At 11:49 PM 3/16/05 -0700, Steven Freeman wrote:
"I recently got a great deal on chrome wire wheels for the car, which I always wanted. I was hoping that you could take me through the steps of the change over."

It all starts with such innocence. I did this once when I was in college, at a time when I was in possession of two MGA, one with disc wheels and one with wire wheels. There are no adapters required. Simply exchange the original equipment parts that are different between disc and wire wheel cars. Consult the Moss Motors MGA parts catalog for reference to which parts are different.

The front is easy; just install the appropriate splined hubs and knockoffs. The spindles, wheel bearings, brake rotors, calipers, caliper mounting plates and hose fittings are all the same for the 1600. For the 1500 the front brake drums are different.

For the rear you need to change the entire real axle assembly. The halfshafts and axle housings are 7/8 inch shorter on each side for the wire wheel set up, where the splined hubs make up the difference in length to maintain the same track width. Shock absorbers, leaf springs, leaf spring mounts and flexible brake hose is the same. All of the brake parts on the axle are the same. Even the two steel brake pipes on the live axle are the same part number, just formed a little different. You will need to change the hand brake cable. I have seen people bolt TR6 rear splined hubs onto the MGA disc wheel rear axle, but that puts the wheels and tires outward about an inch where they will interfere with the fenders.

There are occasionally people looking to change from wire wheels to bolt on wheels. If I had a wire wheel car I would make this swap to bolt on wheels. There is a much better variety of wheels available for bolt on application, which is generally important for competition vehicles. If you can get the two cars together for a day or two it is fairly easy to swap parts between two cars, and you might work out a good deal on the price, like even up swap for the parts. You might post enquiry for a swap partner to the mgs e-mail list. The parts also pop up on e-bay fairly often.