Morris Minor Owners Club

I've had the day off today so decided to do some work on the car - at long last. I will post pictures up every so often, but this will certainly not be a quick restoration!

Today I've been ligning up a new front lh inner wing., it all looks fine except therer is a mismatch between the replacement inner wing and fltich panel of about 5mm (see picture). Shoudl I be worried about this or just do some judicious hammerwork when I put on front panel and bonnet again? It all lines up perfectly at the rear. <br><br>

Here it is from another angle...<br><br>

sadly I think this is common with new panels - nearly "seems near enough" to the manufacturer's, and the suppliers often sell what they recieve with no quality checks.

I had the same issue on my 71 pick up when doing the inner wing in June. 5mm is a lot when you expect it to fit right. The main priority is to get the top edge in the right place - and also where the front panel fits.

I used a new inner wing with a new flitch and it fitted well, maybe its worse because your flitch is not new - still should fit properly though but as said above, if you can get your front panel back on properly there is no harm in some triming to make it fit.

Thanks very much for the replies guys, I love this forum - a great help.

I think front panel will fit ok and I'll just do some minor trimming on the rest. Meanwhile I've spent the last couple of days putting in a new kitchen floor to please her indoors. Tomorrow though, I can escape back into the garage to remove LH rotten outer sills and slightly rotten boxing panel. Once that's repaired, I can weld in the new inner wing properly. It all sounds so easy doesn't it!

I would line it up properly at the upper edges - as you have done - then just blend away the mismatch where it doesn't matter on that inner flange.

Was there an official tolerance specification during original manufacture?

Ideally beter than that, but I wouldn't worry about it. Just blend it in as suggested. Depends on the new panels and just how it all sits.
Main thing to check is fitting the bonnet and front panels. If the external panels you see fit, the inner bits can't be too far out.