Morris Minor Owners Club

I started what I hoped would be a reletively straight forward bit of restoration work on my daughters Minor yesterday, replacing the rear chassis rails under the boot.
Whilst it was stripped I had a look at the rear floor pan, from above there was a nasty split in it and some visible rot, underneath it looked solid.

When I poked about a bit more I found the rear floor pan had been badly patched with a thin bent plate welded to the sill and the floor pan. I took it off and have now found the bottom of the inner sill where the seat belt mounting is has rotted too.

Looking at the diagrams the rear floor pan has an upstand on which welds to the sill which is fair enough, but what does the bottom of the inner sill weld too?.

This is a two door car, I'm trying to piece it together from the sketch in the bull motif catalogue, but there's a lot of bits and it's not easy!

A photo would be a great help to understand what your talking about.
I recently did the sills on my Four door, i have a comprehensive photo library........http://s166.photobucket.com/albums/u118/yamahafs1e/

scrolling through there may help to answer some questions.

good luck,
YG

OK thanks YG I had found your album from an earlier post, it did help, but yours being a four door I expect the area is slightly different.

I will take some shots, but to be honest they wont show much as it's a bit of a mess and a lot of it is hidden still.

I'm currently rebuilding a 2 door, it sounds like your having the same problems I did when I tried to work out where everything fitted behind the rear quarter panel after a lot of "this is an outside panel and how good is my welding thoughts" I have cut the outside quarter panel off because thats the only way you can get to the rotted bits inside (there is a repair panel for this too) and once its out of the way you can see where the inner box section goes (and what state its in) and how everything connects to the back of the spring hanger.
In my oppinion unless you do this with a 2 door you cant see how historical patches have affected the cars structure and whatever you do will be a patch on patches and structuraly suspect...

Yes, chadbrook is right, you have to cut off the 1/4 panel bottom (get the repair piece too before you start so you know where to cut), not a bad thing to do because if there is rust in the other areas, then the bottom of the 1/4 is going to be rotten as well.

I absolutely agree, cut off all the MOT patches- these are usually crudely welded and poorly protected and likely to be a big rust sandwich.

The bottom of the inner sill originally would have had a lip at right angle and this would have been spot welded to the floor. I would get some 2-3mm plate and cut the rusty piece of inner sill out. Save the captive nut (on the inside of the sill ) and drill a hole in the 2/3mm plate repair piece you have made up bolt up the seat belt achor to the nut through this hole and weld the nut to the inside of the new sill piece. Then weld the new piece to replace the rust into the inner sill.

With such thick plate its going to be hard to bend a 90 so IMHO its acceptable to bend a 90deg flange in the floor pan for plug welding to the now solid inner sill.

With this kind of damage, I would prepare for a part restoration. Remove interior, seats etc carpet, mask the window glass to avoid damage from weld splatter. Brace the door gap, take lots of measurements and prepare yourself for several hard monthis of spare time work replacing floors, and sill pieces.

There is a few pictures of the restoration the previous owner did on my ser II on my website www.morris-1000.co.uk may be of some help