We built the garage in 2012 and bought a lift in 2013. Basically a lift changes all the rules. I spent endless hours working on my back with the XKE, but much of that time was wasted by just climbing out and under the car. Now I can stand up to do most work and a lot of things can be accomplished in a short time, whereas it used to take hours. Virtually all of the tools used on my projects come from Harbor Freight. They make inexpensive power tools that can be replaced cheaply when they break or wear out. All the new parts for this project came from Moss Motors or Victoria British, LTD. I think Moss Motors has a little better quality on parts. Most of the used parts were purchased on eBay.
I set the lift up myself with the help of some friends. I would recommend even a half lift if you plan to do serious work on a project car. They are not real expensive and work in a regular size garage.
Once the lift was in place and operational, I was able to do lots of welding at eye level. This makes the job much easier.
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There was so much rust on this car that I went through two large rolls of welding wire and multiple bottles of shielding gas with the MIG welder.
The lift made it easy to remove the body from the frame and that exposed more rust problems. I spent many weekends getting the frame repaired and cleaned up. I painted the frame with POR-15 and it works very well. A couple of caution notes:
1. Do not paint over old paint - it will bubble up.
2. This stuff is toxic - wear a carbon filter paint mask.
3. Once you open the can, wipe any paint out of the rim because you will not get the lid off after a couple of days.
4. Seal the can well because it cures quickly.
Once we had the frame in good shape, I pulled the seats out to see how I was going to fit them. When I bought the car, the seats didn't look right but I liked the leather seat covers so I didn't think too much of it. When I really inspected them, I realize they were light aircraft seats and I didn't want that so I bought the correct frames on eBay and had a trim shop modify the leather covers to fit the correct frames. This worked out well because everything matches the other interior leather parts.
Once I had the frame repaired, I rebuilt the engine, which looks like an MGA 1500 engine but it is really a Nash-Healey engine. Since these are the same engines that were used in the MGA, all of the replacement parts are MGA parts. The transmission was also rebuilt with new synchronizers. The picture below shows the engine installed in the car and running. I did not have the correct carburetors at this point so I used a set from an MGB. They worked very well but I had to close off all the anti pollution vents to get them to work. Later I rebuilt the correct carbs and they are now on the car.
The pictures on this website cannot really convey the time spent on the thousands of little things that need to be done on a project like this. Everything that needed replacement was replaced. Some things that look like they should take minutes to fix actually end up taking hours. Some things get fixed and you don't like the way they turn out so you do them again. The carburetors, for example were on and off this engine at least 5 times.