What's a minor like as a daily drive?

[Orkney]

The other thing i like is that it is universally loved

Yup thats the most important thing - Mogs are Babe magnets

[Matt]

Mogs are Babe magnets

and if you dont believe him....

http://www.morrisminoroc.co.uk/index.ph ... 73&start=0

;)

[Orkney]

Bravo very good - never realised or wouldnt have typed it thus

[Matt]

oink

[estwdjhn]

I tend to work on vehicles at a mates pig farm... so am not stranger to the things. I'm not sure I'd put one in the "people and lugage" bit of any of my vehicles tho - they stink.

I phoned my insurers today, they said that any minor fitted with a standard minor engine (be it one originaly destined for that car, or a bigger one) could superseed the landrover on my policy, for a princely £15 admin fee...

Now all I need is a cheep minor, ideally somewhere near Manchester...

[rayofleamington]

Minors make much better every day cars than Series Landys (although so do most cars...) ;-) but on the serious side, they are a great little run around if you don't mind being a bit slower accelerating than the average fiesta.
Standard brakes (on the post 62 cars) are comparable to decent drums on a Landy (i.e. rather limited by modern standards but fine if you drive accordingly). The pre-62 7" drums are very inferior in comparison to the later 8" and if you want to go better then you can find bigger drums (can be hard to get and spares are a fortune) or go modern and have disks.

The other question is what are spares like, both in terms of availablity and price - are some engine/models better catered for than others...

In my experience, Minor spares are more expensive and much worse quality than Land Rover spares Having said that, they are still cheap and readily available compared to spares for many modern cars. You will certainly be needing some though!

As for calling people on this board 'sane', I'm far from sure about that!! Minor addicts are a darn helpful bunch though!

[estwdjhn]

Minors make much better every day cars than Series Landys (although so do most cars...)

I take issue with that statement... although the bit about moggies may be true, I'd rather have a Series Landrover than any car built after 1990... My flat mate has a 53reg pug 206. So far, the landrover has been both cheeper to run, and nicer to drive to boot. (the Pug tends to go wandering off to the dealership with mystical electrical problems at intervals. Also, taking into consideration the costs of insurance etc and servicing, and for all the the pug does 20mpg more, the landrover cost me less per mile that the pug has, and we are both fairly high milage drivers)

I've no worries about poor brakes etc, and have a postive dislike of modern, servoed up stuipidly light disks. I have yet to understand why landrover owners want disks, as far as I can see, it just means you have to push the pedal less hard to achive lockup . Maybe moggie tyres have more grip than landy ones.

As for minor parts, more expensive is no supprise, worse quality is... I didn't know it was possible for stuff to be worse than the non-genunine landrover stuff tends to be. (e.g. I know three people who have had acidents or near misses in landrovers due to flawed pattern brake master cylinders suddenly failing).

Anyway, I'm without a runabout now, sold the landrover tonight, so if anyone knows of a cheep minor, drop me a message...

[rayofleamington]

Minors make much better every day cars than Series Landys (although so do most cars...)

I take issue with that statement...

Having driven my S3 88" 6000 miles in a month (road trip) - I'd prefer any modern car for daily driving! Eventually I did grow some new veins so my bum stopped going numb... In that month it was fairly reliable (except for the headgasket, oil pump and clutch master cylinder...)

Anyway - back to sensible discussion about Minors - Locking the brakes isn't going to happen much unless you're Geoff Capes or the road is damp. People often go for disks to avoid potentially deadly brake fade and to make it easier to swap between a modern car and the minor. If you go for the antique 9" drums you're less likely to suffer brake fade than with standard drums, but the rules of physics still apply giving disks an advantage over drums for heat capacity.

Parts quality - I replaced a master cylinder on a friend's 69 minor 1000 and myself and 2 other people tried (and failed) to get a good brake pedal. After 18 months the new (non-pattern) master cylinder stopped working altogether. Bear in mind that some suppliers stopped selling the pattern ones due to regular problems, that's just one of the many examples of naff parts.
Non-pattern parts for Minors are sold as 'genuine' however since they are no longer made by the same company (parts are sub-contracted / company has closed / business been sold off etc..), and are not even that similar to genuine parts, good quality is a rare find!

The suppliers blame the 'cost sensitive market for spares' for selling poor parts, but as it's impossible to tell what is good and what is bad until after you buy, people will choose on price. Even regular service parts can be completely sub standard and sometimes don't even fit
The same probably does go for Land Rover spares, but as Landy's out number Minors quite a lot, it's hard to make a like for like comparison.

[dunketh]

Pattern brake and clutch parts are complete ****.
There's no other word for it.

I stripped the nipple thread on a new brake cylinder with no force whatsoever leaving me with a brand new part that was useless and a car off the road for another day.
I didn't bother returning it - supplier will just say I was too heavy handed and how can I prove otherwise?

[valium]

Got a series III LR and MM - contrast each other well -both fun to drive in different ways - make you feel different about yourself when driving either/ or around for some reason

got to get a 2cv and then collection complete (until the next time)