I booked three days off from work, and a friend (Ashley) to help me tackle a batch of jobs on the MG. This is what we achieved on day 1.

Fan belt: I thought it prudent to replace the fan belt which came with the car. Given that the MG had been stood for at least five years, and in my ownership for three years, and that the current fan belt was of unknown vintage I had decided to replace it with a shiny new one. The job itself is really simple, slacken off the lower bolt on the sliding bracket. then the two top bolts on the alternator. The alternator can then be swung, taking the tension out of the belt and its comes off easily enough. The new belt took a bit of work with my thumbs to sit over the pulleys, but not too bad. I then swung the alternator back into position, applied some tension and tightened the bolts. The belt tension felt about right, although time will tell and anyway an easy thing to adjust. It certainly isn’t too tight. It brought back memories of when Dad used to service cars and I would help him. I seem to remember that he would ask me to hold the alternator, which of course would immediately move, and he would have to put it back and again and say something encouraging like ‘this time hold it.’ Oh the fun we had, I am not sure how much help I was!

Bonnet Seal: Next easy job was to fit a rubber seal to the seam which runs up the wings and then joins the scuttle. On the MG this is a three quarter affair – its starts halfway up the wing, goes around the top and then halfway down the other wing. This was a simple matter of pushing the rubber seal onto the seam and making sure it sat nicely. Then when I found that the two sides were uneven (it went further down one wing than the other), taking it off and doing it again.

Seat Preparation: I had previously had all sorts of hassle with the seat runners, a victim of a mis-order resulting in too few of the right parts and too many of the wrong ones. Anyway, I now had everything I needed, so in the comfort of my study I laid out the parts and worked out what went where. The seats are now ready to be fitted.

Steering Column Bracket: Some time earlier in the build I had temporarily popped a bolt through the steering column bracket to hold it in place while I fitted the dash. I remind myself that temporary fitting of anything has tended to end badly. So it was that Ashley and I found ourselves struggling to remove the temporary bolt which had wedged itself into the bracket (note: the bolt was too short to stay permanently). Combining this job with re-fixing the dash as I wasn’t happy with the fit, we loosened off the dash fixings and this enabled us to manoeuvre the steering column and dash allowing the temporary bolt to pop out willingly and the correct bolts to be promptly inserted and tightened up. With the steering column properly fixed to the underside of the dash we could then refit the dash, with the correct stays in place and a bit of adjustment to the brackets, achieving a better overall result. Its not perfect in terms of fit, but it is solidly and correctly placed which is good enough of me.

Rear Window trims: The MG has door capping trims which extend from the front doors to the rear windows. We had previously been short of the right screws to fit these. They are important to keep down the carpets and of course aesthetically. Ashely went on a mission to Halfords, Screw Fix and then B&Q in the hunt for suitable screws and returned with a suitable product which was swiftly fitted and so another job was struck off the list.

Door Glass: I’ve had a couple of goes at putting the door glass in before, but this time, I had Ashley alongside and I had a feeling that he would have a better three dimensional picture of what needed doing which turned out to be the case. I have trouble imagining things in three dimensions – my brain is tuned to other things, so these sorts of jobs I find really taxing. Ashley suggested checking that each door lock worked before fitting the glass and we verified that yes they were working fine. This was a smart check as otherwise it could have been very annoying to have to take it out again. We then spent a bit of time just looking and (Ashley) figuring out what needed to go where and then had a proper go. The tricky part is feeding the winding mechanism through the door as the opening is really tight and then aligning the bracketry so that the actuator is at the correct orientation as well as the other bracket which takes the weight of the window. Another challenge is getting the glass passed the outside window trim which again is tight. However, the drivers side glass went in and wound successfully up and down. We did have the adjust the quarterlight and rear rails to pull the window forward as the glass was too far to the rear and catching on the B-post. After adjustment it was better, but the glass was still a little short and far back – looking at it, we concluded that the door has dropped. This also explains why the door does not shut well. Neither of us was confident in adjusting the door hinges, so this remains on the job list, alongside other panel adjustments needed to the bonnet and hatch.

The passenger side was a repeat job and naturally doing it for the second time it was easier. Saying that, Ashley was the brains of this particular job, although it would be difficult for one person to do due to the need to both manoeuvre the mechanism and support the glass at the same time. This side fitted perfectly first time, providing further evidence that the drivers side door has dropped.

In the box of window bits was a chrome trim which we worked out was fixed to the door trailing edge (I love that term) to stabilise the glass when it is up. This needed to be rivetted in place, so an excuse to get out the rivet gun which is huge fun and within minutes the drivers side was fitted and looking good. However, there was only one trim in the box, so where was the passenger side one? Fortunately, I had previously sourced a spare door which had said trim, so it should have been an easy job to swap it on. However, not only were the rivets very reluctant to let go, but the chrome trim had been over-sprayed in green by the previous owner of the door. With some targeted brute force we removed the trim and set to with sandpaper to remove the horrible paint. After around 40 mins of effort we had the trim is reasonable shape and condition to be fitted. I walked around to the passenger side and…you’ve guessed it, the trim was already in place, having been over-sprayed in white (and thus invisible to us earlier). How we laughed.

Overall a good day of progress and a few jobs knocked off the list.