Boot Floor Woes - MG Car Club

Boot floor trouble

Thomas Aczel shares his story of the issues he found after lifting his boot carpet.

I’d long regretted carpeting the boot in my MGB, (in 1985), but with its bare painted floor, articles being carried in the boot were forever scratching and marking the painted surfaces. It just never looked tidy, always deteriorated and “unfinished”.

So, 35 years later, I finally got around to taking the carpet out again.

Initially, things didn’t look too bad! Just a lot of hard rubbing, leaning over into awkward angles. BUT, around the fuel filler, clearly things weren’t so happy. Much rust, which looked like surface rust predominantly. But also emerging were former patch repairs (x2) to the boot floor, and, as you can see in the photo with the screw driver pointing, some small perforations appeared in areas well away from where corrosive and rust promoting fluids had collected in the off-side rear quarter recesses.

One significant disadvantage of having to go to work was my not being home when the soda blaster came. He had assured me that he could protect the surrounding paint and only blast in the boot. Nonetheless I carefully masked off around and inside the boot carefully, including boot lid hinges, prop, wiring harness and filler neck. I also masked around the perimeter of the vertical panel separating the cabin from the boot to stop the dust getting in to the cabin. To mask inside the cabin, I removed the parcel shelf carpet. Unfortunately it would seem the this was interpreted by the soda blaster as me asking for the parcel shelf to be blasted, which was entirely unnecessary. The result was a cabin with dust everywhere! In some places there actual piles of sodium bicarbonate a centimetre and more high, and in many places forced into narrow inaccessible crevices.

Small pinholes, and more than just pinholes (!!) and not unfortunately not localized to just one area. Things are looking more serious!

The last photo is of some of the foam I extracted, placed on each side between the corner boot floor panels behind each wheel arch on the sides and the inner surface of the mudguard, still there from when the car was first assembled in Enfield, Sydney, at Pressed Metal Corporation, in September 1965. It was all still in there, intact and complete, and, remarkably, utterly dry.

As the photos demonstrate, the two boot floor corner sections have been put in now. Predominantly as a result of the previous insertion of a repair section in the trailing edge of my boot (circa 1977) with a slightly inaccurate radius, the near side panel took quite a deal of fettling by Robert to allow it to fit nicely.

The main section of the boot floor is next. The reproduction panel had serious discrepancies from the original. The panel now sourced from British Motor Heritage is better, but is roughly produced, poorly finished and still shows differences from the original, which will unfortunately need further time consuming attention by the artisan Robert.

Another discovery from taking out the boot carpet was that the wiring harness had been cut into, spliced and wrapped in PVC tape. I have no idea when this happened, by who, nor even why. The car had been rewired in 2006, using a brand new cloth-wrapped wiring harness. So it was fortunate that a new unused early MGB rear harness came up for sale recently at a reasonable price.

And poor Robert got into all this by having very kindly offered to repaint the interior of my boot in readiness for my upcoming Easter road trip in my MGB to Wodonga! He may understandably be reluctant to ever again help me with a seemingly small task on one of my MGs again. The Wodonga trip has since been cancelled. Hmm…Robert, I’d love my MGA to be Katoomba Grey again! :-D

Tom and Robert’s problem solving and finishing touches

Reproduction items for our MGs are repeatedly poorly done. The people giving the go-ahead for these parts clearly are inattentive to important details, time and again. A good example is my present need to source a new boot floor for my MGB.

In particular, look at the swage pressings reinforcing the front lower corner that runs across this section of the floor in the original. Then look at the half hearted purely cosmetic impressions made in the reproduction floor in an attempt to look, at a glance, similar to the original.
Those swages are there for a reason, to stiffen that folded line in the panel. Without them, with a load in the boot, even the weight of the spare and the fuel tank, which is bolted to the underside of the boot floor, would cause the floor to go up down as the car travels over every day bumps in the road. Apart from noise, ultimately a metal fatigue fracture would almost certainly ultimately result along this fold in the panel.

Also compare the mounting for the spare wheel/tyre. The original has a raised star shaped form, integrated with a substantial circular plate which is welded to the boot floor. The reproduction floor just has a copy of the raised star formation. Again the strength of the configuration in the reproduction boot floor is significantly compromised.

Near enough IS NOT good enough.

After rejecting the Metalcraft brand reproduction boot floor for significant constuctional oversights, the British Motor Heritage “OE”

boot floor, said to be formed with the original tooling, arrived. But all was not satisfactory with this panel either. The reinforcing swages where the floor floor turns up at the front were indeed present. But they were poorly done with creases and wrinkles in the metal. They were also wider, and shallower than the originals The swages crossing the horizontal face of the boot floor were present, but were also more shallow than the original, with less vertical sides. The whole thing was somehow less “crisp” and neat than the original.

The spare wheel securing fixture was a more substantial structure than in the reproduction boot floor, similar to, though still not the same as the original. But structurally quite adequate. However it was attached to the floor panel further forward than the original, by 3/4″.

Previously when storing my soft top roof frame in the boot, the horizontal bars for my soft top dropped into the recess between the front of the spare tyre and the forward vertical face of the boot, getting them nicely out of the way into a space otherwise wasted. This will no longer be possible. Now even with the spare jammed hard up to the front of the boot, it is impossible to vertically clamp the spare down with the securing rod. There is also no way in hell that an MGC’s (15″ diameter) spare wheel will fit using the newer securing point. I now think this will have to be drilled out and remounted in its original and correct location!

Additionally, the part had been shipped in a box (from Moss) too small in height. The force to close the box had bent the brackets on the floor (no big deal) but had also bent the boot floor and buckled the sides of the floor. Artisan Robert was able to attend to these nicely.

So while Robert administered to the MGB in need, I attended to complex issues such as attaching the new rubber strips to the now repainted petrol tank and further extraction of sodium bicarbonate dust in areas such as behind trim panels inside the cabin. Meanwhile I was able to observe Robert at work, and every now and again render some assistance.

The good bit of news is that despite the above described flaws (not “floors” :-) ) the new boot structure slipped into its aperture very easily with surprisingly little fettling on the way. A myriad plug welds, made fractionally quicker in their preparation by having a “hole maker” lent to us by a retired panel beater I know.

So once we sort the ineptly incorrectly located spare tyre securing part, we will actually be ready to start preparation for painting!

Probably for the first time since around 1977, my MGB has a properly configured, structurally sound boot!!

Another productive day here today yet again thanks to Robert Pope’s patience and skill.
A repeat trial fit of the spare confirmed that the spare wheel locating bracket in the new boot floor was indeed too far forward to allow the spare to be properly secured. Robert drilled out the spot welds holding the bracket in the new boot floor and removed the bracket. We managed to successfully harvest the original bracket off the old boot floor, since the new bracket was not just mounted in the wrong place, but was also visibly different to the original. The holes in the floor were welded up, and the old bracket was plug welded into the correct position. Robert then spent a considerable time dressing the wrinkled swage pressings in the upturn at the front of the boot.

Then came time to clean up the boot, the bulkhead from the passenger compartment side and to sand and clean the unnecessarily soda blasted rear shelf; somewhat tedious but essential, especially carefully masking off the rest of the car.

Finally, at last, Robert could start on what poor Robert originally offered to do for me in the first place, to help me out and repaint my boot!!!
So on went two coats of etch primer.

So at last, the boot is structurally sound and corrosion free, and all nicely protected by the first two coats of paint. We are certainly getting there!
Two coats of paint primer next, then two coats of colour and two coats of clear.

On Thursday, 17’th of April (the anointed day), Robert the Pope arrived with his mobile paint booth (more commonly known as a tent!)

A BIG day lay ahead, with final surface preparations, a little more masking off, to be followed by two coats of colour primer, two coats of colour base coat, and two of clear.

The “paint booth” was floored with a tarpaulin. The ground around hosed down. There were heaters, lights and a large blower fan. The compressor for the paint gun was parked adjacent.

In the end events conspired to show that we were over-ambitious, particularly with the shortening days. Two errant moths landed on the still wet first clear coat. They clearly emit a chemical as they flap around. Suddenly the paint lifted right down to the base metal, even through the etch primer that had been applied a week earlier!
So we arranged to reconvene the following day. Probably just as well, as the paint blend provided by the car paint specialist business proved too yellow.
I headed out early Friday morning with my boot lid to ask the shop to have another try at matching the colour. Meanwhile Robert busied himself dealing with the moth-induced graffiti. The re-blended paint was ready in FIVE HOURS! Clearly fate was trying its hardest to allow another insect induced frustration to occur at dusk.
But this time we pulled it off!

Two weeks now to allow the paint to cure and harden, then some attention to the occasional blemish (my how one can obsess over surfaces to be shortly covered by a spare tyre, soft top and tools and, in the cabin, by carpet!)

Then comes refitting the fuel tank, boot lid, bumpers, tail lights, harness etc. And then we (thy?) will be done! (And it will be heaven :-) )

Tom Aczel