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MG Midget and Sprite Technical - Depth of windscreen

I have been installing a new glass in the windscreen frame today - what a job. Impossible without rope tournaquets. Anyway, its done, but the central rod seems to be too long to me. It is screwed up to the stop and to me it looks as though the frame should be a little closer top to bottom. As the car was a basket case, I wonder if I've been given an MGB rod. It's a 1966 car by the way.

So can a few of you please measure the exact distance between the top and bottom metal frames. Please measure vertically in line with the central rod, and take the measurement from the inside edges of the metal part of the frame. Mine currently measures 304 mm on the outside of the glass. Thanks.
Mike Howlett

Mike,
Mine is a 1965 and measures about 289mm measured on the outside metal to metal so looks like your hunch about a B rod may be right.

Trev
T Mason

Thanks Trev, that is very interesting and looks as though I have to pull the frame together by 10-15mm That figures, because the rubber is not flush with the metal part of the frame as it should be.

Has anyone else got the time to measure their screen for confirmation? I've drawn in the measurement I want on the attached picture.



Mike Howlett

278 mm - (this is glass area between top and bottom rubber inner seal(s))

from 1973 car

your photo shows a car with three wipers
Nigel Atkins

286 mm metal frame to metal frame (i.e. excluding rubber seal)

so matches Trev's

(I should add my measurements need to allow for leaning over car wing, head to tape angle and old eyes)
Nigel Atkins

286mm for me also
Doug Plumb

280mm rubber to rubber
290mm metal to metal

and 245mm bottom of mirror mounting block thing to top of threads on the rod

1972 car :)
Rob Armstrong

Thank you everybody. By judicious use of rope tourniquets and a large wooden mallet I have shrunk the screen down to 294mm, a reduction of 10mm. At first I was scared stiff of cracking my new laminated screen, but in the end I just bashed it with gusto, and it has survived. No matter what I do I can't get it any slimmer, so that will have to do. In the end I cut just over 10mm off the threaded part of the rod and now that works fine too.

It's odd isn't it. You would have thought that if you have got the side rails properly installed and screwed up tight then the central depth would be fine. But it obviously wasn't as the rubber wasn't fully home into the channels, which at 294mm it now is.

Nigel, many, if not all, US midgets and MGBs had three wipers because the powers that be over there decided that two didn't wipe enough of the screen. The picture I used was taken off the internet and is of an American car.

Many thanks again. What a great resource these boards are.



Mike Howlett

I realised it was possibly a stock photo and of an American car but at the time I couldn't get the words out

The American cars seem over complicated in many areas compared to the simplier British versions

As a mate told me what a pain job the windscreen was I bought a refurished frame complete with new screen and had someone else swap as it would have been well beyond me
Nigel Atkins

Interestingly mine measures 332mm overall the frame (outside to outside of metal) but its a 1973 model so may well differ from yours. Moss says that windscreens have now been rationalised from 10 to 4 types!

Peter
Peter B

This thread was discussed between 11/01/2011 and 14/01/2011

MG Midget and Sprite Technical index

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