MGA FACTORY SEBRING COUPE

The owner of this car, an experienced shop owner himself, came to us needing an expert touch in the reconstruction of the nose and repair of rust on this historic racing coupe. The body arrived on its restored chassis. The nose was banged up and battered and there was rust on the cowl, heater shelf, rockers and sills. The objective was to save as much of the original sheet metal as possible, making the reconstruction much more difficult.

In the late 1960s the car had been the subject of at least two previous attempts to repair the nose. The work was badly bodged, and the current owner had started the disassembly. This is how the car arrived.

The initial work involved installing a new old-stock radiator panel and working the inner fender to its correct shape. Careful alignment of those parts to a known straight bonnet allowed the work to begin of reinstalling the factory-modified cowl piece.

Further work involved repairs to the cowl and heater shelf, all areas originally modified by the race department at the MG factory in Abingdon.

The left side door post was rebuilt using the original inside parts, mated to the shell of a new replacement door post.

The two-piece valance support was fabricated by K&T. Sometimes fabricating parts to the original specifications is required, since replacement parts just don't exist, or are of imperfect quality.