University Motors Ltd Archives: Transforming loose parts into a classic MG VA

Excerpt from MG, Interrupted – 1937 MG VA Tourer: A father-son restoration project that lay dormant for 25 years is brought to completion. Written by David LaChance on 09/23/2018 for Hemmings.com

Few things on this earth hold so much promise as a new restoration project, especially when you’re a 12-year-old boy who’s looking forward to many satisfying hours of work at your father’s side. You can hardly wait to get started, as you peer out through the dusty windshield and visualize that triumphant maiden voyage down your street.

Diving into the work, you’re surprised to learn how little time it can take to reduce a running automobile to a collection of parts. You make steady progress on disassembling, sandblasting, and painting various components, but it soon becomes apparent that you have underestimated how much time and expertise the work is going to demand. Before you know it, it’s time to leave for college, and the car is just a rolling, painted frame; when your younger brother heads off to college, too, the work comes to a stop.

“When you’re not getting closer, you’re getting farther away because you’re taking more stuff off instead of putting it on, the thrill of victory recedes,” said Jim Hoeck, who was a 12-year-old boy back in July 1973 when his father, Bill, brought home a deteriorated 1937 MG VA Tourer that he had bought for $1,600. “We certainly attacked the project with vigor, but not necessarily with the best plan.”

The dream sometimes ends here, with the boxed-up bits and pieces listed under the “project car” heading of the classified ads, but not this time. After storing the parts for a quarter-century, the Hoecks (it rhymes with “brakes”) turned to MG expert John Twist at University Motors to bring the project to the finish line. In February, the completed car you see on these pages was trailered from University Motors Limited in Ada, Michigan, to Jim Hoeck’s home on Cape Cod.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

After both Jim and Steve had left for college, the car went into storage, following Bill Hoeck through two moves and, finally, into storage in Wisconsin. There it stayed until Bill’s retirement five years ago, when Jim suggested getting the project started again. This time, the Hoecks decided to call in the cavalry, and hired MG sports car specialist University Motors, which had done such fine work restoring Steve’s MGA. The car arrived in Ada on July 31, 2001.

“It was just a jigsaw puzzle, a 3-D jigsaw puzzle,” said John Twist, owner of University Motors. “It was just a pile of sticks and lumber and boxes and everything. Our job was to put it back together. We had to deal with the fact that there wasn’t another one around to look at–but, on the other hand, it is an MG, and we know our way around MGs.”

Twist and his crew began by disassembling the chassis and all the suspension components, sending them to Southwest Sandblasting of Grand Rapids, Michigan, for powder coating. The gas tank and radiator were sent out to the Radiator Hospital of Grand Rapids, Michigan, to be cleaned, the wheel cylinders and master cylinder were sent to White Post Restorations to be sleeved, and the previously rebuilt engine and gearbox were set aside.

Twist initially tried to rebuild the deteriorated steel-over-ash body tub, ordering new timbers from Peter Ratcliff of SVW Spares in England, a leading specialist in the MG SA, VA and WA models. After running into a number of difficulties, he turned the job over to SVW, shipping the timbers and parts of the body overseas. When the body returned, Carl Heideman of Eclectic Motorworks in Holland, Michigan, massaged the fenders to make them fit. “We had to lengthen and shorten and widen and narrow,” Twist said.

The body and fenders were then sent to Mark Kenworthy of Lowell, Michigan, for paint. “He’s probably painted more MGs than anybody else in the country by now,” Twist noted. “He does as nice a job as you want done.” Although Ratcliff had applied primer, Kenworthy stripped the shell back to bare metal, using a propane torch and a razor blade. Deciding that an etching primer was not necessary, he applied three coats of PPG catalytic primer, then block sanded the body, beginning with 180 grade paper and finishing with 600.

Next came three to four coats of PPG Concept, a two-pack acrylic urethane paint. The Hoecks, inspired by a VA they had seen at an MG gathering, had chosen Old English White, a color used on MGAs and early MGBs, for the fenders, and Autumn Red, a color used on MG TDs, for the body. The final coat was wet-sanded, beginning with 1,000 grade paper and ending with 3,000 grade, then buffed with 3M Perfect It II rubbing compound, applied with a Meguiar’s Softbuff foam pad.

All of the fasteners are British Standard specification, and not something you can find by rummaging through the bins at your local True Value hardware store. Twist cleaned the fasteners thoroughly in a motorized tumbler filled with ceramic abrasive, and sent them to Midwest Plating in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for zinc plating. Rechroming tasks were farmed out to Custom Metal Finishing of Shelby, Michigan.

SVW Spares supplied a number of needed parts, among them a floorpan, to replace the incorrect piece that had come with the project; a set of new wire wheels, needed after it was discovered that the splines in the old wheels were too worn to use; and an air cleaner assembly, to replace a missing part. Other parts were sourced from Moss Motors in Santa Barbara, California, and Abingdon Spares in Walpole, New Hampshire.

B & B Auto Upholstery of Lowell, Michi-gan, retrimmed the interior, making all of the panels from scratch. Leather was used for the seating surfaces, with vinyl used for the backs of the seats. B & B also sewed a new folding cloth top and side curtains to match the interior. The instruments were refurbished by Nisonger Instruments in Mamaroneck, New York, and a new wiring harness came from British Wiring of Olympia Fields, Illinois. Twist rebuilt the distributor and the carburetors, getting SU parts from specialist Joe Curto of College Point, New York. Lisa Kenworthy ordered the parts and kept the project on track.

Twist credits workers Gregg Purvis for doing the bulk of the mechanical work on the car, and Curt Saunier for most of the reassembly work. A water pump failure that showed up during test runs was corrected, and the car was put into an enclosed trailer and driven east by Herm Goldner, arriving on the Cape on a cold February day.

The finished car represents the completion of the labors that father and sons began more than three decades ago, and the pride that Jim and Bill feel is evident as they climb into the car for a trip down a seaside road. But Bill confides that he long ago gained his reward from the project: the precious time spent with his sons during their teenage years. The fact that there’s a finished car today, he said, is the icing on the cake.

Read the full article here: MG, Interrupted – 1937 MG VA Tourer.