Father and son team, John and Nick Wakeling, went to great lengths to get their decade-long MGA project looking and driving like a new one.
Even with a father-son project, you need someone to blame for the purchase. According to John: “It’s Nick’s fault we bought this! We looked at Unique Cars every issue and even considered a Sandman. One day he spotted this car in Newcastle, it was part of a deceased estate. I said: ‘Okay let’s go and have a look.’ We made an offer and went and picked it up.”
It was all meant to happen in well under the actual 10-year timeline. “I moved interstate twice,” says Nick, “so that didn’t help the process. I think our original timeline was 18 months.”
The MGA is a very late example, the history of which was traced by Garry Kemm of the National MGA Register. According to his info: “Your car was one of a batch of 12 MGA CKD kits collated/packed at the KD Department, Cowley, and dispatched from the UK on 19 January, 1962.
“It was assembled by Pressed Metal Corporation, Enfield, Sydney on behalf of BMC Australia around late April to early May 1962.”
According to John: “There were 148 of these came to Australia as knock-down kits and were built in Sydney. I think the MGB was launched about the same time, so these cars had to stand out, and they certainly did.
“These are much prettier, and I think one of the prettiest MGs. This is car 69 and, up to that number, they had a unique chassis plate. We ended up replicating a plate that looks exactly like the original including the 1940s to 1950s font.
“We produced 20 of them to help cover the costs of setting it up. There was a guy (Todd) in the USA who had the correct stamps and we sent the plate to him. When they did them, you can see they were rough, but that’s how they did them at the factory. Todd was able to replicate that.
“He also had a whole lot of parts that aren’t available anywhere else in the world. Lots of fasteners, the straps that hold the jack and tyre pump. He had reproductions of the straps with the right connectors – all that sort of stuff. That’s the enth degree we’ve gone to.”
What sort of shape was the car in when they got it? “The engine was in the cockpit and was all painted. We thought, touch wood, maybe it will be okay. Then we had a look at its internals and it was all fine. The gearbox was in the car but not attached. It was all cleaned up and we thought maybe it was okay. We put it in the chassis and it wasn’t. First gear was really noisy and it was jumping out of fourth.
“We ended up driving down to Melbourne with the gearbox to John Needham. He said he wasn’t building them himself any more but if I went down with it, he would show me how to do it. It’s not something I’m interested in repeating!”
What appealed to Nick about the car? “I grew up with Dad’s Healeys and this is a very similar style of car. He had all the Healeys, so that wasn’t an option. It was a really pretty car and an opportunity to start from scratch.
“As the youngest I was always put into the smallest crevices to work on cars, so I decided I wanted to do it myself and being able to take one home.
“It took about a year to get it back to bare metal. I used to carry the chassis out into the driveway and then soda-blast it. I’m sure the neighbours were happy with the cloud of dust down the road! We built it up from there.
“The hardest thing are the details, which is where Dad has been great. He’s very good at connecting with people in other states to get the details right and understand what this car should be.”
John picks up the story: “Garry Kemm has been on this journey with us. There is a shroud in the engine bay that is subtly different on the MkII and he was able to give me a template for that. It was those sorts of things. He was heavily involved in looking at the artwork for the chassis plate and critiquing it.
“It gets frustrating when you’ve done 20 versions of it and you’re still not right.
“This car, because it’s Australian-delivered, is heater delete, radio delete and leather. All the English cars had a leather interior, including the dashboard. This is painted with a vinyl interior. And the stiffening bar in the door cards is meant to be the body colour as well. It’s all those little things. This was competing with Triumph TR series and the Healey 100.
“The body was very good. All the rust repairs had been done. We have a painter nearby who has painted this and various other things for it.”
Nick adds: “There was a bit of rippling on the rear that needed work, and a few areas around the headlights.
“This top of the radiator here, I think Dad sanded and repainted that about six times, which is a really good time to be interstate!
“I did a lot of the earlier work and then it sat in the paint shop for about two years or more. I’d come up for a week at a time and we’d do something like get the engine in.
“Dad did a lot of the final details and really pushed it across the line, which is nice.”
John continues: “The wiring we got from Paul of Vintage Wiring Harness in Melbourne. He was brilliant. The numbers are forgotten. I’m a marketing person, not an auto electrician, so this was all a black art. We fitted the harness and Paul would diagnose any issue we had over the phone. We had the manual and all of his connecters were numbered, so you could cross-reference the two.
“The chassis rail which sits under the front, I ended up making up a new bit of tube and weld it in.
“With the engine, basically we tested it to check if it had in fact been rebuilt and it all stacked up. The only thing we’ve changed is the oil canister filter. I can’t get my hand in there to remove or attach it – there just isn’t enough room. English people then weren’t this tall! We put a conversion kit on that.
“I rebuilt the carburettors and then we ran it and it still wasn’t going real well. So we sent it up to Kevin at Tech Tune (Sydney), who gave me a hard time because I did a really lousy job. He’s doing the carburettors for the next project (a Datsun 240Z).”
Nick says: We went for our first big drive, for lunch down on the coast the other day. After 10 years it’s really nice to drive and not a worry.
“When you start to drive these projects, it’s usually a block at a time. I think that extends to all old cars. I remember taking my Dad’s Healey to a formal and didn’t make it. The fan disintegrated and went through the radiator.
“As for the MGA, it drove really well and they handle nicely.”
John reveals: “It’s surprising because they’re only on four-and-a-half-inch wheels. This has new wheels, so it has some hope of going in a straight line. My Healey has six-inch wheels with much wider rubber, which is really sticky and you can belt through a corner.”
When we did the story, John was in the process of moving house, which means downsizing the family fleet. Nick too is moving, and is hoping to get somewhere with a garage so he can take some of John’s overflow, hopefully a Healey. That topic looks like being up for debate …
Meanwhile the MGA is going on the market. You can contact John on 0410 489 915.