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MG MGB Technical - BGT weight - balance point.

I’ve been looking at options of renovating my old Repco Koni hoist or replacing it. One niggle with the old hoist has always been that Is of the asymmetric configuration - designed apparently to enable more of the car to remain behind the posts so that doors can be accessed while the car is up in the air. Problem is, the little cantilevered arms at the front or “short” end don’t close up enough to reach the narrow chassis of TC or even TD. All sorts of cunning solutions have got around this over the years.
And so for the question: is there an established datum line for the balance point of a standard BGT, front to rear? - this could be useful in considering hoist options. I’d obviously like to ask the same question in relation to TC, TD and Y, but maybe that should be put on the respective sites. From what I’ve read on this place, I figured I’d start with the B!
Thanks anyone. Yours, John.
J P Hall

Going by the factory figures for weight front and rear it's pretty near the middle. You could probably calculate it from those:

Kerbside 1162lb front and 1239lb rear or 48% and 52%, subject to what you have in the load space. The roadster is a bit closer front and rear at 49% and 51%, for obvious reasons.
paulh4

Great info thanks Paul. I might post my car's balance point measurements (ie the distance from each end to the balance point), just in case it's of interest to anyone else.
John.
J P Hall

Strictly speaking the calculation from those figures need to be done from axle to axle, i.e. the wheelbase.
paulh4

It is where the jacking point is ....
Chris at Octarine Services

Nice one, Chris - I don't have a roadster to compare, but I wonder whether the jacking point is slightly further forward on the roadster, or whether more likely the difference is so minimal that they didn't bother.
John.
J P Hall

The sills & underbody are the same on roadster & GT, so they didn't bother!
Chris at Octarine Services

PaulH4 says "... Kerbside 1162lb front and 1239lb rear"

As a point of comparison, after putting a Buick 3.8L V6 into a '71 MGB GT, these are the total and fr/rr weights I recorded:
2380Lbs (full fuel tank, w/o driver)
1200 fr/1160 rr

I wish I still had that car, but alas, my ex-wife does (I put a T-350 xmsn in it so she could drive after her clutch-knee surgery, what kind of guy would I have been to take it back...).

Feel free to requote those numbers.
https://www.mg-cars.org.uk/v8_conversions/files/buickv6/buickv6.html

Randy Forbes

This thread was discussed between 16/03/2020 and 03/04/2020

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