You may note that a couple of years back, my Dad bought a 1970 MGB GT. It looked a bit rough, but ran really well. So he bought it, and admittedly states that he paid too much for it. So after some tuning and some maintenance it's on the road and he's pretty happy, it needs a paint job though, badly.
So I started in the fall of 2009 taking a class at the local Vocational School. I took the car in, and started to sand off the old paint, thinking that at the least, if we want to get the car painted, we can save some money by doing alot of the grunt work. Every night I dropped off the car, with the statement "I have bad news." Every class I'd uncover some new hell; bondo, rust, dented panels. The worst was the rear quarter panel behind the driver side door. It looked like the hulk punched it. I uncovered it by chiseling off 1 1/2" thick of bondo out of it. It was a super bummer. I'll admit it kind of took the jam out of my doughnut. I felt like I was in over my head, and I was.
So this year Dad decided that he wanted it done. I wasn't looking forward to putting the time in getting this completed, as I knew that it was gonna be a long process, and if I was lucky it would be done in about 6 months or so, If we were lucky.
We stripped a junked MGB GT for a rear quarter panel, and we had bought a parts car, and stripped it for whatever else we could. I knew the metal work was gonna be out of my abilities, and I started to think of finding someone that could do that work, but I was drawing a blank. Good body guys that don't charge an arm and a leg are few and far between these days.
My Red MGB had the infamous "crack of doom" on the driver side door. So I cruised craigslist and all sorts of places trying to find a replacement door. My idea was to refinish this new door, and replace it on my car. My search brought me to Burnett's garage in Wenham; I asked if they had a driver's side MGB door that was in good shape. The guy at Burnetts said, why don't you send it to this guy, and gave me a phone number for a guy that does all their body work. "It'll be cheaper than doing a compete door panel, and he'll have it done in no time at all". Funny thing is, the guy that gets us supplies for auto body class, mentioned the same guy to me awhile back.
So the wheels were turning in my head. So I called the guy and we made an appointment to see him, and mentioned we needed the GT done, and he said he'd do it. We dropped off the car, and every time we went up there, progress was made. We later found out it was in a couple of fender benders, and also was fighting off rust and starting to loose that battle. The body guy said it wasn't easy, and that it was tough task, even for him. All of I sudden I didn't feel bad that I didn't get to do all this work, as it became apparent it was well over my skill set.
My Dad ended up in the hospital during all this going on, and when I went to visit him, the first thing out of his mouth was "did you talk to the paint guy today?"
It's almost 100% complete. It's passed inspection, and has all of its safety stuff sorted out. Just the interior and some small trim items like a grille, British Leyland markers, and mud flaps. But from here on in, it's a car again, and shouldn’t have to be taken off of the road to do any work on it! (Hopefully)
I am however a bit bummed, as when we went to car shows; we did it together, talking on the way down about what's going on, and on the way back about what we saw at the show. Now we'll be taking 2 cars to shows, I'll miss that chit chat on the ride down and back. But we’ll have a lot to talk about when we get to our destination.
