The finished car.

It is the end of March 2016, 2 years and 9 months since I purchased the car and started the restoration. I still have road testing to do and fix anything that shows up and still need to get it through an MOT, but essentially the car is finished.

Interior: Seats, Carpets, Roof Lining, Dashboard etc.



Seats:

The car had 'Corbeau Sportsman' seats in it, which did not recline or tilt and although they look nice, are uncomfortable, so I have sourced a set of original seats from a breakers, and will re-cover them with 1970's trim.

 I have now stripped down the seats, and ordered new rubber spring bases, foams, card backboard and covers.

 I wire brushed the frames, and etch primed.
The sprayed them in black Rustoleum.

 Here is the finished seats, recovered with new trim, new foams and springs.

Carpets:
New carpets have been purchased, I went for a high quality set in Navy blue to complement the exterior.

Prior to fitting the carpets, I fitted new floor pan insulation, already pre cut to fit the contours of the floor.

New navy delux carpets are now installed. Looking nice.



Roof Lining:

The Britax sunroof was removed with a view to replacing the lining material, however it is a difficult job and requires a complete strip down to be able to do this, and in addition the front and rear metal sections in the cover are rusty, so I need to make a decision on how to proceed.

I finally decided to not have a sunroof, and I replaced the complete roof panel with a Heritage roof, which I will reline when I do the interior trimming.

Dashboard:

 

The dashboard has areas of corrosion, so will be stripped down and painted.  

 These photos show the corrosion on the dash front face, and the wrinkle finish has degraded.

Here is the repainted dash, painted in Semi Gloss Rustoleum, I decided not to try to replicate the factory finish.

I also replaced the dash top vinyl trim, and I had to make a new hardboard base for it. 

Next job on the interior list is the roof lining.
I decided to do this myself, with the help of my good wife, and as I wanted to go with black, I had to make it all myself.

 We purchased the black material (brushed nylon on 6mm foam for the roof, and 3mm black nylon scrim for the side roof rails.

 Once cut, we sprayed the material with contact adhesive and then sprayed to roof panel, and used a small foam paint roller to smooth it onto the roof. the result was excellent.

We the stuck the scrim material onto the plastic side rail trims, and then glued them to the rails.

We also recovered the 'C' pillar trims, in the black vinyl. 

 I tried to reuse the old door cards, but they were too badly distorted to get them to fit well, so I order a new pair of 71-76 style cards, they fit nice and look good.

I also decided to replace the black plastic window winder handles with metal chrome ones, although they fit and look good, they rub against the door cards, and will eventually damage the door card material, so I am looking for a solution to this at the moment.

I have now found the perfect solution to the MGB Window Winder Handles rubbing on the door trims, if anyone out there wants to fix this problem, this is a solution for you.

Buy yourself a window winder spacer kit for a Jensen Healey, it comes with two cast spacers and two longer screws. I also bought a pair of plastic escutcheons to finish it off.

Electrics:

There are some modifications to be done to the electrics. The first job is to convert the Tachometer from 4 cylinders to 8 cylinders, as the V8 will produce twice as many switching signals per engine revolution.
I found a great article on the web, on how to achieve this cheaply and easily.

I will fit a 100k Potentiometer onto the chip and then adjust it to get the correct reading at a given rpm.
The Tacho cover just twists off and 3 screws on the back to release the unit.

 I soldered 2 wires onto the chip, and passed them through the rubber seal, and I will then attach the 100k adjustable potentiometer so I can calibrate the tacho when it is installed.

 Started to make the changes to the wiring loom.
The distributor, coil, electric choke, second cooling fan, and central locking, all have to rewired or modified.

 I decided to upgrade the fuse box and relays, I made a stainless steel bracket to hold the fuse box, which I will now wire up.

This shows the wiring partly done, still a bit to do.

I fitted a second cooling fan to assist in the cooling of the V8, which I will control with an electronic adjustable fan controller. 

After the first engine test, it became apparent that the temperature gauge was reading a bit high. I tested the gauge with a test box I made years ago, and I also tested the temperature sender unit, which appears to be ok, and I monitored the actual engine temperature with a thermometer on my multi meter, I can only conclude that there is a slight incompatability between the MGB gauge and the Rover SD1 sender unit. So I installed a resistor into the circuit to bring the needle down slightly.  I used a 10 ohm resister on the output side on the gauge, I can easily swap it to fine tune later on.

 The next job is to install central and remote locking. I bought a Hawk system, really cheap and quite effective. I marked up the doors and drilled where I thought the motors should go.

 I then bent the actuator rod to line up with the locking rod on the car.

I then wired it all up, with the control box up behind the dash.

Just need to tidy up the wiring and tape it up where it goes through to the doors.