Morris Minor Owners Club

My name is Danny Downs, I'm eighteen years old and have owned a 1952 morris minor 2 door since i was fifteen and have been working on it ever since. As of recently i have decided to take on a 4age twin cam project but i was dismayed at the relatively small amount of info available regarding this engine swap. Therefore i thought it would be helpful for some if i explained my project-engine, engine mounts, transmission mounts, etc.
The engine is out of an 87' mr2 and the tranny is out of an early 80's corolla t-50 5 speed. Both can be found in the junkyard (i live in california so i'm not sure if there is many junkyards in britain ). Some say that to get the motor and trans in the engine bay either the cross member on the firewall or the front lower crossmember has to be cut. I had to cut neither of these ( although i did have to recess the extending lip of the front cross member to give the oil pan clearance). The engine has to be dropped in sololey and the transmission bolted up from underneath (simple with a floor jack). The floor ( the actual floor and not the tunnel) also has to be recessed to give the shifter clearance. As for the engine mounts i used the mounting rubber out of a toyota corrola. I used 2 inch tubing with eighth inch walls and the rubber mounted at a 45 degree angle to ensure that the motor stays centered. There is about a quarter inch of clearance between the pulley and the front crossmember and a quarter inch between the head and the firewall crossmember. As for the transmisson mount i used a t-50 crossmember and rubber. I flipped the crossmeber so that the rubber would sit inside and keep everything up as high as possible. The crossmember has to be recessed in a few areas to ensure that the transmission wont snub . The holes which mount the rubber to the crossmember also have to be moved or slotted. Then drop down brackets must be fabricated which can be welded to the frame rails. Its a pretty easy process, it only took me 2 and a half days to completely mount the motor and tranny. Pictures speak a thousand words so see below
And as you say over there, Cheers!,
Danny Downs

Hi Danny, Pretty impressive work so far. You may find more information about Toyota engine transplants on the Australian Minor site as it's a more common conversion over there. I can't find their URL at the moment as I'm rushing off to our National right now.

http://www.morrisdownunder.com/forum/index.php
http://www.minormania.com/index.php (Maybe also useful)

Sounds great.
Trouble is finding early toyota inline boxes over here.

Also I'm willing to be we pay a much higher premium for scrap engines than you chaps do.

I have seen this conversion once before but only in pictures... bout time someone de-mystified the process. Nice job.

Keep the pics coming Danny! The 1/4" clearances don't sound enough to me - the engine will move back and forth under power and under braking - you may have to increase these clearances! But great work so far !

dunketh wrote:
I have seen this conversion once before but only in pictures... bout time someone de-mystified the process. Nice job.

It's been written, I believe, on the Oz site

thanks for the feedback! I'll try to post more pictures as the project progresses. I'll probably mount the alternator tomorrow (it needs to be moved a quarter inch) and bolt up the inake manifold. Hopefully i can get started on the clutch linkage as well.

Other mods on the car include mgb outer rims with stock morris centers, mgb disc brakes, mgb master cyclinder, mgb rear end including drums, mgb black leather bucket seats, black interior, pioneer deck with 6.5 inch front speakers 6by9 inch rear speakers and two twelve inch subs in the trunk. The car lowered 2 splines in front and 2 inches in the back.

Hopefully the motor and trans will no longer be the weak link of the car

Cheers,
Danny

The 1/4" clearances don't sound enough to me - the engine will move back and forth under power and under braking - you may have to increase these clearances! But great work so far !

Well I thought about what you said and under hard braking the inertia of the engine could have potentially damaged my radiator. Anways i found a fairly simple way to fix this problem. While was thinkig about an easy way to fabricate the clutch linkage i decided to use a stabilizer bar fitted from the transmission to the front crossmember which would not only keep the tranny from moving backward when depressing the clutch (which would be the resulting force of depressing the clutch- my first thought was to do like the minor clutch linkage and have a second lever shaft connectd to the rail and transmission but that was clearly not an option) but a stabilizer bar as long as it is fitted as close to the rotational axis of the engine would keep the motor from moving back and forth but not inhibit the natural torque of the engine (fingers crossed ). Therefore two birds were killed with one stone and thats a good thing!.

The stabilizer bar is ironically enough from the morris minor front supsension! It mounts to the the clutch slave cylinder boss on the tranny and my sway bar mount on the front crossmember. It also utilizes the rubber donuts which will hopefully keep it from inhibiting the torque and allow a small amount of motion.

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The picture quality is horrible but the bar use see is the stabilizer bar extending to the trans

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quality also horrible, this is the linkage-just a simple link between the fork and the pedal, the clutch feels extremely positive probably due to the lack of a lever shaft, the only thing that worries me is that there will be increased pedal vibration but chevy did this for years![/quote]

Just thought i would post some more about my project. I'm nearly at the finish line-just a few more things to do and hopefully i can attempt to start her up this weekend. All that is left is the driveshaft and wiring. I still have to do the rest of my exhaust but i figure i could test drive it uncorked at the header.

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Not shown (obviously) is the front grill and radiator. I'm using a corolla gts rad with a haynes 10inch high output fan.


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My first attempt at building a header. Trying to keep the primaries all the same length while bringing the tubes together is harder than it looks. I think it turned out pretty decent tho, still waiting on my collector from the speed shop.

hey everyone, i havent posted on this forum in a long time, most because i couldnt work on my morris for 9 months due to being away at my first year of college.

The car is on the road now, and she runs great, and faster than i had expected (130 hp in about a 1900 pound car). I might post a video and some pictures if anyone cares to see them.


-Danny

Congratulations at getting on the road. I for one, would love to see pics!

pics would be great!
i soon shall be taking on this project, depending on when i get back to work (been off work for 4 months now )