Morris Minor Owners Club

Hello All,

I am a new member to the site so hi to eveyone here and apologies for the length of this post!. I came into possesion of a 1966 4 dr Minor 1000 about 6 months ago.
It had been off the road since about the mid 80's and the previous owner had made some attempts at restoration during his ownership. Unfortunately it is not in great condition although equally it is not as bad as some of the pictures i have seen on this site.
From my initial inspection, structurally it needs:

Centre crossmember replacing, LH and RH sills (all), new floors LH and RH.

This will be the first car i have attempted to restore and while i am a massive car and motorbike fan, and have a reasonable amount of theoretical knowledge about how cars/bikes work, from experience it is difficult to put the theory into practice.

Anyway, i have totally stripped the interior and am now at the stage where i am ready to start structural repairs, but am unsure how to start. I have seen some examples of people totally removing the entire body of the car to enable easy access to everything and this looks like a good way to do it, however i cannot see where/how to even start taking the body off or if it is even possible without being a master engineer, none of the literature or manuals i have suggest taking the body off at all. I have also seen some people roll the car on its side to let them get access to everytihng, which also looks like a good way of doing it and would probably be easier than taking the body off.

I guess what i am asking is where and how do i start!............. I want to save my little baby from ending up as scrap but am currently a bit overwhelmed by the prospect of the structural work, which is slightly demoralising and demotivating.

Thanks in advance, all help is greatly appreciated!!

As I see it the way forward for you and getting your Morris back to health can be broken down into two needs and strategies to meet those needs:-

1) Skill level- you want to restore the car but are not sure how to do it. Best thing I can advise is to get some welding instruction or better still car restoration instruction. Learn the necessary skills you will need before starting on the car. There are night courses run at colleges throughout the country for this instruction.

2) Project mentality- to avoid the "being overwhelmed" feeling, I break the project down into a series of tasks. First task is to learn some welding and fabrication skills, then you can start on the car. I would warm up by restoring the front and rear inner wings and bumper mount areas. That gives you some options for bumper mounted chassis tilters as well. As each section is rebuilt, you can paint it and derive a feeling of achievement from a bit of the car now finished and shiny!

Another priority is to get the car under cover while you are learning the restoration skills and don't cut any structure off just yet.

The best part is you clearly have enthusiasm. That is great, take things step at a time to keep the enthusiasm going.

From reading your post again, I see you are worrying a lot about "taking the body off".

No need to worry as this is not possible on the Minor as (with the exception of the van and the pickup) the Minor is a monocoque construction so all the structural parts are part of the body and not a seperate chassis as on the commercial vehicle Minors. You cannot take the body off as the body is the structure.

The floors, sills, crossmember are all made up of several seperate panels that if rusty can be cut off, or drill out the spot welds and chiselled off the rest of the body and new sections welded on.

Read "Youngun's" thread on this site, where he restores the body on his 4-door Minor. Or especiallr read "Taupe" s excellent Traveller restoration.

Many thanks John, as you say, it does not sound so daunting if you break down the whole into smaller parts.

Best Wishes

something i find useful is to put a side small jobs that you can do if you find your enthuasium starting to drop off, cleaning and painting handbrake / steering column / heater etc so you can pick it up and finish it always gives me a little boost when doing things that seem to take for ever