MG MG Farina Magnette - Magnette Update
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| With Allen moving, it has been all quiet on the Farina-front. Not at my place however! Mk. III #1566 is about a weekend away from being a bare shell. If anyone else is contemplating a bare shell Farina Magnette rebuild, just stop. Ok kidding, I wanted to mention something about the underseal on these cars. It gets sticky when its hot, and gets hard when its cool. This makes it very very hard to sandblast off because of the heat generated. It just melts the underseal and pushes it! I got MUCH better results using a heat gun and scraping off the underseal. It wasn't even that messy because the underseal hardened as it hit the floor and I just swept it up. Whatever was left was pretty easy to sandblast off. A couple of notes. The spare tire holder should be painted black. Under all that underseal it was nice and shiny black paint. There is a body number tag in one of the wheel wells. There is a REALLY awesome paint your car forum at www.autobodystore.com They reccomend a process where you bare metal the car, coat it in something called Picklex-20, epoxy prime the entire car, then do your body filler on top of that. I'll be epoxy priming by mid month and well into bondo time by August. I've been slogging through this work but then it all got easy at the end. Anyone else having fun? -John |
| John10/07/2006 at 21:22 |
| John, Removal of plastic filler is much the same. You can carefully use a small propane torch to heat up the product and then scrape it off. It takes about 5 (%) percent of the time it would otherwise take to grind or blast it off. -BMC. |
| BMC Brian McCullough11/07/2006 at 04:16 |
| Hi John, As Samuel Clements would have said: "rumors of my demise are highly exaggerated" - or something like that. ' Sorry to be so quiet for so long but there are hopes for the future. We moved the day after I returned from MG2006 - so you can say I'm committed, or perhaps you can say I SHOULD be committed. At any rate, as I cast my eyes upon the sea of cardboard boxes that surround us, I am reminded that cleaning off the old underseal on my Mk IV is not exactly priority number one. But, here's some useful information for those negotiating with their Navigators about automotive priorities. The Navigator was not too keen on the expenditure of family funds for an addition to the 24X32 workshop that came with our new house in Michigan. That is, she wasn't too keen until she SAW the total chaos that is my new workshop. It is so jammed with cars and parts that her compassion was powerfully invoked and she immediately offered that a substantial expansion was the only possible solution. OK, so now I'll spend a few months expanding my work-space rather than working on the cars, but the end result will be very favorable! Soon I'll be back! I confess that the ZBV Magnette, already started, will be the first priority, but the Mk IV will not be far behind. In the meantime, John, I'll save your observation until it becomes relevant. Cheers, Allen |
| Allen Bachelder13/07/2006 at 06:33 |
| Hi, After a two year hiatus of moving house, I have recently got down to working on the Magnettes. After careful consideration I have decided to create one good Farina out of two. Both are 1960 MK3's but one lived its life in Arizona while the other in Ohio. I will go with rust free but baked interior any day. Just currently switching doors from Ohio Magnette to Arizona one as there was some damage at one time and it was badly filled. Why bother filing again when there is a serviceable door readily available. I will be removing all mechanical bits from the Ohio car as they are in better shape. With my MG playing up recently my focus has never been clearer on the Magnette. Cheers, Ian |
| Ian17/07/2006 at 13:46 |
| Hi Ian, It's good to hear from you. I'm still digging my way out of a sea of cardboard boxes, building shelves on which to place the contents as I go. Currently, this is taking place in the family room. Next it will be in the attached garage - home to household and garden tools, etc. After that, the venue shifts to the workshop - so jammed with cars, parts, and tools that I quite literally cannot walk about in there. Fortunately, it has a 12' ceiling - plenty of space to build a parts storage balcony. After all that, perhaps there will be time to WORK on the cars! Please keep us posted on your progress. Cheers, Allen |
| Allen Bachelder22/07/2006 at 18:47 |
| Great reading about the Magnettes. I've still got the parcel tray trim from my red 1959 but sadly that's all. Do you know what happened to the 1960 Riley that used to live on Lakeshore Blvd in Toronto? If you've any photos you'd like to share I'd love to see them. Best wishes, Bruce |
| bruce 26/07/2006 at 04:20 |
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