Skinning the tailgate

Due to my job and other obligations (such as taking the dogs for a walk, etc) I could not spend time in the garage during the week. To avoid upsetting people that live around my garage I don’t use power tools after 6:30pm. Most of the tasks on my list right now require the grinder/wirewheel to clean up stuff. Therefore, I did not even bother to start at 6pm. What I did achieve yesterday is to get a price indication on the tailgate repair.

Of course – the body shop could repair the tailgate without a replacement panel. Their estimate is it takes at least 5 hours of work just to fix the entire lower windows part. Now, let’s just say that hourly rate is 100€. The verdict is clear: such a repair is financially not viable. The reason I preferred that idea is because the old tailgate had a decent fit and gap. Not perfect – but good enough to not fiddle with it.

Some people advised me to just get another tailgate from Ebay or so. There are a few I found – ranging from 60 to 250€ for used ones. What are the chances that those are rust free? With nothing to lose – I decided to try to separate the skin from my tailgate. If the inner part is any good – I will just order a tailgate replacement skin which costs 200GBP

Way back in the 1990th when I had my Mini – I assisted a friend doing the same on his Mini. Back then the Internet wasn’t even invented to look up how this is done. We also had no useful instructions, and an angle grinder was an expensive tool which be only borrowed for a few hours. Not going into details – but this was not a success. Well, at least we didn’t hurt ourselves. We ended up getting a new door from the scrap yard later that day 🙂
Nowadays, there are many good videos and blogs on how to reskin a MGB or Mini door. I watched a few of them but could not find anything on the MGB GT tailgate. Looking at it – I concluded that it is the same principal – just with a few more spot welds.

Getting this job done resulted in the most satisfying afternoon of the week. I started at 3pm and was able to remove the skin, clean and prepare the inner part (almost) ready for 2k primer of the tailgate. The skin on both doors are also almost removed – I need a new flappy disc on the grinder to separate the top weld on the doors. The inner tailgate part looks great.