V8, and he cut out the firewall piece and shipped it to me. My bodyman welded it in and got it back to original condition.

The black firewall on your car is not standard, the factory cars were body color. Also note that many fasteners on the V-8 engine were black oxide coated, rather than nickel or cad plated. It all takes time and research, but for me that was the fun part!

Cheers,
Paul Kile

Paul Kile

Thanks guys for all your good information.

Cheers,
Gary
Gary Fraipont

This thread was discussed between 03/06/2002 and 04/06/2002

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