Magnette Dragster (Part II)
or
The fastest M.G. ever?
by Ian Metcalf
 |
Whilst the dashboard area was to be repainted we decided that we'd go
the whole hog and paint the entire car - what a mistake! With the help of my able assistant, Steve Shoobridge, we removed the engine and gearbox in 20 minutes. Then Steve peeled a sticker off of the back of the car 9 months and counting! |
 |
When Steve peeled a sticker from below the rear window it came off with a lump of filler 10mm thick attached to it. Further investigation revealed that we could actually remove the paint with a chissel as the filler seemed to extend over the entire car. |
 |
The rear of the roof had the worst area for filler. It was 27mm thick and had 4 different coloured layers where different make fillers had been used. |
|
The whole car was badly welded... |
|
In its simplest form the best solution was to find another 1955 MG
Magnette, relieve it of its bodyshell and fit it to the race car chassis.... It sounds simple in theory but Magnettes were one of the first attempts at a monocoque shell (the chassis and the body as one unit). This means a lot of work removing the floor/chassis. The original 'A' pillars and scuttle were left in place on the race car to give a good datum point for the new shell. It took the better part of a month to track down a suitable car, but thanks to Ebay, one trip into Yorkshire netted us this little beauty. |
 |
We were only going to be needing the reaer half of the car so, after a
pleasant weekend of careful stripping, this is what was shipped to the
workshop. |
 |
It was soon discovered that the 'A' pillars were left in place as datum
points were also rotten! This meant the front of the donor car had to be shipped to the workshop and then stripped of everything to leave us with.... |
Go to page 1 - 2
