Thanks for posting this-it certainly was an enjoyable watch!
Don Hayter BTW is still alive-several of my MG owner friends have met him recently. He's about 6'6" tall, which is why-once you wedge yourself in-even a tall guy can drive an MGB comfortably.
My own pride and joy-my 1970(one year only split rear bumper)
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I have always wondered if a jacked-up / rubber bumper MGB could be converted back to a chrome bumper car... lowered to the stock chrome-bumper car ride-height, as well, of course. Then fit-up with twin carbs per the original car. Does anyone know if this is possible / viable, or when they went to the big (ugly) bumpers... did they make irreversible or well-nigh irreversible changes?
I've seen a fair few of them done, and a local shop here does one or two a year. It's not 100% straight-forward to attach the bumpers in the first place and have it look right. Among other things, there's a "lip" under the tail lights that has to be constructed from scratch, and the front end needs some added sheet metal to fill in holes. It's doable, but not a plug and play operation. The reason my local shop does it is because a lot of customers come in wanting the nicer '77 and later interior but the aesthetics of chrome bumpers. He also does a decent number of engine swaps, and 73 and later had the body tub designed for a V8 from the get go so a Rover V8 is mostly drop in and a lot of other popular swaps(these days 5L Windors are getting more popular, and the 3800 V6 is also a favorite) are somewhat easier too on the later bodies.
He does sometimes lower them the earlier ride height, which again is more involved than you might think. I think the biggest obstacle is that(IIRC) you have to replace the entire front crossmember with a CB era one(I think the rear end is a bit easier and maybe just needs earlier leaf springs). Truth be told, he doesn't actually lower very many even though he can/has done it-many of his customers for these cars are 70+ and find that getting in and out is a bit easier with the car sitting a bit higher. The earlier RBs, particularly '75s, handled terribly, but by 77 or so they had added enough swap bars and other odds and ends back that the handling is actually CLOSE to early cars.
Of course, if sticking with a stock 4 cylinder, there's a lot you can do to bring back the performance on later cars, which took a hit in '73 when compression dropped to 8.0:1(from 8.8:1) and an even bigger hit in '76 when they went to a single Z-S carburetor with a catalytic converter. The single carburetor in and of itself isn't bad, but the catalytic converter exhaust manifold was a TERRIBLE design that flowed all 3 exhaust ports into a single "log" and then made a sharp 180º turn down to the cat. Many folks will either combine a Weber DGV with headers or an earlier "double Y" exhaust manifold, or will go all the way back to twin SUs. The latter gets a bit complicated because the brake booster used on '75 and later cars gets in the way of many air filter designs on the rear carb. An intermediate solution is actually to use a Marina manifold-which has the desirable double Y exhaust section paired with a "log" intake designed for a 1.75" sidedraft carb-Marinas used an SU HIF-6, but the ZS-175 on the late MGBs bolts on also.
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