Love Family Reunion 2009

Well, what a great time! We had our family reunion in July of 2009 at Sister Faye's house. We had 21 family members and lots of laughs and getting to know some of the new members of our family. We also spent alot of time catching up on each other's lives. It had been 5 years, I believe since we had seen each other.

Final Paint Job for MG Midget

Click the Title above to see the pictures of the new paint job my son, Patrick and his friend, Bowser, put on our MG Midget this weekend.

They did a great job! There is still a little work left to do. A little touch up here and there, but the results are amazing.

We used a single stage urethane paint and clear that we purchased from Eastwood.
It worked great! For a garage paint job, I'm pretty impressed.

No down draft booth, just a window fan to blow out the fumes and some plastic sheet to protect the rest of the garage along with some breathing and skin protection was all that was used.

So, what do you think? See the reflections?

Datsun 210 Tranny rebuild.

Here are some pictures of the tranny rebuild I did. This was really scarry, but I had a tranny manual that I downloaded from Rivergate and their rebuild kit and it all went pretty well. I had to wait a little while between tear down and rebuild, so I almost lost track of how to put the synchros back together, but these pictures saved my skin.

Thanks to Paul Asgeirsson for editing my mistakes about the type of transmission being shown. According to Paul, and I have no reason to doubt him, Morriservice was the originator of the 5 speed kit, starting with them and the modified flywheel and Datsun clutch in 1979.

Midget SU Carb rebuild.

After rebuilding the Datsun transmission I felt empowered and more confident about working on the carbs. Here are a few pictures of what they looked like as I took them apart. I haven't loaded the ones that show the final product, yet. I will get to those later.

Fresh Engine from the shop!

We had thought seriously about rebuilding the engine ourselves or at least having the parts we couldn't do performed by a local machine shop, but I changed all that at the last minute. I got cold feet. I have never rebuilt an engine and neither has Patrick.

My good friend Bob Mead has had engine work done by Richard Wright's Garage in Fayetteville, TN. So, I asked Richard to help us with our engine and I'm glad we did.
He did a marvelous job. We haven't fired it up, yet, but Richard said that they tested it for oil pressure and timing and that it should start up when we are ready. We can't wait.

We will be mating this engine to the five speed transmission from the Datsun B210 that is used in alot of conversions. We will be using the conversion kit from Riverside for our car.

Pictures of Body work, etc.

Here are some more pictures of the work my son Patrick and I have been doing on our MG Midget. We'd love to hear your comments or questions. Enjoy!

The Primer Paint Starts

The pictures below chronicle the further tear down and the rebuild of the rear end of the MG Midget.

The start of the 1973 MG Midget Restoration

These are pictures that document what the MG Midget looked like when we started this journey 5 years ago. It is getting closer to the point where it actually feels like we are going to get it done and I thought it was time to put these pics on the web in case anyone was interested.

It has been hard work so far and it feels like we are on the downhill side. Anyway, check out the before and some of the tear down pictures below. Enjoy...