Morris Minor Owners Club

Just a curious question really...

Are you willing to see Morris' scrapped to save others?
Or would you want to save them all?
And even what would thoughts be on them turned into Banger Race Cars?

I think its a tough one, I don't really like the thought of scrapping Morris Minors but a few years ago I bought a spares or repairs one for £200 it was a bog standard 4 door saloon, I've never seen anything so rusty in my life. It needed 2 new chassis legs, a new crossmember, new floor in most places and all the inner and outer sills needed replacement, aswell as the obvious ther rest of the body anf chassis was in very poor condition. there was basicly no good metal to weld too. In that situation there was no hope of salvage, but it was broken for spares which I am using to get Lily going.

However my Dad bought a 2 door saloon of E bay, which when looking at the rust many other people would've scrapped, not him. He replaced all 4 inner and outer sills and patched more places than I can remember. Realisticly he probably saved her.

Personaly I don't think a Morris Minor should be srapped, broken for spares maybe but only if there is no other option.

Having said that if we were all like David Miles there would be no need to scrap any : http://www.mmoc.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f= ... 57&start=0

scrapped

Difficult to say. Obviously I'd like all remaining Minors to be saved, but being realistic that's not going to happen. Some are just too rotten, and the costs of professional restoration are still very high compared to the value of the finished product. That said, the easy parts availability coupled with the car's simple construction weigh in its favour, and the former means that there is less need to break cars to obtain parts. Just a shame that you can't buy a complete bodyshell as you can with the Mini, MGB, etc.

The biggest danger now is rising scrap prices, which will tempt many to scrap otherwise savable (or strippable) cars.

Fortunately Minors don't seem to have suffered the attention of banger racers, unlike A60s, Granadas, etc. Certainly no savable car should be banger raced, and to be honest if a car's together enough to race then it can probably be restored.

chrisd87 wrote:Fortunately Minors don't seem to have suffered the attention of banger racers.

The only one i ever saw on a banger track lasted less than a lap as the torsion bar pulled out of the chassis leg so it was game over for it!

As JLH has said, it costs as much to restore a Minor as it does to restore an Alfa Spyder (for example) but the finished article is worth a lot more, thus making Minor restoration a labour of love rather than a sound financial exercise.
I bought an entire Lowlight just for the seats. I spent less than the seat covers would have cost, kept a few other bits and then donated the rolling shell for free. Hopefully it will re-emerge one day as a restored car when it becomes worth doing.

I don't like the thought of any Minor being scrapped but if one can be used as spares to save another......

I would hate to see any banger raced. They are such jolly cars, it would be sacrilege!!!

Its a difficult question, obviously some Minors are too far gone to repair. As we move into the future though, people will and are restoring cars that would have been crushed 20 years ago. As they get rarer, people will try and save even the most difficult cars.

With the huge spares available to purchase there is no excuse to break a restorable car for it's bits. Firstly Minors get stolen.. what happens to them, broken for spares no doubt. We members fuel this activity by jumping in every topic when a car gets broken on this forum. We assume the poster is genuine, but are they? Where do all those bits come from on ebay one wonders, genuine sellers maybe or breakers of stolen cars?

Cars will always be scrapped and broken for bits, unfortunately, I think the official club website should restrict and not promote this activity. Purely for the reasons above which we couldn't prove either way.

My mother suggests that a Minor that is just a rotting empty shell might be broken up and made into art of some kind. I can see making a miniature Minor (or group of them) with a little metal beating and some imagination.

But my vote went to 'never'...there are too few of them already. It's true that in my economic position it might be nice to cannibalize another Minor to save Mog, but that's stealing from Peter to pay Paul, isn't it? I don't like it. As many classics of any marque should be saved as possible...

"too few of them".. hard to proove. I would disagree on the basis that there is no shortage of them - unlike many other cars it's easy to get hold of one.
Gladly or sadly there are more minors out there than there are willing owners, which is why, for example prices of a Lancia Delta have sky rocketed over the last decade and Minor prices have merely drifted by comparison.

I've restored some basket cases in my time, and plently of below average cars too. There have been cars where it just wasn't worth my time to do them, but they were not hard to save so I've given those away to new owners.

Personally I'd rather give the car away than scrap it - however if the car is beyond saving then I've sent a few to the scrapyard after they were stripped.

Please do remember though - scrapyards are NOT very good at recycling parts back into use!
There was a perfectly ok Minor van in a local scrappy (scrappage scheme ) - they wrecked the cab by chaining it up onto a pile. On a later move around they screwed the chassis with a forklift straight into the side of it which bent it slightly
Given a few days per side to replace the home made rear arches, it would have been worth £3k plus. The scrapyard handling left it fit for melting down - and apart from a few parts like the rear doors it was 100% wasted.

I fully support stripping them because if 1 can save 5 then surely thats a positive right?

And in some cases economics have to win

I bought a 2 dr in 2008 which I planned to turn into a convertible. After very close inspection it was too rotten. I gave it to my son-in -law who used the front half to make a bigger cab (larger doors) for his pickup. He then turned the rear into a trailer for my daughter's 4dr and i have the engine and gearbox for another 4dr we have. The only wastage was the rear roof section

Ok, so who was it who voted to Race then Scrap?!

Dryad wrote:Ok, so who was it who voted to Race then Scrap?!

That would be me. I personally believe that a minors handling is very much under rated. They have little/ no racing heritage and are rarely even driven at speed or fully tested to their limits. They dont need an mot and can be poorly welded/bodged together even if a scrap shell. They can still be stripped for spares after this to keep others on the road as the main damaged parts such as wings, etc are not in high demand. Tbh neither are the engines or boxes for most. A car can be used for racing then stripped, so its all 'advertising' for minors, and will show them to a different audience.

By "too few of them" I meant from my perspective, that is, in America. I understand they're effectively a dime a dozen in Britain. And if we do take five to save one, we'll very soon end up with only a few of them left!

Alex'n'Ane makes a compelling argument about promoting the cars, but I'm left wondering (forgive me my contrariness) how apt the racing crowd would be to have a Morris Minor. The racing crowd I'm familiar with, again American, mostly prefers camper trailers and tall-as-a-semi-truck pickups.

Alex'n'Ane wrote: A car can be used for racing then stripped, so its all 'advertising' for minors, and will show them to a different audience.

Excuse my cynicism, but it's the "different audience" that worries me. Once the idea of banger racing Minors takes hold then it's the beginning of the end, I think. There will be those who say it's not a problem as they are still relatively plentiful, but how many will be trashed after a few years? And what about the rogue element?; there was an item in practical Classics a few months back about classic cars being stolen in order to strip and sell the parts, then banger race what's left.

We weren't discussing the legitimacy of any of this. If involving illegal activity you could say it is better to just scrap the car as it is rather than break for parts as in the case it would more likely be 'ringed' and 'saved'? I agree with what your saying about too many of them being ruined, but as a personal option i think it would be what i was most like to do if the shell really couldn't / wouldn't be saved.

Problem is, once people get the idea that they make good banger racers, it won't just be cars in the sort of condition you describe being raced. Perfectly savable project cars will end up being bought to race. Therefore I'd rather that 'audience' be kept in complete ignorance!

Fortunately, the Minor is far too small to be a good banger racer as they need big cars (large crumple zones and lots of metal to survive collisions), banger racing has been the death of most of the larger cheapish Bristish classics.

I think, as there are far less Minors now than when I first bought my traveller, we should be saving every one we can.

OK, some cars will be beyond saving, I myself took parts from a couple of Travellers about ten years ago that even I would not attempt to restore, one car was so rusty, the whole car moved when you opened the door and got inside it, and the other so rusty, the engine fell out when the owner dragged it out to his front drive- the whole chassis at the front of the car had collapsed, you could grab the front of the car and move it about. The rest of the metalwork on both cars crumbled in your hands.

But when we still see restorable largely cars being still being broken for parts it is heartbreaking.

We had a similar discussion on the MGoc forum a couple of years ago about MGBs being scrapped and someone made a very good point (not my opinion).
The more cars that are scrapped the more valuable the remaining ones become.
Discuss...........