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MG MGB Technical - Who made bolts

I got a friend doing a concours restoration of a Ferrari who was told that MGB bolts were made by the same manufacturer - Newton. He showed me a photo of a bolt with Newton in raised letters on the bolt head. I'm guessing he's trying to track down 5/16"x24x1.125"L. On my '66 MGB the bolts say mowog, wiley, GKN. Of course, I don't know which ones are original or not. Have you ever seen Newton bolts on an MGB or other MG?

TLG
Terrence Goodell

Terrence - Your friend may be correct, but I can't imagine the Italians using anything but metric on their cars. I also doubt that a 5/16" bolt would come in 1/8" increments - it would be more like 1/4". Of course, I could be wrong, it has happened a time or two in my lifetime. Cheers - Dave
David DuBois

MoWoG represents the merger of Morris, Wolseley and mG in the 1930's, when they started using common parts, with that logo moulded into them. Many years ago I was told that a steering wheel manufacturer by the name Walsall Wheel Company made Ferrari's steering wheels, as Walsall was famous for leather work in saddlery. It's quite possible that one UK manufacturer made bolts for both car companies, but they would have been to the individual specs of those companies and not neccessarily interchangeable. And I can't really see a UK manufacturer in MGB days having anything to do with Metric measurements, unless they were quoted in Imperial!

5/16" bolts *did* come in 1/8" length increments, see http://www.smarc.net/MG/techinfo/BMC_fasteners.pdf
Paul Hunt

Terrence,
I've been taking some parts off a '64B over the last week or so. Did note that there were a few Newton bolts in the lot - first ones I've ever seen on a 'B. They'll be coming out of the acid bath tonight - I'll give you a description then.
Steve Buchina

It is not unusual for Ferrari and other exotic makers to use UK parts. Ferrari always used Thinwall bearing shells made at <Maidenhead, many cars used and may still do drive shafts and CVJs from Hardy Spiocer (GKN) and were not Ferrari F1 cars designed in Guildford at one time. There was a firm in Worthing who designed and organised the production of a Lincoln Town car and it was rumoured they designed many other caers including BMW Volvo.
One last fact Mercedes used to get their high perfrormance engines (4 valves per cylinder etc) from Worcester UK.
Bob Marshall

GKN are large volume manufacturers of a vast range of auto products from drive shafts to nuts bolts and other fasteners.

Most makers bought bolts from who ever offered surety of supply and a competitive price.

Industrial up sets at one makers meant short term supply was often sourced for the opposition makers and then changed back again after the dispute was resolved.

Larger car makers also had a leverage not available to smaller volume builders who often had to take what was in the catalogue.
Morgan cars had this problem when the builders of separate light shells finally decided one buyer was not enough to justify the reinvestment tooling costs.

Morgan redesigned their lamp assembly to cope.

Other makers act in a similar manner as circumstances dictate.

Pete.
Peter Thomas

There weren't many - just 2 out of a lot of 50 or so. One 1/4" (28 tpi) x 5/8" and the other was a 5/16" (18 tpi) x 7/8". Most probably they were added to the car during some previous mechanical work.

Keep thinking that one of these days I'll catalog all the different bolts (by logo and size) and where (and when) they were used.
Steve Buchina

The Worthing outfit that "did" the last Lincoln Towncar was IAD. It was owned by the late John Shute who was an avid MG collector and as IAD and Mayflower were tied together, no doubt helped the organization of Mayflower's efforts on the MGF. Another IAD effort was the last makeover (and improvement) of the Jaguar XJS.

The folks I worked with from IAD (on neither of the projects listed) were all first class engineers.

I doubt that they did any other than specify bolts and fasteners that were otherwise common for the company that contracted them, though.
John Z

Thanks all for your comments. It does sound improbable that the Ferrari would use standard threads. But sounds like it is common to have several different bolt suppliers on our MGBs, and that Newton may have been one of them. I'll pass the word along.
Terrence Goodell

This thread was discussed between 08/01/2009 and 12/01/2009

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