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MG MGB Technical - Wing to scuttle alignment

Further to my post about fitting the T bar into the wing/scuttle seam I have done a dry run and noticed that the nearside fit is not good. It is level at the front of the seam (so the T bar is flush with both panels), but the rear os the seam is not. This means that the T-bar is flush with the scuttle at the rear but the wing sits below this by several mm. I hadn't noticed this before I disassembled the wings and didn't take any pics of this part of the car. On this side of the car there was a large gap between the wing and the bottom of the windscreen pillar, but at the point that the pillar passes through the wing the two panels are more or less flush so may not be caused by this.

See pics. I have put some masking tape on the scuttle side to show up the difference in height.

So, questions;
1) what is the distance between the front of the scuttle and the windscreen/scuttle seal? If it is short enough the gap may not be too noticable.

2) should I try to bend up that corner of the wing that is low? Bear in mind that this is a finished painted wing. This will hopefully close the gap under the T-bar.

3) if I fit as is, I will need to seal the gap under the head of the T-bar. Any ideas about a filler that can be coloured?


Steve Church

And with the T-bar fitted in place. The vertical section has been coloured grey.

Steve Church

I've just found this from some insurance photos I took when I first got the car. It looks as if the T-bar has been deformed so that at the back of the seam the top of the T has been twisted to reduce or eliminate the gap. Looks like I will have to do this. The pic also shows just how far off the wing the windscreen pillar is.

Steve Church

In order to get the front wing crease correctly aligned with the door and the rear wing I had to slacken the bolts in the rear vertical edge of the wing, put a piece of timber between the top of the wing and the car port roof, and jack the car up. Before painting I hasten to add. Looks like yours needed the opposite doing, i.e. that part of the wing pushing up, you may still be able to do that.
Paul Hunt

Not much help but:

I had exactly that problem, by what appears to be the same amount, when rebuilding my B in 1981. Because the reason for the rebuild was that my sister had kindly rolled it in a rallysprint (driving around dumb specators on the road and got into loose off-camber at 80mph) I assumed that I hadn't got the scuttle straightened correctly.

It was only after several hours comparing measurements between mine and customers' cars that I realised it may be the new wing that was the problem. I took profiles of mine and customers' and found that to be the case. It was also different from the profile of the RH wing (also new, my sister made a good job of it!).

At the time, these were still genuine BL parts, so I took the wing back to the local agent, showed them the profiles and swapped it for another ... which had exactly the same problem. Clearly I would not be able to do any better so I gave up and tweaked the new wing to fit.

Which goes to show that parts which need fettling to fit aren't just a new thing ...
Paul Walbran

Paul W.
This was a new shell in 1994 so all the bits are hopefully BH.

I've fettled the T piece so the top part is skewed and that seems to do the trick. When everything is done up tight it isn't too bad.

Paul H.
I assume you fitted the door first (or at the same time). Mine are still off the car and I will bolt the door on first. I still have the washer marks on the panel in the footwells so hope I can use these as a guide. But of course like a bit of MFI furniture it will never go back the way it was originally!
Steve Church

Steve, On my V8 rebuild I used 2 new heritage wings. One took 21/2 hours to fit, the other 11/2 days, involving much spot weld removal, cutting and welding, blocks of wood and jacks and still wasn't great when I finished. On the top scuttle joint I ended up loading the scuttle to reduce the enormous gap. But that was a GT always more problematic than a roadster, I thought!!!!.
Allan Reeling

"I assume you fitted the door first"

That's right, it was only after positioning the door so that it lined up with both front and rear wings, that I squinted along the crease through all three panels and saw it was like a dog's hind leg!

I had a similar problem with the same wing around the radiator grille, it was about half an inch forward of the grill whereas the left-hand was flush. I had to reshape the flange where it attaches to the inner wing in front of the radiator and oval the holes by that amount in order to force it into the correct position.

Similar side-to-side discrepancies exist at the rear i.e. the near universal 'offset axle' that ends up being 1/2" closer to the left wing than the right. Careful measurements have showed that the front and rear hubs are in correct alignment, it is successive panels from the chassis rails up and over the wheel that seem to be the problem. That caused significant problems when I fitted wire wheels to the stud axle, even with so-called special conversion hubs, not resolved until I fitted a pukka wire-wheel axle. However having fitted 175s at the rear instead of the previous 165s it is now rubbing again occasionally and slightly.
Paul Hunt

Thanks for the replies. I've fitted the wing now and also the door. I had drilled pilot holes on the wing/engine bay seam so that was the datum. Everything else pulled into place with a little leverage. The door fits ok but the "waist line" is about a mm too low. The shoulder line (top of wing/door/B pillar) is straight. Now to put the door furniture back on.

thanks for all your help. I hope the other side goes as well.
Steve Church

Ha ha - about a mill too low, I like it!!

You are doing very well mate with newer worn tooled parts v. older original but chucked together frame n bits.

Have you seen how they used to bash things about with bits of wood and massive levers to get cars to align up at all in the 60/70ies.

Made me smile. :)
Iwan Jones

Iwan ...I'm glad it caused some amusement. I assumed that that is what they still did in 1994 when the new shell was made. There would have been a little bit of "pursuading" the T bar into a skew shape when they put the wings on. Hammer and block of wood I imagine. But just because there was a certain amount of brute force used on the production line doesn't mean that we shouldn't take a bit more care to get things as good as the 1960's engineering will allow. Then if it still doesn't fit....well there's the lump hammer in the corner!
Steve Church

This thread was discussed between 03/01/2015 and 07/01/2015

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