They made a lot of not being able to look underneath, then as soon as it was on a ramp immediately found rot where you don't need a ramp to find it, the outer cills under the doors, where all MGs fail.

When I used to weld/restore cars I used to dread MGB's (and Staggs) as there was a trend to fit shiny oversills - looked lovely but the complex structure behind the scenes was usually cream crackered. A tip (not 100%) was to kneel down next to the rear wheel and pull where the wheelarch met the rear of the sill - If it moves/gives at all just walk away.

I once was doing this on a car and I could feel the whole thing starting to give way in my hands and a pile of rust dust forming on the ground - I ran away!

It's one reason I liked the Moggy Minor as it was easy(ish) to unbolt the "over sill trim" and visually check the sill structure underneath. It was a bit harder to check the rear spring hanger structure though (except one that had pushed through the boot floor!). The early ones were a welders dream as they had really thick metal - with later ones it was much thinner.

Edited by Big John on 28/04/2019 at 22:19

Just watched the latest episode, a BMW Z3.

After watching I checked out the MoT history. It failed in October on a couple of relatively minor things but what struck me was the number of times it has failed over the years and the number of advisories it's had. Clearly not a loved car and one I think most of us wouldn't touch with a bargepole.

I made the mistake of starting to watch 'Stripping cars for cash' or some such title. Overplayed 'diamond geezer' type characters reminded me of Harry Enfield's 'loadsamoney'. That was fiction too.