Morris Minor Owners Club

1969 Traveller failed MOT because of lots of corrosion on underside of chassis at numerous points. I can not believe this has developed in just 1 year - but it does look bad at numerous points.

Children are distraut comparing it to loss of recent family dog etc... youngest blaming the MOD....

Is there any point in trying to get a welding job done on it (quoted £700+ !!!!) or from your experience will the rust just come back.

It is also time to replace a couple of wings and perhaps a respray - can anyone recommend a garage that specialises in this type of full recovery at a reasonable price. Probably does not help that we live on the West Coast of Scotland.

All comments much appreciated.

why the MOD shame not this way as i know you could get done cheaper at that price get a welder and do the work your self

Can you supply pictures of the areas that failed? It may give some of the more experienced bodywork guys on here an opportunity to evaluate what is wrong and the type of experience required to do the job.


Sorry, forgive me... welcome to the forum!!

The trouble with going down the route of repairing the underside is that you may well find that in a few years you will find some more and rust etc etc.

If you are looking at replacing a couple of wings getting a respray I would certainly recomend you put the 700 pounds towards a full rebuild.

Sorry i live in aldershot so can not help with a specialist but no doubt one of our members in scotland will be able to point you in the direction of a specialist or two.

Welcome to the Forum IrnBru - in rather sad circumstances of course. Plenty of advice and help on here - it's free! It is worth repairing the rotten panels, and yes it is likely to be an on-going problem. For that reason my Traveller never goes out on salty roads!! But £700 sounds a lot - so start looking around for alternative quotes. Have you no hope of doing the work yourself ? Until you get the MOT safely done, don't go worrying about wings/re-spray etc. MOT comes first.

sometimes when you read an mot failure ticket it looks like an obituary,tell us what has been said,it might not be as bad as you think. Welding is not rocket science and with a half decent mig welder, relatively cheap, and a bit of practice, its suprising what results an average person can get. Show us the problem everything can be sorted with time,and time is the garages payback. your time is free.

Agreed^^^ re the obituary. Hard to imagine any Minor going from good to scrap in a year. Any rust will look horrible at first glance, especially to the uninitiated. When you cut the rubbish out you can see a different picture! "Fear not, said he, for mighty dread...."
(hopefully you won't need an angel of the lord to sort it, though)

A recent MOT refusal was a bit of a shock until closer inspection showed the following:-

nearside headlamp not working on dipped beam
offside headlamp not working on dipped beam
nearside headlamp not working on main beam
offside headlamp not working on main beam

you've guessed it, a faulty earth, let there be light!

Al

alcro wrote:A recent MOT refusal was a bit of a shock until closer inspection showed the following:-

nearside headlamp not working on dipped beam
offside headlamp not working on dipped beam
nearside headlamp not working on main beam
offside headlamp not working on main beam

you've guessed it, a faulty earth, let there be light!

Al

Dean,

Attached are a few pictures of the underside of Woody....

Dean

Thanks for your encouragement

Attached are a few pictures of the underside of Woody....<br><br><br><br><br><br>

Is that the only bad areas? The rear area is not too bad to repair (sections available), and shouldn't take too long. I repaired worse than that on a friend's traveller a few years ago. The sills will be hiding a lot more though, and your car's underside looks pretty soft to me. I certainly wouldn't have my kids in it as the structure will be fairly weakened.
You may have to transport the car to a repairer ( a good one near to me who does Minors, but don't know how busy he is), and if so, you can reduce cost by stripping out the easily removeable stuff - bumpers, tank, sill trim, etc etc.
Still won't be cheap though - unless you do it all yourself.

Pete

Hi Dean, There don't seem to be many good restoration garages in Scotland and the guy up near Inverness has retired now - so one less! If you are set on keeping the car and viewing it as a long term project then why not look at some of the specialists in the north of england. I know from experience you will save a lot if you can strip out the seats, carpets and anything else. The way I looked at it with my saloon (which needed £800.00 welding - gulp!!) was that I know what has been done and now I have a solid car which will last me a long time as there are plenty of rot boxes out there. Hope this helps and if you do go ahead have everything waxoyld to try to prevent further corrosion. Cheers, Jeff

The Traveller looks pretty bad. It didn't get to be like that in just a year! Problem is - the timber may have to come off to do a decent job of replacing the rotted steel. But it can all be repaired - given enough time, and money! I would say - survey ALL the car very carefully before starting to repair any of it - so there are no nasty (= expensive) horrors later on. You are a bit vague with your location........

Hi IrnBrumoggy - is that the only problem area? Looks like you need a new rear panel, repairs to spring hangers/mounts and possibly new timber thats in behind the rear valance.

Unfortunately the problem areas are usually worse than expected as you strip the area back but if not to bad, it might be possible to work out a way of fixing it without taking the wood frame off as this would save on labour costs.

Ok well being how i am a professional in the bussiness i will be the first to not encourage you to do this yourself. If we were talking about the fenders the floor pan or somthing of that nature i would say go for it. What you have there is a structral problem with the suspension. This needs to be done by an experinced welder (maybe not a pro but someone familliar with his machine and secure in his ability) over here in the states small pick up trucks with a air ride suspension to put the truck on the frame rails when parked are real popular.

In order to do this you have to modify the frame. I have fixed many that someone welded with a welder that wasnt big enough to the job and seen alot of totaled out truck when the frame broke at speeds of 65 to 75 MPH

As far as rust comming back if you replace all the rusted metal and treat it with the proper chemicals, primers or paint it wont come back the only problem is you have no idea how much of the car is rusted. The only way to tell is to tear teh car completey apart and have it media blasted. Trust me i have seen some beauitful cars come back from the blaster so bad i couldnt belive it made it to the shop.

If your were in America i would say bring to me

i would say it has been rotting like that for a good few years

but it can all be fixed