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MG MGA - Curious Coupe

My coupe is currently apart under going a complete resto, I posted earlier about the dented frame, delivered to Eclectic today. I am trying to figure out what I have and the questions came about by reading Clausager's MGA book. My body inner fender has the kidney shape indent on the carb side, and no indent on the other..this would point to a 1600. The rear window "shelf" is the shortend variety, again indicating a 1600. The rear fenders are of the 1500 type. The trunk has the tire clamp on the side, and the tonneau has the spare tire hole, this was for the 1500 model also, the body number is 45984. The frame is a 1500, and the engine was a 1500 (15GD), but a high starter was in the car with the low starter tunnel hammered out to make room. The serial number on the shelf is 38593. I would love to know the history of this car, where its been, etc, but the guy I bought it from bought it from a guy who's family had parked it behind their house 15 years ago, and no one knows anything about it. I suspect a collection of parts was put together to make one car, the frame has roll bar mounts and could have been raced one time I guess. I am not concerned about being original and knew the pedigree was not good on the car before buying it. I will be restoring it with an 1800 and OD tranny, along MGB front hubs and brakes, I will make every attempt to keep the car original looking, but want to drive it on modern highways.
David Terhune

Hi David. From your description, it sounds like you have a 1600 body shell, 1500 chassis and power train, with numerous 1500 parts grafted on. Since the transmission tunnel has been "hammered" from a 1600 configuration to a 1500 configuration, it sounds like a previous owner has modified a 1600 tunnel to fit the 1500 drive train, as necessary to make things fit. From my understanding, it was not totally unheard of for the factory to do strange modifications on some MGA's occasionally, when switching from one model of MGA to another. For example, if the factory had numerous left over 1500 parts, sometimes these parts could find their way onto the new 1600 model, simply to save money and use up the surplus 1500 parts! Another example would be the MGA "deluxe", which was essentially a twin cam car with a pushrod engine. When the factory found that it had more twin cam chassis's than engines, they decided to simply fit pushrod engines, to make the otherwise surplus parts into a vehicle that was saleable! Thus a "NEW" MG model was "born" It might be possible that some of the strange modifications you describe were actually done by the factory. Or perhaps not! There is so much interchangeability within the MGA line, that people often used to (and still do) graft whatever was/is available to them, to keep the vehicle on the road! This often makes model identification, and the actual "stock" configuration difficult to acertain. I do suspect that the "modified" transmission tunnel was done by a previous owner though! I don't think that the factory would stoop so low as to hammer out an improper tunnel! Cheers! Glenn
Glenn

This thread was discussed on 03/10/2004

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