Austin 1970 pickup from Guatemala

[Neil MG]

Looks absolutely superb! The upholsterer did a fantastic job!

[aupickup]

the dip switch wire is held in place to the floor with a P clip

[George Smathers]

Great looking seats.

George

[GBond]

Thanks aupickup, I'm afraid I don't know your name. In my ignorance I had to use Google to find out what a P clip is but now it makes perfect sense. I'm guessing it goes in the hole above and to the left of the steering column but I can see no captive nut and it seems a bit big for a self-tapping screw so do you know if by any chance it's held by a clip of some sort?[frame][/frame]
Thanks a lot Neil and George for the congratulations! I'll let the upholsterer know his work was praised all the way from the US and the UK.

Today was a pretty good day too, the best days are when a bunch of parts strewn all across the garage come together into a whole.

Door cards were first, they are the originals which were moistened, flattened and then painted to look like new again.[frame][/frame]The buttons are original as well, they were sandblasted, plated, repaired with body filler and painted.

I told the upholsterer to use a bit of reinforcement inside the door straps so that they wouldn't stretch and as a result of that it was an ABSOLUTE NIGHTMARE to get them through the metal buckle on the door card.[frame][/frame]
The fibre washers for the window and door mechanisms, do they go on the outside, inside or one each side? I have them on the outside only at the moment.[frame][/frame]
Doors done then came the sound deadening.[frame][/frame]
Close up of the repair.[frame][/frame]
Gloveboxes next, the rear brackets were missing so I made some from stainless steel my dad had lying around. These were also a nightmare to install.[frame][/frame]
End result:[frame][/frame]
NOW it finally looks like a proper car interior, now all it needs is a nice carpet (I've given up in trying to find the original rubber mat, plus carpet looks nicer) and a gear lever sticking out from the floor to be complete.[frame][/frame]

[orb596]

I'm very impressed with what you are doing - it's a fantastic restoration. I look forward to seeing the pictures of the finished vehicle.
Shouldn't be long now by the look of it.

[George Smathers]

My car is apart now, but from this picture it looks like at least one fiber washer was on the outside of my 1967 Saloon (when I enlarge the original image it shows up well).

George[frame][/frame]

[GBond]

Thank you Laurie, just looked at some pictures of your lowlight and it's in stunning condition, did you do the restoration?

And thank you too for the tip George, Beatrice is going to be one very good looking car once you're done with her. Where do you buy parts in the States? I've had to buy most of mine from England and the shipping is killing me. At least for electrical parts I've found a couple of vendors in the US and I'm planning on buying the tires from Coker but if you have someone to recommend I'm all ears.

Back to the restoration, the engine arrived today!!![frame][/frame]The crankshaft has been cut to .010, the block has been honed and had new bearings fitted so it's now just a matter of cleaning and assembling. The machine shop also changed all the valve guides and assembled the head, forgot to take a picture though.

Pistons are good, so they'll stay, but they're filthy.[frame][/frame]
Cleaning the ring channels is the worse part, managed two pistons today and I'll hopefully finish the other two during the weekend.[frame][/frame]
I should have done this before, but the water channels in the block are dirty and I'm trying to decide how best to clean them. They're not awful but there's definitely some rust. I'll take any suggestions and I'll post a picture tomorrow maybe someone will know how bad/not bad it is. (fingers crossed)

[George Smathers]

Gabriel,

I buy mostly from ESM and the shipping adds about 30%. I can't complain about the speed though; I get parts in 3 or 4 days. I haven't found much to buy in America. I use Moss in California for a few parts but these are mostly Mini cross-referenced parts.

At least in Guatemala you probably have some old school mechanics who are experts on metal and non-computerized engines. Labor must be cheaper too. After reading your progress I've decided to restore my glove boxes.

George

[GBond]

Good luck repairing the glove boxes, first step is straightening them, get them a little moist and then use weights to keep them flat for a day or two. If I were to change something regarding how I did mine I'd leave a bit more slack in the top reinforcement I glued and I'd use a thinner base coat paint (I was expecting the cardboard to soak a lot of paint but it didn't).

I've also had good experiences with ESM and also David Manners for parts, but shipping does get very expensive. By the time I get a part here with the shipping, import duties and taxes the price is almost double what it is in Great Britain.

Labor is much cheaper though; I had the seats hand made copying the originals and I also hired a mechanic to help with the engine and gearbox for not too much money. As everywhere there are good and bad mechanics but even the good ones I've found seem to have some serious time management issues. I was going to pay to have the engine assembled but the mechanic never showed up so I've decided to do it myself and save a bit of money in the process. I will need him to check out the gearbox though so hopefully he'll have some time available soon.

My plans to get the engine assembled this weekend have had some delays; the engine was much dirtier than I thought so I still haven't been able to put any parts together.

Here's how the water jacket looks:[frame][/frame]And that's after quite a bit of cleaning. There aren't any big chunks of rust but loads on the surface. I'm thinking of assembling it like it is, use water that's a bit acidic to get the chunks out and change the water a couple of times after the first few miles and then use a good coolant to prevent rust from forming again.

[Trickydicky]

Some on here have put a dish washer tablet in and run the engine to clean the water jacket and report it works

[GBond]

I'll try that, I don't think there's enough deposits to hinder the cooling but I'm more afraid of a chunk of rust coming loose and damaging the radiator or the water pump. Is this a likely occurrence or am I just being way too cautious?

[MarkyB]

Too cautious I'd say.
Waterways look fine.

[GBond]

As cautious as I am my dad's even worse so he decided to clean the waterways with caustic soda. This would have been fine except for the fact that it had already been sent to the machine shop so now one of the main bearings is ruined.

In the meantime I've gotten back to the interior details. The car came with no parcel tray and shipping for such a big item from England is prohibitively expensive so I'm going to make one from scratch. Here's the first template.[frame][/frame]
My drawing:[frame][/frame]
Still haven't decided what to make it out of though, I have small parts of the original and it seems to be thick cardboard of the kind architects use. Hopefully I'll find a sheet big enough.

I believe it was held to the body with rivets and to the bar with those little brass folding tabs, can anyone confirm this or provide more info on the type of rivets used? Seems to me any water that gets to the rivet would easily get to the cardboard but then again it's not like the gloveboxes and door cards were very protected either.

[les]

The bar was fixed with bifricated (not sure of spelling) rivets,(split half way down) pretty sure the shelf was fitted this way at the bulkhead as well, although I used engineering screws there. Washers fitted before folding the rivets.

[GBond]

Thanks Les, I bought a bag of small stainless screws and washers a while ago and I'm thinking this is where they'll go.

Finding the proper cardboard to make the shelf has proven to be a challenge, I went to a couple of places today without luck but I got the address of a shop that might have a large enough sheet of cardboard, otherwise I'm going to have to glue different sections.

And I'm still looking for one half of an engine bearing for a 1098 in .010 oversize before I can continue with the engine; I'm afraid I'll have to buy a complete new set from Moss, can anyone confirm if the bearings are the same as on the Sprite/Midget?

Anyway since the engine won't be assembled too soon it got a protective covering of Glyptal on the inside.[frame][/frame][frame][/frame]
As well as some corroless in the water passages.[frame][/frame]

[Matt]

Sprite/Midget bearings are different - they use a 2" main whereas the minor uses a smaller one.

[GBond]

Thanks for the heads up Matt; I cross checked as much as I could since Moss US doesn't have a specific Morris section and they appear to be these.

http://www.mossmotors.com/Shop/SearchRe ... atalogID=0

Some older Sprite/Midget 1098 engines (10CG) apparently used the same 1.75" crank as the Morris as well as a host of other cars like the MGA, MGB Spitfire and some Triumphs.

Hopefully they'll be the same length.

[GBond]

Fitted the rings to the pistons today and started to clean the head which was also filthy like the block was, should have done that before sending both to the machine shop but what's done is done and I guess it's better late than never. Otherwise for the moment engine progress is stopped until I receive the new main bearings. The ones that got damaged were bi-metallic and the ones on the way are tri-metallic so hopefully they'll last longer and I won't have to see the inside of the engine for a long time.[frame][/frame]The engine's four little hearts!

I was looking through some old photographs and found these, they appear to be from an old junkyard but I don't think it still exists.[frame][/frame][frame][/frame][frame][/frame][frame][/frame]
Now that I think of it, this is the closest thing to a surviving Morris saloon I've found evidence of here in Guatemala. As far as I can remember I've never even seen a Morris saloon or even a two door in person.

[George Smathers]

Gabriel,

That's too bad about the caustic soda. Speaking of helpful fathers, my dad crashed our Morris many years ago and the parcel shelf badly injured his knee. Is there any way you can make it collapsible?

George

[GBond]

Well, to be honest a LOT of junk came out from inside the engine so it was for the best.

As far as I know the crash bar that holds the parcel shelf is supposed to be there for safety, I'd guess it's to prevent you from going under the dash in a crash if you're not wearing a seatbelt. However, the edge points right at the knees and is covered in just a thin foam padding so I'm not sure if it causes more trouble than it solves.

No pictures today but I finished the parcel tray template; it looks like an easy job but tiny differences in the measurements kept it from fitting correctly and doing all the adjustments took quite a lot of time. I'll do the final one tomorrow and hopefully install it and upload some pictures.

On other good news my main bearings are now in sunny Miami so I should have them here by wednesday or thursday and finally be able to assemble the engine.