Morris Minor Owners Club

I have to say that I would think it unlikely that those pictures show a significant amount of decay to cause any major problems with shell distortion (on a saloon at least). Just brace it for now as per my previous pics and put the sill finishers back on. No one will ever know from the outside and even if you have to get a mobile welder round to do it it won't cost much more than £50 esp if you clean back the surrounding metal in preparation for the welding yourself. I'd offer to do it but I don't have the time at the moment but you are welcome to come over and use my welding equipment if you want to....

In my experience Minors can be vastly more rotten than this one and suffer no noticeable loss of structural integrity.
I'd be happy to take my fattest friends to a pie eating competition and back in this car.
If you cut the roof off and want to go cross country your on your own.

Remember the car recently passed an MOT, so the visible structure must be OK? If the car was structurally unsound the car would not have passed. ;)

thanks for the offer psl184 but we have got some one to weld it for us next week and im still learning how to arc weld (havent got a mig)
so i wouldnt trust my welds on a car at the minute

i can do mig, when its done get red oxide put that on and then plaster it in waxoyl thats what i have done

found some one to do the welding after the guy we where going to us decided not to turn up on wednesday (phoned him again) and then decided not to turn up again on thursday.

Glad you've got it sorted now

well getting it sorted booked in at my brothers work place or tuesday

my car is finally being fixed. taken it to where my brother works. its a lot worse than i first thought. been in since tuesday and expected to get it back at the end of this week or start of next week.

I work part time for a local garage doing MOT welding and the majority of morris minors I have seen are like that and most people only find that out when the sill bottom rots through. As the boxing plate is invisible on the MOT many people just weld the bottom sill plate and ignore the fact that their car is structuraly unsound. the boxing plate is not bad to fix and worth doing well. Having said that the avarage minor even with a bit of rust damage is probably stronger than most new cars

tried undoing the nuts underneath the car that hold the kickplate on but they are rusted solid any suggestions

Try spraying them with something like WD40/Plusgas It may help.

You could always grind them off James. Replace them with some cheap metric equivalents from toolstation or screwfix. They cost pennies. ;) On replacing really grease them up (grease up then screw on nut), copper slip is good but expensive.

we had the same problem most of them snapped and the rest came off .just use force and anger works for me

If they are as far gone as they sound then brute force is probably the best way.
Use a ring spanner and a socket letting the inner tool rest on the sill if the whole lot is turning.
Then apply the force with a tube slipped over the tool if necessary.
If they get rounded off as is likely with open ended spanners you may have to resort to the grinder.

At least those bolts are easy to get to with a grinder, unlike some on the suspension
When I went to remove mine once I found that the actual kickplate was welded on! so I had to take a grinder to it.

The trouble with reaching straight for the grinder is the collateral damage that tends to occur.

The sparks look impressive but tend to stick to paintwork, plastic and glass.

As an aside to this thread did you know vans have a different boxing plate with less holes in, presumably because they have a full chassis further in, you would think less holes equals stronger diaphragm.

They aren't just holes, there should be a lip around them.
This makes the massively stiffer in terms of resisting twist, than flat sheet.

As an aside to this thread did you know vans have a different boxing plate with less holes in,

they have a different sill, not just a different boxing plate. On the LCV's the cab sill is not part of the main strength - that roll is as you already guessed a job of the (seperate) chassis.
The cab sill does however play an important roll in maintaining alignment of the bodywork though!