Morris Minor Owners Club

The engine and box will be sold, but only once the new power-plant is safely installed - until them I may want them for reference, or to rob mounting brackets from.

I've been busy welding this weekend, but didn't remember to take my camera one day, so limited photos of work progressing...



First cut a hole...


...then make it bigger...


...and bigger.


Then beat a bit of tin to shape and tack in place...


And run round and weld in.


Look! more holes!


DIY undersill construction - folded up some tin on the pressbrake, then v'd it to cut the curve to match the outersill.


The final state of play when she got craned away again for the week. Also shows the holes cut in the boot/inner wing (for which I have a simply dreadfully bad repair panel) and the outer wing mounting flange I fitted (I've painted it with several coats of paint, next mission is to filler and sand it till the bodyline looks OK again!). Oh, and repairs have been made to the rail the rear spring hanger mounts through too.

Excellent work!

And another half day's welding!!! And yet more rust I wasn't expecting behind the door pillar - more fool me!
Still wondering what to do about the big hole in the rear inner wheelarch - to say the repair panel doesn't fit well is rather an understatement...

Another happy afternoon/evenings welding...


New outer kidney panel made and fitted.


Plug welded through to kidney panel and painted. Door hung off the crane in the right place.


Hinge pillar bolted to door to get alignment and tacked to car.


Door off and pillar welded on - plus yet more paint. (I'm working on the theory that the more paint I spread over everything, the longer before I have to do all this again.


And door back on, at least for the moment. At some point I need to repair the bottom of the door, but that can wait till I've got a decent shell again.


It's amazing how fast this stuff is to do - I've only really spent an afternoon on it since it looked like this!

Today's valuable lesson is - be careful welding near the kidney panel if the previous owner was majorly into waxol. Tacking the replacement kidney panel in, I set fire to the wretched stuff, which then set fire to the (highly flammable) insulation in the area behind the dash. I got the hose on it fairly pronto, and put it out, but it made a hideous mess and stench. To be fair, the insulation wanted changing anyway for something non-flammable, but if I was doing the job again, I'd prefer to remove it before setting fire to it...

Another afternoon spent welding. Not totally happy with the results (I prefer repairs to be less visible), but it's solid enough.

And another £169 worth of panels ordered - should have enough to do the RH side with any luck... although at this rate, I'm wondering if it would have been cheaper to buy a brand new car!

Another afternoon spent welding. Not totally happy with the results (I prefer repairs to be less visible), but it's solid enough.

Nothing wrong with a good honest solid repair that can be seen, in my view. Your doing excellent work. And unless you are looking for concours wins, I wouldn't worry about it.

I am in much the same position, it comes down to either spending thousands on new panels or making good solid repairs to the originals and living with a few extra welds and some filler. In my case this will be the difference between getting it roadworthy or scrapping it.

I am taking it a bit further and replacing many of the seams which are rust traps with seam welds as well.

Kevin

Got started on the RH side. It's easier now I know what to expect where when I cut holes in her!






















This was what I found at the bottom of the door pillar - truly a thing of beauty ...

Todays progress. One slight trick I've missed - I forgot to put one of the captive nuts in for the wings... ( I left two out, but one on purpose as I can get to the back of it anytime). I'll think of a solution to that in due course, possibly with a a rivet nut.

Nice work John where are the pictures taken looks good

Pictures are all taken at work - my employers kindly let me rebuild projects in the workshop on a weekend.

The yard is in Cromford, Derbyshire, very near where High Peak Junction was on the Cromford and High peak railway.

Not had a chance to do much on the minor for a few weeks. Got back to it this Saturday, and decided it was about time it got turned on it's side, so I made a contraption to do the deed out of some old boiler tubes from this loco...



Attached said contraption to the car...



...and over it went.









I did a load of welding underneath (no pictures of that - it was just fizzing up underbody seams I'd left unwelded when I did the sills etc), then tipped her back the right way up, and took the contraption off again.





I imagine it may have several more outings before this shell is finished, although I don't think I'd be brave enough to try rolling it over once there is an engine and box fitted...

Well, six months have gone by since I last did anything to the car... so I felt it was time to go prowling in the undergrowth, and see if I still had any car left! On finding that I did, I craned her out, and stuck her in the workshop, and proceeded to carry on where I'd left off last time...

Thus a bonnet was fitted, and a big hole cut (regular readers of this thread may recall quite early on, the poor car was dropped heavily on it's nose from about 15' in the air, and the front inner wings had suffered somewhat as a result).


Obligatory photo of rusty/bent bits of scrap metal. It was much more bent than this, but it was only really possible to beat it straight after cutting it off the car. It also contained a surprisingly high % filler round the bump stop area, so it was probably as well it got changed.


And then I filled the hole in again. I'm not completely happy with the line the top of the inner wing makes, but hey, it will have to do now. I also replaced a section of the inner wheel arch around the bump stop...



Loaded on the folklift for the trip back out to it's spot in the bushes.


And I've still got this side to look forward to... and part of the drivers side engine bay floor section, which on close inspection turned out to be mainly holes (and not just the big round ones that are meant to be there!).


The really good news is that I've asked nicely, and my boss has said it can come and live indoors at the back of the workshop for a few weeks while I do the underneath properly... and he's also offered me a load of top notch industrial grade grey paint we've got left over from a job, so the underside will be getting several coats while I'm at it. (I think he's hoping for a go with it when I've finished it).

I've also bought a 'sister' car to compare and contrast... (well because it was cheap, and I fancied a classic to run for the summer) - 1954 Austin A40 Somerset. Interesting comparison to a minor - makes you realise just how good a minor was to be honest...

There is a very small crease in the roof - one the photos above makes it look much worse than it is. Because life is short, and I've no real desire to take the headlining down (or more to the point to put it back), I've every intention of being a naughty boy, and painting it liberally, (to stop it rotting) filling it with body filler, and painting over the top.

Ironically, I didn't do the damage when I dropped it - it was like that when I bought it.

Got her stashed in her new home at the back of the workshop tonight, and set to with the grinder (a couple of not great camera phone picture I'm afraid).

Front grill off again...


And a big hole cut in the engine bay. The actual chassis legs seem OK, but the drivers side engine bay floor definitely wasn't, with daylight visible in places it really shouldn't be. Rather bizarrely, the other side seems fine.


I called it a night at that, hopefully I'll get a new section cut and welded in shortly, probably Wednesday. Any disadvantages to not bothering putting the large round holes in the new section? It seems a lot of extra work to not really achieve much.

Not a lot wrong with the A40 by the way - apart from it being a not terribly well designed 1950s car. It's a lot more pre-war in feel to my mind than the minor, despite being a younger design. It's round at a mate place at the moment while he sorts the engine tuning out a bit for me (I really don't do petrol engines, and it was running like a bag of spanners when I drove it home). It wants the interior tarting up a bit, but someone has done a pretty decent job of all the bodywork at some point in the recent past, which makes a nice change. I'm quite looking forward to having it as a run-around for a while, but I can't see it getting used much once I've got an exceptionally rapid and very cheap to run morris minor on the road...

The large holes help with cooling, the air coming through the radiator has to go somewhere.

Well, I've been busy rebuilding more bits of car...

We have an engine bay floor again!


But no passenger side inner wing...


Then some loosely assembled bodywork, to make sure the new inner wing ends up the right profile...


Almost looks like a car again...



Has anyone got a usable LH wing spare... this is the best one I've got, and while if needs be, I can batter it a bit straighter and cover it in filler, one without quite such a big dent would be nice...