Editor Simon Goldsworthy must have known what my answer would be when he asked whether I’d like to take on the magazine’s latest project, a slightly worse for wear MGB GT. With tatty paintwork and equally tatty welding repairs on the underside, this was clearly a car that was going to need some work, but then again that is what makes a project! And despite the faded and dulled purple paintwork, the patches of surface rust along the tops of the rear wings, the bubbling around the rear wheelarches and the deep wiper scratch across the windscreen, I was assured the GT was driveable and safe, though in need of a thorough service and some light tweaking.
The problem with any car in this sort of condition is assessing how deep the problems go. All cars can suffer from corrosion in areas such as the wheelarches, doors, sills and more, but what you see is rarely all that you get. Rusty sills, for example, can mean equally rusty floors, and minor bubbling on the outside can sometimes require extensive surgery and a lot more replacement metalwork than anticipated to fix the underlying problems.
We’ve seen many an MGB sill repair extend to the floors
