Morris Minor Owners Club

it would go a long way to the members if they felt that the club was addressing some of these shortages

no shortage in my garage

When the swivel pins arrive, and the next order secured then we will have a reliable supply.
If the club had become involved ,say a few months ago then there is no guarantee that their supply, would arrive any sooner than the current supliers, nor that the quality would be assured.
If the kingpins do not arrive soon then there may well be a need to re think, and maybe another supplier would step in, if not then the club might need to.

if anyone is really stuck, well you know pm me

Made some enquireies today re swivel pin production. The release date of January has now shifted to March/ April.

Of which year?

Its the uncertainty that worries me. How long can we wait before some sort of decision has to be made on this. Its not the traders fault. Form an orderly queue outside aupickups garage

Get the club spares to recon your existing ones.... (provided you haven't already gone down that route of course).

I would have thought in the current economic climate engineering firms would be falling over themselves to win any orders at all! We use a competitive tender process to invite prospective producers to provide cost breakdowns and quality control plans for all items and award contract on the basis of tenders returned, not allways cheapest first.

leyther8008 wrote:I would have thought in the current economic climate engineering firms would be falling over themselves to win any orders at all!

I think you will find that the term is 'economic viability'.

What concerns me is, which part is the next to fall victim. I really think that the club should be getting involved in this before it's too late.

I believe that it is only the tooling to cut the swivel threads that is holding up the delivery. New tooling is being made, so lets hope that the delay is no longer than need be.
I think it might be prudent for the MMOC to talk with and if need be, help the company who are trying their best to manufacture these swivel pins, rather than to set up in competition against them.
If the MMOC go down the route of parts supply without including the trade then I feel there will be trouble ahead. Tens of thousands are spent every year by the trade to have parts manufactured or re manufactured, if the MMOC become involved one, they do not have the financial resources, given that the club deems necessary to sit on 1/4 of a million over the last ten years or so, so where will the money come from, and how will the MMOC placate the trade who will now loose their income and investment capital. Its the beginning of a slippery slope, and an area that the MMOC has no experience.
Leave parts manufacture and supply to the trade ,they have served Minor owners very well over the last 30 odd years , with this swivel pin saga being the only worst blip in supply

I think that there may be some misunderstanding here Jonathon. I have never suggested that the MMOC set up in competition with anyone. However I believe that they should be working in conjunction with both manufacturers and suppliers for the benefit of all Morris Minor enthusiasts. Surely this is what the club is all about?

Judge wrote:Competition is good, monopolies are bad

Judge wrote:
I believe that one of the reasons behind the club maintaining its funds, was to enable it to look into the production of certain parts if this ever became necessary.

Ohh......,my mistake then!
Representing its members and their interests is what the MMOC is about. If it feels the need to help a trader , should the traders ask for help , then fine.(How this sits with the policy of not favouring any specific trader I'm not sure).
I'm not to sure that the communication between MMOC and trade is particulary good either, I refer to the group set up to look into traders and practices, when I asked if the Trade had been informed of, one the group and if the trade were being involved at the early stages of any decisions, the answer seemed to be no.

Now why do you think I followed that statement with a and a

The funds naturally would be used to assist an existing supplier/manufacturer. This surely would be the most economical and productive way of using members subscriptions.

Unfortunately I must agree in respect of the communication, and have mentioned this previously.

Dean wrote:Get the club spares to recon your existing ones.... (provided you haven't already gone down that route of course).

Dean, are these metal sprayed and re cut to use the original trunnions, or are they undercut threads.
If its the former and the tooling has been made, rather than one off machining then it would be an advantage to us all if the MMOC made this facility known to the manufacturers of the swivel pins.

Club spares has pins with undercut threads and matching trunnions. There's never been any secret about them - advertised frequently in MM, and on display at last year's National Rally. My only concern is that the supply of trunnions will run out, and you can't recut a recut thread (not properly anyway).

The threads are re-cut undersize then have undersize trunnions fitted.
Pro's - Car back on road within a week.
Con's - Trunnions are unique, so once worn again you can't replace trunnions with over the counter ones.

Cost - £60 includes trunnions and return postage of either yours or a similar recut leg.

Whether the undersized trunnions are still made or of limited supply is not known to me. Only club spares can advise.

I did look into the sprayed and recut route, but no toolroom would guarantee their work. At £60 a shot this was too much a risk.

Thanks for the replies

In view of the cost of producing a run of swivel pins, is there an engineering option that could make use of modern parts and/or simpler parts to replace maybe the swivel pins and trunnions with ball joints or rod ends?

I don't mean a performance modification but the use of a minimum subset of parts off another more ubiquitous car's suspension?

If it's such a big and unprofitable job for engineering companies to tackle remanufacture maybe we're already at the point where it's not going to happen or will be prohibitively expensive for most.

could new ones of these not be machined from solid steel

I'm still awaiting a machine drawing of these to determine if I could manufacture them, but the man who has the drawing must not have been able to go for it yet.

Jordan