I've owned an XKE Jaguar for years and I've been working on it for the last 18 years. The Jag is nice but I always wanted another MGA, so in 2006 I started looking for something the needed some work. I spent a lot of time looking but I never found anything close enough to inspect, buy, and drag home. Finally I found one and learned that, even though I've owned two MGAs in the past, I really didn't know that much about them. I'll be smarter if I do another one because I've certainly learned a lot from this one.
This is what was stored in someone's garage. They had started working on it but it turned out to be more than they bargained for. Basically, I was lucky that most of the parts were actually MGA parts. But even worse this car was actually a bunch of old parts thrown together to look like a whole car.
Plenty of parts but not a full car's worth. This added a lot of expense to the project and lends credence to the term "basket case". Many of the parts had nothing to do with an MGA.
Even a little research would have helped. It turns out that the engine was not an MGA 1500 but a Nash-Healey 1500 built in the same factory. The parts are interchangeable but the engine block was not tapped for a tachometer so I've modified an early MGB electronic tach to work with a negative ground.
The head was in such bad shape that it could not be saved. I bought another one on eBay.
Part were scattered around the owner's garage and we got everything we could recognize as MG but I'm sure we missed lots of things that would have saved money. Some parts were from other things -- like the seats and the seat rails came out of a Cessna 152. So I bought the correct seats on eBay.
The only real work I did in 2009 was to rebuild the steering wheel because the original wheel was cracked and split beyond repair. I bought some clear popular boards and glued them together and then outlined the steel rim of the steering wheel on both pieces of wood. Next, I added 1/2 inch to the outside and inside of the outline and used these as the guide for the outsides of the wheel. A router was used to cut half the depth of the metal steering wheel rim into the wood on both boards. I used a marine gel epoxy to glue everything together and let it cure for a week. The wheel was shaped with a rasp and a paper template to get it round. Sanding and clear spray lacquer finished the job. I have other MGA steering wheels, but I now prefer this one.
