Morris Minor Owners Club

I'm one of those lovely people who lurk on here and benefit from all your experience without ever posting anything back, but I promise my project (aka Traveller "in need of minor tidying") will feature on here one of these days.

I'm in the process of fairly major surgery to one side and have cut out the sill step and boxing plate ready to replace. The replacement sill step is fitted with flanges at the rear to weld to the rear seat panel. It strikes me that this would provide no structural continuity with the rear part of the step member which snakes up and round the rear arch. At the moment I've left a short stub of the original step member protruding (see pics), and hoped to sort of lap over this and weld the join. This doesn't really work as it pushes the new sill too far in and up. Does anyone else view this as a problem or has come up with a solution? Presumably the same problem crops up every time a replacement sill step is fitted?[frame][/frame][frame][/frame]

welcolme mark, Well If it was mine I would do as the old Cut and Shut merchants do. First make up a section of similar thickness to go inside of the bit you have left, protruding out as far as you want 2" would do.drill a few holes in the old chassis section, Then weld the made up bit into the old section ,through the holes. Cut your new section to fit up against old section which will/should ,if you have made it right slide over the extra section you have now welded inside forming a butt joint. Weld that onto the made up section after drilling holes in the appropriate spots. THEN MOST IMPORTANT seam weld down the joint all the way round so that you are in effect welding both the old bit ,the new section and the insert together as one solid weld.Done like this you can really turn up the welder to get a thick well penetrating weld because the inserted metal prevents blow through as in a normal butt weld. If done correctly that joint will now be stronger than the original panel.Then the old cut and shuts grind all the weld so that you would never know that you had two cars joined together .I would leave the weld because its obviously stronger and will be covered when in use GOOD LUCK.

Thanks, that's really useful. I had been thinking I would cut the end off the new sill, butt weld all the way round and then make a new flange welded over the join and against the seat box. I think I'll follow your advice, but, as I've only left myself 1/2" of original sill to weld to , still make an outer flange as well. What worries me is that I think there must be a lot of moggies out there with the end of the new sill step just welded to the seat box!

Mark