Canned heat & the pedal box

The MGB’s heater box is something that I believe is featured in every MGB restoration at some point. Time for me to do the mandatory heater box post as well. 😁And it has been quite some way for a simple task in the entire restoration. Back in 2021, when I took Mildred apart, I disassembled and cleaned the original box. It looked like the heater core had been leaking for a long time. This not only caused a badly rusted flap. As the Tom’s knob drain pipe was also clogged up – the entire gearbox tunnel was rusted through (see picture)

After manually removing the remaining paint and rust with a soft wire brush, I generously applied rust converter, primer and finished the box with a few coats from the spray can. It looked alright – but not as good as I wanted it to be. The rust removal left too many dents that still showed through. At some point in 2022 the replacement parts from MGOC arrived.  An upgraded heater core, a larger impeller and a new two speed motor also found their way to my workbench. The larger impellor requires a small modification inside the heater box. And this is something that I pushed out for a while.

At some point I found two less rusted heater on “Kleinanzeigen.de”. I took them apart and cleaned them as well. After consulting my local paint shop, we came to the conclusion that powdercoating is the best option. As they did not have priority – it took a few months until they were finally finished. All there of them are now in a close to new or at least very good state. Mildred’s original one has dents on the lower backside – but nothing to be bothered about – it is not visible when installed.

I found a thicker polyester felt that is rated up to 110°C and got a spray adhesive with the same heat resistance. This was applied to the flap. When writing this post I noticed that I made a small mistake when applying the new stickers – so it is wrong on the pictures – but will fix this shortly. The second heater box already has an uprated core – if I am satisfied with the box for Mildred, I will also add this to Maggie at some point. The third heater is complete as well – will most likely sell this on Kleinanzeigen.de

Next to the heater box in a MGB is the pedal box. And as new bushings and some other parts also arrived in September, I also assembled the pedal box. Both pedals have been welded, redrilled for clevis pin and powder-coated. One bronze outer bush needed to be replaced and reamed for the inner metal bush. Feels good to be able to tick off two items of the list.