These notes provided by Kirk Y in Washington, DC, USA.

Apparently the bloke who wrote Workshop Manual Section S.15, Removing a Door Lock or Window Regulator (Coupe), was paid on the basis of word minimization. And, he was also denied a diagram. But, armed with the Internet, I pressed forward with disassembly.

I had previously removed all the outer trim, as that was easy. So here's the passenger door, which still had the oilskin intact.

The write up on the MGA Guru site implies that you can remove the window winder at this point, but I couldn't make that happen. In addition, I managed to break the window crank arm cranking the window up and down (the mechanism was very stiff). So here's a tip: If it doesn't crank effortlessly, crank the winder with a 3/8" box wrench.

What the documents don't tell you is that the winder "quadrant arm" won't slide out of the bracket unless you have the window cranked a bit beyond all the way up. That means you need to get to this.

So you've got to be able to raise the window channel assembly. I detached brackets at the bottom from the inner door (6 total screws) as advised by S.15, and unscrewed the two L-brackets on the top inner edge of the door. Then I went back to S.15. It says, "With the glass fully raised, remove the self-locking nut and tension spring from the ventilator window through the aperture in the door. Lift out the ventilator window." I was actually able to reach this nut and tension spring and unscrew it.

Then S.15 says "Unscrew the two barrel nuts securing the window frame to the door." I could get to the rear one with a small socket wrench and extension, but the front one? No way, and this is the first place where I'd like to waterboard the S.15 author. How did he think us mortals could access this barrel bolt?

Well, other people have thrown up their hands at this, and I followed their lead. It was time to drill a 1 3/8" access hole, using a jig made out of scrap plywood. The coordinates of the lines, if you can't read them from the picture, are 1 7/8" and 2 5/8". For the hole I was drilling, this gave access and cleared a reinforcing channel on the inner door skin. So that barrel bolt is now forever accessible, and I took it out.

The next thing S.15 says to do is to "Withdraw the three screws securing the waist rail finisher to the outside of the door and pry the finisher up and out away from the door". That translates to the chrome strip at base of the window on the outside - easy enough.

Now, a few paragraphs previously, S.15 told me to "Remove the screws from the bottom brackets". Well, that's these damned things. Even though my car is relatively rust-free, 2 of the bolts holding these brackets to the window channel assembly would not move. I had to cut them with a mini pneumatic Sawzall, which is the only thing I owned that could get to them. And, everything finally comes out.

With the window glass and the channel assembly gone, removing the door lock mechanism, the outside door pull, and the hinges is straightforward. However, I will take others' advice and make up some mounting plates for the hinges, rather than messing around with four nuts buried deep inside the door. I cannot figure out how anyone could get the window glass replaced with the door on the car. They must have an octopus working for them.

I took one of the channel assemblies apart, taking care not to lose any of the microscopic screws holding it together. The remains of the window channel rubber was hard as a rock, but all the L-brackets were good.

In a conversation with a prospective painter, he asked if I had marked the door hinge locations on the A-pillars before I removed the doors. I hadn't. Charlie Adams suggested drilling a small 1/16" hole through the hinge into the pillar to record the locations, and fortunately I could see where hinges were from the 70's repaint of the car. And holes were drilled.

Finally, the MGA Guru has documented how it is possible to lock both Coupe doors and make it impossible to get back into the car. I found that, on my driver's side lock mechanism, there was a grub screw installed to prevent this from happening.