A Tale of Two Midgets

I suppose it was inevitable that I would become enthusiastic about MGs, after all Granddad owned at least two, my Mum had one and my Dad had three. But I could never have imagined what was to happen to me. After becoming really keen at the age of thirteen I started to search for a suitable car to rebuild for when I reached driving age. But on a budget of approximately £300 it was a case of buying a basket case or a dinky model. Eventually I realised that I would have to wait a few years before I could own an MG.

Time went on and after my GCSE exams I decided to get a job for the long summer vacation. I found one fairly soon and began work earning £90 a week. The money was put into my MG fund. I don’t think I spent a penny of that money, it all went towards my dream car. Throughout the summer I scoured the pages of every classic car magazine trying to find a car that I could afford, which to be frank was not that much, in the region of about £800. Anyway, one Friday, I spotted this advert for an ‘MG Midget 1977, yellow, good condition taxed and MoT’d till the end of the month, first £850’. Well, it was an MG, it was in my price range and it lived just up the road from my school.

That evening I went round to have a look. I was so excited about the prospect of owning an MG that I didn’t look at the car in enough detail before I parted with my money. I thought it was a bargain. It drove, it looked right and above all it was just what I wanted. “Nice” I thought, “one year’s work and it will be perfect for when I am seventeen”. The following year saw me start work doing various jobs to make the car a bit smarter.

Everything was fine until a wheel fell off when my Dad was driving the Midget along the lane to our house. Although it didn’t do much damage, it did enough to make me call on the expertise of a friend of mine who was already very experienced in the rebuilding of cars. He patched the Midget up for me but warned that it would require a lot more work to get it road worthy. It was a typical story of rot, bodging and filler. What I thought was a bargain turned out to be a rot box and knowing what I know now, that car should have been in scrap yard years ago.

ODK 380R before the rebuild

So now, one year later, when I thought I would be driving it around, I had a big problem. What was I going to do with the car? I can’t weld, neither can my Dad, so rebuilding the shell was out of the question. The pondering went on for weeks but I was now working again as the summer holidays had come round once more and I was getting a break from my A levels and earning money. ‘Enjoying MG’ turned up on my doorstep and as usual I went straight for the spares section. “How much are Heritage bodyshells, James?” asks my Dad from the other side of the kitchen. “Oh, about three grand” I reply. “Hmmmmmm, a little bit out of my price range”. Just then, I notice the advert. ‘Rot free Midget body tubs from America £550’. I was on the phone straight away to P H Sportscars up in Derby and ordering one. “There is a wait of a few months” came the reply. That did not bother me as I had time to save up the money. During the same time I stripped ODK 380R down, ready to clean and recondition parts. By the end of September the shells had arrived. So bunking off school, my Dad and myself went to get one. We ended up with an almost complete car. It came with wings, boot lid, plus a load of ancillaries, including the dash. However, I paid £1100, which was more than I expected. “Oh well, MGs are worth it”.

After getting it home we stripped it down and converted the shell to right hand drive, which is not an easy task on the later Midgets with the introduction of the American safety regulations. In fact I was surprised at the amount of differences between the American shell and the English shell. Once that had been done it was time to clean the underside. I spent at least two months scraping the underseal off the bottom of the car, and this was supposed to be my relaxation in-between my A-levels! By Christmas of 1995 the underside, interior, boot compartment and the engine bay were painted in my preferred colour, Brooklands Green. It was now a case of getting the car rolling. Having the running gear off the American car made this job fairly straightforward as it was now just a case of cleaning the parts and bolting them on, with new nuts and bolts of course. The various bits cleaned up nicely and a few parts didn’t even need cleaning, just a quick spray with some gloss black paint. Soon the car was rolling. The engine had been rebuilt by my Dad and as I had the head converted to run on unleaded fuel it was now ready to be installed. The only problem was that my A-level exams were coming up, so the restoration had to take a back seat for a month or two. But not before I cleaned down the gearbox just two days before my Physics exam. As you can see, I know where my priorities lie.

Scraping underseal off the bottom of the American shell Getting there – engine in place and body rolling

The exam months went by fairly rapidly and now I was free of this worry I could concentrate on the rebuild. The engine and gearbox went in a treat. This left only the bodywork to do before I could get on with the nice jobs of assembling the car. In the early part of the summer of 1996 I primered, sanded and primered and sanded until I was well and truly satisfied. The door gaps were a cause of a major nightmare, but in the end they did not turn out too badly considering the doors were taken from totally separate cars. Soon the MG was ready to be painted in lovely Brooklands Green.

The Midget looked superb and for the first time I thought I was actually getting somewhere. Very soon parts started to appear on the car and then the wiring loom was fitted. This job was a nightmare. Things did not go right from the very start when I was supplied with the wrong dash loom. Somehow I still managed to get most things working though. As soon as the wiring was resolved, everything else slotted into place and after plumbing up the water and oil systems the engine fired first time.

The finished article, another Midget immaculate again

With this everyone in the household heaved a huge sigh of relief and we could crack on with the rest of the rebuild knowing that the engine ran smoothly. This is the stage of a rebuild where you can get on with the ‘nice’ jobs. By this, I mean fitting out the interior and getting all the other hundreds of bits on the car that seemed to be sitting in boxes all over the garage. Within a month and a half of the engine being fired for the first time the car was almost complete and it was driven out of the garage under its own steam for the first time in one and a half years. A few peripheral jobs were done before the car went for its MoT.

“It’s a rebuilt car”, I thought “the MoT should be a doddle”. How wrong could I be. I drove the car over to Birmingham from Bridgnorth, which is about 25 miles for its MoT. Everything was fine until a problem was found with the rear brakes. They did not apply enough braking force. Dejected I went home. But I soon found the problem and took the MG back and it passed. Thank goodness!

So I finally got the car finished. It may have been a year later than I expected, but at eighteen years old, at least I had an immaculate MG Midget instead of a rot box. The car has performed brilliantly over the last two years since it has been rebuilt. It has had its share of problems though. The brakes failed, the engine dropped a valve guide and now the gearbox wants a full rebuild, but what do you expect from a car that was built on a student budget.

ODK 380R pictured here with Chris Backlund’s (the Guernsey Secretary) MGB

All I can say now is, that if there is anyone who is fifteen or sixteen years old reading this and you want an MG of your own, you can do it, if you are prepared to put in the work. You will get a huge sense of satisfaction when you look back and you can say, “I did that when I was seventeen”, plus the fact that it pulls the birds.

James Williams

James with his Midget in Fishguard, Wales