MGB. The Rubber Bumper Variety

[Spiny]

Don't go expecting this one to be completed soon, I'm not expecting it to get started in earnest until early 2022 but with the British weather I figure I need to get this painted before it gets cold (and wetter). This one is the Aoshima kit which was rereleased a couple of years ago - I'm doing the rubber bumper variety as that's what was on the roads when I was a kit. The fad of returning them to chrome didn't start until I was much older. That is an option with this kit, as has been said many times it come with the chrome and rubber bumper parts, but I'm sticking with the unfashionable rubber bumper version.

 

One thing I'm not sticking with though is the triple wiper setup the kit comes with - to me that just looks wrong. So I did a bit of googling and eventually found out where the holes should be for the two-wiper version. The good news is that the driver's side wiper doesn't move from where the kit has it so only had to drill a hole for the passenger side. And as the wiper holes are symmetrical, I could have used the kit to get the location but instead I did it the hard way by finding a drawing of where the hole should be in the real thing and scaling it down.

 

 

If anyone is wondering, that dimension is 11mm (just under to be precise, but 11mm is close enough) and it just needs to sit the same distance from the windscreen as the other wipers. The hole for the middle wiper needed drilling out anyway, so all I had to do was fill the hole for the passenger wiper. With that filled, I gave it a coat of grey primer to identify any sink marks, mould lines etc.

 

 

And the good news is that there are very few. I'm not sure how Aoshima did it, but the only mould-lines I could identify are on the front and rear valances and (annoyingly) within the headlight recesses. I did wonder if they'd followed the chome belt line, but if they did I can't see it even in primer. The photo should make it obvious where I sanded it down - there's very shallow sink marks on the passenger doors which is why they got a smear of filler. And the filled wiper hole sunk so has had a second fill, but I'm hoping that will sand smooth next weekend.

 

And that's as far as I've got at the moment, unless you count a coat of primer on the chassis and the wheels. Expect somewhat slow and erratic progress on this until I get the Jag finished.

 

Thanks for looking.

 

[Fnick]

Good start! That coat of primer looks super smooth

 

Nick

 

27 minutes ago, Spiny said:

that's what was on the roads when I was a kit.

Was that when you were a big kit or a little kit? 🤣🤣

[johnlambert]

Looking good so far.  I didn't realise that MGBs came with three wipers until I watched Jay Leno's Garage on YouTube tonight.  It seems it was an American market thing, because the law said that the wipers had to clear a certain percentage of the windscreen.

 

What colour are you going for?  I hope something suitably 1970s, maybe a brown?

[JohnT]

John

im sure you will know but the dash and overdrive switches were quite different as between the older chrome bumper and the later rubber bumper vehicles. I have some old photos of my 1978 b if of use?

[Orso]

The new impact rules from 1974 in USA destroyed the looks of many early 70's cars while other disappeared from the market. Like the Volvo 1800 that the Saint drove. The SAAB Sonett got the ugly large bumpers in 1973 but only survived one more year after that. I'm glad that mine is a 1972 model. Mercedes is another who didn't gain in the look from the new bumpers.

 I missed that Aoshima made an MGB and looking forward to follow this build (even with those rubber bumpers 🙂)

[Ben Brown]

3 hours ago, JohnT said:

John

im sure you will know but the dash and overdrive switches were quite different as between the older chrome bumper and the later rubber bumper vehicles. I have some old photos of my 1978 b if of use?

The ‘74 1/2 had the rubber bumpers but still had the earlier instrument panel. I put many, many miles on my ‘78. I’ll be following this thread!
 

Ben

[Marco F.]

@spiny

Thanks for showing the Position where the hole for the passangers-side for 2wiper conversion should be placed.

Nowadays it's seem to be harder to see a rubberboat  (Gummiboot in GER) on the road as compaired to the chrome Version, just bcs you can still get everthing you'll need for backdating 

Looking foward to see your progress in the WIP of the MG-ZODIAC        Marco F 

[Spiny]

23 hours ago, Fnick said:

Good start! That coat of primer looks super smooth

 

Nick

 

Was that when you were a big kit or a little kit? 🤣🤣

 

Well I started out in the usual kit way with two pieces joining together. After 9 months of assembly I was unveiled to the world, but over the next few years further detailing continued before full completion. Unfortunately, as the years have passed I'm now at the stage of parts losing their colour , falling off or just generally not working as well as they once did.

 

More seriously, the primer was bound to be smooth - it's there waiting to be covered by white primer so was always destined to be one of my better paint applications

 

22 hours ago, johnlambert said:

Looking good so far.  I didn't realise that MGBs came with three wipers until I watched Jay Leno's Garage on YouTube tonight.  It seems it was an American market thing, because the law said that the wipers had to clear a certain percentage of the windscreen.

 

What colour are you going for?  I hope something suitably 1970s, maybe a brown?

 

That was my understanding about why there's 3-wiper versions too, doesn't make it look better though (in my eyes). As for the colour, we're thinking along very similar lines:

 

 

21 hours ago, JohnT said:

John

im sure you will know but the dash and overdrive switches were quite different as between the older chrome bumper and the later rubber bumper vehicles. I have some old photos of my 1978 b if of use?

 

Always good to see references from in period, so if you have them to hand that would be good. Just be aware that I won't be undertaking major surgery, but if there's anything minor it will be good to be able to work off the real thing. No rush - it's likely to be over 6 months until I reach that stage!

 

19 hours ago, Orso said:

The new impact rules from 1974 in USA destroyed the looks of many early 70's cars while other disappeared from the market. Like the Volvo 1800 that the Saint drove. The SAAB Sonett got the ugly large bumpers in 1973 but only survived one more year after that. I'm glad that mine is a 1972 model. Mercedes is another who didn't gain in the look from the new bumpers.

 I missed that Aoshima made an MGB and looking forward to follow this build (even with those rubber bumpers 🙂)

 

There's still a quite a few of the Aoshima MGB kits about for sale, at least over here, both chrome and rubber bumper varieties (although I expect they're the same kit apart from the rubber bumper having the Rostyle wheels and rubber bumpers in addition to the chrome parts). It also looks as though a rally version came out end of last year in Japan so expect them to be hitting Europe about now.

[johnlambert]

Good call on the colour

[Anteater]

Tan interior to suit...?

[johnlambert]

I'm hoping for striped, brown "deckchair" style upholstery.

[Codger]

A friend owned a pristine rubber nose car in BRG over black. And it was stunning.

[Six97s]

1 hour ago, johnlambert said:

I'm hoping for striped, brown "deckchair" style upholstery.

 

Not being that familiar with late BL motors, I had to look it up.  Good grief.  Perfect complement to Russer Brown though.

[Codger]

Here's what I meant above. Apologies for brain failure it has tan gut and top. But I prefer it to the brown contingent:

[Spiny]

That's a nice looking MGB there. I can't argue with British Racing Green looking good on it, the main reason I'm not doing it that colour is that over here it seems that most of the rubber bumper versions which haven't been turned to chrome are BRG or have been turned to BRG, I want to do something different, it's gone through being planned to be Sand Yellow (think of that babysick colour), then Inca Yellow when I saw Halfords did that, before Russet Brown grabbed my attention and just felt so '70s it had to be done.

 

As for the interior, I'm still deciding that one. But it will be between tan and black, don't think I have a steady enough hand for the stripy seats I'm afraid. Not sure which one of tan and black yet though, but I have got about 6 months to make up my mind 😆

[Codger]

41 minutes ago, Spiny said:

 I want to do something different, it's gone through being planned to be Sand Yellow (think of that babysick colour), then Inca Yellow

 

How 'bout that E-Type Primrose yellow?

[ElectricLightAndy]

3 minutes ago, Codger said:

How 'bout that E-Type Primrose yellow?

They never had such a lovely yellow on the MGB, the did have one called Citron which was a green tinged yellow 🤮 I agree, brown is good 👍 although the very last mgb roadsters they did an orange metallic (and pewter on the GTs)

[JohnT]

I’m prejudiced but my one was black gloss and it looked to blend in the large rubber bumpers more aesthetically than other other colours I saw them in

 

 

ps black interior too and black hood

[johnlambert]

9 hours ago, Spiny said:

As for the interior, I'm still deciding that one. But it will be between tan and black, don't think I have a steady enough hand for the stripy seats I'm afraid. Not sure which one of tan and black yet though, but I have got about 6 months to make up my mind 😆

C'mon, you might as well fully commit to a theme of 1970s browns and go for a tan interior  

[bigbadbadge]

Nice, I will tag along, was looking at one on ebay recently but after a very large purchase of a large-scale GT40, I don't think SWMBO would stand another one arriving so soon !!!

Will be happy to watch this  progress instead.

Great start 

Chris

 

[Spiny]

22 hours ago, JohnT said:

I’m prejudiced but my one was black gloss and it looked to blend in the large rubber bumpers more aesthetically than other other colours I saw them in

 

 

ps black interior too and black hood

 

Sounds like the same colour scheme as an MG Midget I saw near Thornton Dale just before Covid hit - looked very nice too.

 

11 hours ago, bigbadbadge said:

Nice, I will tag along, was looking at one on ebay recently but after a very large purchase of a large-scale GT40, I don't think SWMBO would stand another one arriving so soon !!!

Will be happy to watch this  progress instead.

Great start 

Chris

 

This is where having a job which allows deliveries to work comes in handy

 

As for the model, it will be done in Russet Brown, the can in the photo was bought specifically for this model and I have nothing else in the stash which would suit that colour. It will also have a black hood (as in roof for our American friends - two nations divided by a common language etc. ). It's just the interior to decide on, but as that will be brush painted and I have both the black and tan/beige options I can leave that decision for a long time yet.

[bigbadbadge]

2 hours ago, Spiny said:

This is where having a job which allows deliveries to work comes in handy

Trouble is I work from home now!!!

[Spiny]

As I'm sure just about anyone reading this in the UK will be aware, the weather has been pretty rubbish for sprayingthe last couple of weekends, but today the humidity in the garage got down to 70% so I figured I'd do a bit. Figured that rather than do a bit of clear-coating on the Mustang I'd go with adding primer to this with the humidity being pretty much at the upper limit for what I'll paint at - if the primer goes wrong you lose a lot less work (and decals!) than if things go pear-shaped with the top coat.

 

So for your perusal, here's the MGB in it's white primer. Quite like the look of it in white, but this one will be brown - the white of the primer is a bit too crisp for something this age (it's actually much less grey than the photo makes it look).

 

 

And I'm afraid that's all there is on this one.

[Fnick]

30 minutes ago, Spiny said:

the weather has been pretty rubbish for sprayingthe last couple of weekends

Didnt know humidity was that bad...now at least there is a reason for the wet coat on my Cadillac going hazy when drying... 😞. I'll need a humidityometer...

 

Nick

[Redstaff]

Love these cars, had an MGB GT back in the day, but they only seem to have kits of the soft tops not the hard top