Grille and Rear Bumper

 The grille had to be installed three times to get it right.  We bought a new exterior shell but re-used the inner portion with slats.  The interior slats includes the brackets for mounting the assembly, it had the three upper brackets but was missing the lower  three.

So we fabricated one bottom bracket and attached it with a screw.  Turned out pretty well:

Then we tackled the rear bumper.  We had received our used brackets, which we painted.  The old non MGA rear bumper actually had an MGA license plate bracket on it, which we were able to retrieve and include on this assembly.  And we bought a new license plate light, which looks cool.  So here's the rear bumper in place:

Fun Part Continues

 Glad the door latch system went in place well, this can be a bear to get right.  Both doors latch nicely with moderate pressure.

Front bumper is installed, rear bumper is awaiting some used interior brackets we found in Covington KY.  This guy had a couple of other used parts we needed, saved a bunch of money going used on non cosmetic parts.

Rubber trunk seal installed, plus carpet in trunk and rear of cockpit.  Fuel filler attached, installed replacement clip in gas cap and it works fine.

Then moved on to more part installation.  Ray likes to install the shiny stuff, ie "bling".  But he missed this part, plus the MGA oval pieces in the front fnders.

The door panel kit we ordered was the basic kit, that did not include the pockets in the doors.  But it does include material to cover your original pockets.  The only problem was we didn't have the original pockets!

After looking around we found a dilapidated set of pockets from an old set of door panels for Ray's MGA.  And our friend Dave had the idea of making new ones using the old as a pattern and sheets of corrugated plastic that he had at home.  Here's some pics:

I think it turned our pretty darn good.

We also got the lights all installed and working, including the complex turn signals.  MGA's have only two filaments in the rear, yet you need three functions - parking lights, brake, and turn signal.  MGA's accomplish this with a complex relay device that switches between brake and turn  signal functions on one circuit.  I was very pleased when this device worked first time, last MGA we had required some contact cleaning to get to this point.  Btw, the grille is just sitting there for the pic.

Here's some pics with the lights on:

Assembly Moving Along

 Here's some more pics of the car as rcd from Darrell:

Then here's some pics with the "welting" in place on the fenders:

Also includes the windshield installed.  Darrell did a nice job on the fenders, they fit up real well.

We also got the dashboard basically installed: