LIVING WITH "ALISON"
In an occasional series, Malcolm Robertson outlines life with 'Alison', his 1957 MG ZB Varitone Magnette….
Readers of the now closed magazine MG World will remember my occasional Running Reports in which I described in tortured detail the agonies of living with one or two MGs. For several years I outlined the highs and lows of running my 1936 MG Two Litre (SA) and of trying to keep a 1964
MG 1100 up to the demands of my then teenaged daughter, Amelia.
Of more interest to the visitors to this website would have been the developments with my ZB Varitone Magnette (ZBV 27116) since it joined the fleet in 2000, a lasting gift to myself purchased with a legacy from a favourite Aunt who died the previous year. In memory of the great friendship we shared, the ZBV was christened Alison.
I bought Alison in January 2000 from the vast collection of MGs gathered over many years by a man in Sydney's west. The restoration commenced almost immediately but was initially a relatively unhurried affair as both time and facilities were limited. Although Alison looked original and sound, she was in fact very tired. Her interior, especially her leather, was complete but sad, she had some rust in her sills and other panels, and her old 1500 cc engine was seized solid.
So when time permitted, I organised the recovering of the seats in new burgandy leather, I had the wheels sand-blasted and new tyres fitted (so that I could move the car around!), and I sent her to Sydney to have new sills welded in and an MGB motor with a Toyota T2 five-speed gearbox fitted by Nepean Classic Cars of Penrith (www.nepeanclassic.com.au).
Then, in April last year, life took a turn for the better when I left working full time and became a self-employed freelance writer, something I had been planning for years! Now I could really focus on the projects that interested me, and the first was already underway in the garage - Alison! And so began in ernest the stripping down for painting. That was about when I stopped reporting for MG World and where this occasional series of stories begins.
After the body had been stripped clean of all its bits and pieces and the chromework sent off for re-plating, the loose panels were taken to our local industrial estate for sand-blasting. While these were being done, at home I got out the disc sander to remove the last of the old paint from the body shell. Essentially this is the only way to be sure you can find all the rust, and rest assured, you will find some. In my case, there was rust in each door (the front left-hand one was so bad that I sourced another one), and around the lower parts of each rear mudguard, plus a few other odd spots, such as under the rear quarter windows. The boot floor was also badly rusted, a legacy of years in the damp Sydney environment. By the way, take care with the disc sander if you ever strip a car this way. It is easy to rip out any lead filler which not only is hard to replace, but is an occupational hazard.
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Magnette in the panel shop Alison receives new sills at Nepean Classic Cars in Penrith, Sydney, in 2001…. | New engine …..and a new engine |
Magnette dismantled Alison stripped bare in preparation for painting | Magnette partly painted April 2004 and Alison's new paint begins to take shape. With the birch grey already done, here she is having her original twilight grey colour applied according to the directions found on the Magnette web-site |
So, with all the rust revealed, several months of hard work followed, first cutting out and replacing the damaged metal, and then finishing the panels to painting stage with filler and elbow grease, with most of the filler ending up on the garage floor. At this stage, I also took the opportunity to make up and weld in new nacelles for turning indicators just above the tail lights. These are designed for a set of Lucas L539 amber lamps that will be fitted in due course, something the factory could have done themselves in 1957 instead of implementing the short-lived flashing brakelight solution when they discontinued the amber trafficators.
By Christmas the car was undercoated and I was driving the Magnette Bulletin Board participants crazy with various questions about original Magnette colours and painting methods. I had discovered quite early on that what I had thought were the original colours (light and dark metallic greys) were in fact a respray from some period in the car's life. The original colours were birch over twilight grey and fortunately, after much searching, I found some remnants of these two colours that I could match.
So, after a recess of a couple of months over an unusually hot January and February during which I attended to a list of items about the house that someone had thoughtfully left out for me, I was able to get back into the painting in March.
Once again, there was an enormous amount of filling and sanding to do to reach the point where the top coats could be applied. Guide coats are essential as it is amazing how many small imperfections can be found in an otherwise perfect panel. Much undercoat was applied and sanded off again, and on panels where a good finish is essential, such as the doors, I used a long block (250mm) to ensure I minimised the ripples and finished off with 400 grade wet and dry.
For my painting system I had chosen PPG 2K and the appropriate undercoats that go with it. This is a two-pack system that requires good clean conditions and effective breathing protection. The undercoats are quite forgiving to apply, but the top coats are a little tricky as they remain fluid longer than say acrylic lacquer, especially when applied at home in ambient air temperatures rather than in an oven. However, the benefits are that fewer coats need to be applied and you can get a beautiful gloss 'off the gun'.
You can see from the photos that the paint on the car looks pretty good, and this is as applied. However, because I did the work at home, there were plenty of small pieces of dust and dirt caught up in the finished paint, plus one or two paint runs, which you can only see up close, so a further week was spent de-nibbing these imperfections with 1500 grade wet and dry and buffing the surface back to a high gloss again. Because the paint dries to a high gloss, there is no need to buff the difficult areas such as under the mudguards, around the door frames and inside the boot or bonnet.
Doing the two-tone colour scheme is an additional work load as you need to mask up everything every time. Two-pack paint is very sticky and will settle onto anything within several metres of where you are working. I discovered later on that I had inadvertantly applied a light coat of birch grey to my black MG SA which had been sealed inside the garage while I was painting outside. I have no idea how the paint drifted into the garage, but somehow it did and it took me nearly a week to buff that off - at least the black acrylic lacquer on the SA now looks a whole lot shinier than it has for years!
So that's where the restoration of Alison has got to now. We had a launching ceremony on 28 April to celebrate the conclusion of the painting phase. Many MG friends and friends from other walks of life enjoyed a glass of wine and were subjected to lyrical speeches about the benefits of freelance work and MGs while the champagne was pored over Alison's gleaming bonnet by my friend Brian Oxley. Before the unveiling, he had to remind them that the launch of Alison was in the nautical sense - at least the ship floats but there is still fitout and sea-trials to complete before she can be commissioned.
 |
 |
 |
| Crowd on steps With the paint work finished, the crowd of admirers from the Canberra MG scene listen to speeches prior to the launching of Alison on 28 April 2004 | Malcolm talking Alison's owner, Malcolm Robertson, enjoys a moment in the spotlight as he philosophises about the benefits of restoring an MG Magnette | Magnette under cover Alison peeps out from under her cover to cheers from the admiring crowd - Magnette owners, Peter Daley and Paul Bray, do the unveiling honours |
 |
 |
 |
| Champagne being poured Brian Oxley pours champagne over Alison's bonnet to consumate the official launch | Magnette painted Alison shows off her new birch over twilight greys paintwork in this profile photograph | Magnette painted From the rear, Alison's shapely tail shows the new colours nicely. Keen observers will see a new nacelle above the tail light ready to take a Lucas L539 amber indicator lamp |
I'll tell you about the fitout in my next article.
<< 1 - 2 -
3 - 4 -
5 - 6 -7
>>
