And so it begins...all over again!

This will chronicle my efforts to restore my 1974 MGB. I originally purchased the car in 1988 for $850.00. It barely ran, had no interior save the seats and dashboard and was painted in at least three different shades of primer. But everybody instantly fell in love with “The B.”

















Above: The MGB in 1988 the day I bought her

My first restoration began in early 1989. A friend of mine (who recommended that I buy the car in the first place) found an MGB engine at a local machine shop which had been stripped, cleaned and bored .40” over. It had new competition pistons, rings and cam shaft and a ton of other goodies. It had about $400.00 worth of work and (at the time) about $500.00 worth of new parts and the machine shop only wanted $150.00 for all of it since the owner had never come back to claim it. If you think that deal didn’t get jumped on, you’d be wrong.

I bought the silica bronze hardened valve seals so the engine could run on unleaded gas, had the shop completely rework the head and valve assembly and started to work putting it all back together. I had never rebuilt an engine from scratch but with my trusty Haynes manual, it was actually a fairly straightforward procedure. When I was finished, I only had two washers and one bolt left over so I figured that was pretty good!

Being a still rather young man, I couldn’t afford to have the very rough body of the B done by an auto repair shop so I did what any other idiot would have done in my place: I got a job at body shop. I’d work on other peoples’ cars during the day and my car at night. When the body was finished The painter at the shop sprayed a Dupont base coat/clear coat Corvette flame red paintjob for me and I began putting it all back together.

Left: The MGB in 1989

Once it was all back together with the addition of new carpet, panel kit and tan top, the MGB looked pretty damned good! I drove that car for 10 years as my daily driver, rain or shine, hot or cold and I drove it everywhere. All over the east coast of the USA. On vacations. To work. Everywhere. Unfortunately, I had done patch and fill when I did the bodywork so after 10 years, the sills, doglegs and door skins were pretty much Swiss cheese. Mechanically it was fine but the body was just too rough to keep her on the road.

So, in the fall of 1998, the MGB went into the back of my garage and she was replaced by a 1995 Corvette. I thought after two years or so I would finish up restoring the B and she’d be back on the road again in no time at all. But home improvements, vacations, work and the birth of my son got in the way of that and she sat in the back of the garage for 10 years. I did do some work on her during that time. I stripped off the hood, trunk, doors front fenders, top and interior. I also stripped out most of the other things that I could except for the engine and drive train, electricals, hydraulics and suspension. I also ordered a fair number of parts that I’d need during the restoration, including new outer sills, doglegs and a bunch of the other body parts that would need to be replaced. They all sat for quite a few years too.

Well time passes and things change as they always do and I found myself a divorced man who moved 40 miles away from the home I lived in for nearly a decade. Well, a move, getting remarried, another move, more house remodeling, two new kids and a bunch of other things got in the way of the MGB restore. But finally, in July of 2008, I trailered the B to my new garage and began the real work of bringing her back to her full glory.

Here is the story as it unfolds.