Body is now mounted on the chassis and proceeding with skinning in Birch ply and then onto doors.

More pics to follow.
Body frame is somewhat beefier than standard
Having been all cut from a single 1" thick seasoned ash plank.

A lot of original Cups I believe were built with 3/4" timber and often with parts in white wood( kindling really!)
Rather than ash.

For the curious I cut most of the curved timbers following the natural grain of the plank to suit the drawings templates.
a lot easier than resorting to building jigs to bend straight timbers into the side body curves.

Just finished sanding the profile of the frame so that the ply will lie smoothly on the curves.

Using a lot of my Dads hand tools as he had been a pattern maker in steel foundry.
His joints would have been better than mine .

Regards

Bill G
Scottish Borders

Nice work Bill

All these Seven people 'in their cups'

Tony.

I have decided to depart from the usual 1.5 mm three ply birch outer skin in favour of 1mm aluminium.

In preparation for the tricky job of cutting and fitting/nailing
The alloy skin I've decide to practice with paper patterns which will also double as templates.
Working out where I'll put the joins and can I get all the panels out of a 8x4 ft sheet.
I think I'll need more so may make the side members 2mm and keep the 1mm for the more highly curved areas.
Apart from nailing, ( round the corners, so not seen) I'm planning to also glue the aluminium to the extensive ash frame
Which is already very strong.

I may also go off piste for the screen, so could be
A) a la Salmson(V-type)
B) a la Ulster( single big aeroscreen)
C)or just a normal repro Cup screen.

Will also have an alloy bonnet and boot, perhaps polished perhaps painted.
An all black shiny beetle type look might be interesting.

Regards
Bill G

Location: Scottish Borders

Bill, unless you are going to first back up the aluminum skin with 1.5mm birch ply I would suggest that 1mm aluminum will not be thick enough and would be very prone to dents. With the birch ply backing in place the aluminum would become purely cosmetic so could be very thin, I also think the overall structure would have better strength with the ply in place.
Just a suggestion others may think differently.

Location: Auckland NZ

Hi Ian

The main strength in the Cup body are the twin
Boxed in section side members which support the cantilevered tail section and add
Rigidity to the sides to support the door posts.
Sideways rigidity across the car is achieved by the ash framed ply bulkheads and the seat back.
The seats themselves bolt directly to the chassis.
Normally the lower side members are made from 2x1/4" ply, adding siginificant strength but the 1.5mm on the scuttles and lower tail
Can't add that much.

I plan to use 2mm alloy sheet on the outer lower side of the box section and 1mm
On the scuttles and tail.

The GE Brooklands used similar SWG sheets of aluminium and they presumably
Had a harder life than Cup models, 75mph rather than 50 mph guaranteed

As I say I am going " off piste"!

Regards
Bill G

Location: Scottish Borders

Thinking completely outside the box , how about plywood cladding covered with a metallic vinyl wrap ??

Merv ( half piste )

Location: New Forest

Hi Merv

Thanks for your interesting suggestion.
I had thought of a plywood vinyl wrap though. :-))

Bill

Location: Scottish Borders

Skinning in aluminium should present no real difficulties as there are no compound curves anywhere in the body (except the boot lid) assuming that the joins are made in the same place as the original ply skin.

I would have thought that the only alteration would be that you will have to rebate the wooden frame to allow the aluminium to be turned over and pinned onto the frame - particular care would need to be taken around the doors and boot lid.

Bill - I notice that your side members are "open" to the outside. Originally, I believe that these were a sandwich of ply, ash, ply to create a box with high rigidity and strength. Are you happy that you will achieve this with your method?

Personally, I'm not that great with metalwork so have stuck with wood and fabric. Aluminium is far more forgiving than fabric - you can always weld or fill and overpaint. However, with current DVLA situation, I would consider making your body as faithful to the original as possible because that may be the only concession we end up with.

Peter

Started skinning the GE Cup body frame today in 1.2mm Alloy
rather than the usual 1.5 mm 3ply birch.

Two tail panels made today (top and Bottom)

Joining them by joggling the edge of the lower panel and
Riveting together using flush rivets countersunk and "nailed" and superglued
Into the ash frame.

Panels currently screwed in position and will be removed to assist finishing join edges etc
Final assembly will involve lots of galvanised round head pins and gluing alloy panels to frame sections.

Final body weight only a few kilos heavier than the ply+padding+ rexine.

Not sure if I'll polish it up or paint it.

Regards

Bill G

Location: Scottish Border

Looking good!

That Vee screen certainly does it for me!

Location: Ripon

Hi David,

Thanks for pairing up the Cup screens,

Your machine is looking great! Plus I like the glove compartment.
The boot line is so smooth its worrying me!
Can I ever get it so good?

Can you have a hood though? Or are you just having a tonneau?
Making a Cup hood frame is one of the minor challenges ahead perhaps.

Remember I'm in Scotland and a hood would be handy .
How did Salmsons do hoods?

Regards

Bill

Ps Just sent a big file + forms to DVLA!
Fingers and toes crossed....

Location: Scottish Border

IIRC Salmson hoods have three lift-a-dot pins at the tops of the frame arms.

Location: Ripon

Hi Duncan

Do you prefer the straight sided look of the MG M-Type or the Salmson
"With lugs" look ?( Scottish for ears...)
Straight type might work OK with sidescreens
For a less hardy soul like me?

MG photo taken at the Manx Classic 2016
Making the side castings would be the hard bit.

Regards

Bill G

Location: Scottish Border

The authentic Cup hood frame is apparently a rather complex affair, which is designed to be taken off the car, folded up and put in the boot. I didn't fancy the weight, complexity (or cost!) of this, so designed a much simpler arrangement, basically two tubular steel hoops, one pivoting off the other. Sorry that I can't photograph it at the moment but it's away being powder-coated. When you take the hood off an authentic Cup, you are left with two pivot pins which stick out from the sides of the body at exactly the right height to catch in your trouser pockets and tear them. I wasn't sold on this idea, so found a couple of internal threaded bolts which I happened to have in my collection of inherited junk (they did come in useful one day..) and fitted those from inside the car instead, ending up with a couple of 5/16 BSF sockets flush with the side of the car. The hood frame is attached with a couple of Ruby sunroof knurled knobs.

I have screwed lift-a-dot fasteners on to the middle and side supports of the windscreen at the top, and plan to attach the front of the hood to these. I have a couple of pieces of window channel which fit snugly over the top of the glass and to which the front edge of hood will be attached. I haven't done all this yet, so don't know for sure whether it will work… I took photos whenever I saw a V-windscreen car with the hood up to get some ideas of how others had done it.

I will be having a tonneau cover as well, made out of the same fabric as the body.

Having looked at a lot of repro Cups, I didn't like the way that many of them had a hump at the top of the boot lid, so I asked Rodney Griffin if he would rework the boot lid so that there was a smooth curve from behind the seats down over the boot lid. I think he's done a good job of this. He fitted all the fabric as well – I know my limitations (both time and skill).

Now must go back to the garage and carry on working on it...

David

Having driven several hundred mile with a straight(ish) outer edge I think I would prefer to have the sides a bit more lug-like as that would give a little more protection. I would also make the screen taller but bear in mind that if you cannot see over it you need wipers (in theory anyway).
Mine was a little ill-researched but with the benefit of hindsight and looking at others, it should have been taller, more bellied out at the sides and the centre strut should come to the top of the glass if not slightly higher to allow for the affixing of a soft top. I would not bother with side screens as, without doors, it would be difficult to get in and out from under a hood.
A straight upper edge is easier to fix a hood to but I think the curved upper edges of the Salmson screen are too graceful to give up!
The good thing about getting wet in a shower or downpour is that it does eventually stop and you will get dry.
In last month's Automobile magazine there was a piece about why we get involved with vintage cars and IIRC there was an analogy drawn between the misery of breakdowns and the capacity to forget the pains of childbirth. If we didm't remember the good bits we'd never do it twice!

Location: Ripon

Bill - as David said, the authentic hoodframe is a complicated arrangement. Almost 40 years ago I stayed with Tom Abernethy and Tom permitted me to take details and measurements of his original frame. (Guilty, Your Washup, I've never gotten around to making one myself!) If you settle on a straight screen, I'm sure Tom wouldn't mind me passing my sketches etc on. If you can't obtain the details elsewhere, email me with your snail-mail address and all will be revealed via airmail. Good Luck, Cheers, Bill in Oz

Location: Victoria, AUS.

Good progress on the alloy bodied GE Cup Model
at the Mens Shed today with two rear panels finally fixed using a combination of small galvanised nails , Horilla glue and countersunk flush alloy rivets.

Next week should see the sides on. Immensely strong.
As for dealing with DVLA , God give me strength !
More on this once the correspondence has completed.

Regards

Bill Gardner