Morris Minor Owners Club

Just come in from fitting a good 2nd hand radiator. The car has a 1275 Marina engine installed by a previous owner. There is a problem in that the thermostat housing is pointing away from the radiator top hose spout. The options as I see it are to a) refit the old radiator, but it needs a recore (fairly expensive) b) have the spout modified to match the one on the old radiator or c) find another thermostat housing that points where I want it to point!

Does anyone have any ideas please?[frame][/frame]

and here's another view[frame][/frame]

Your rad looks to be particularly awkward, on my engine I was able to fit a curved hose - but yes - it's normal to change the stat cover for a B series one that points rather better at the rad.

Not a Problem set a hose- it be curved - when you Buy hose look, it make with nylon

would it be possible to cut a bit off the rad pipe to make the bend a bit less severe then a concertina hose may well fit ok,should still tighten up even without the enlarged bit of pipe at the end

Birmingham MMC sell a1098/1275 conversion stat housing

As I had one to hand, I fitted a Triumph Herald top hose.

You could of course cut a bit off - just be sure to not leave a ragged edge.....

Hi folks, thanks for all the replies.
I've decided to take the cheap-skate approach as I'm somewhat skint right now! I spoke to a local engine re-builder who showed me an old thermo housing from a B series head that I thought would do the trick - it just moves the problem from one side to the other however as the bend goes too far the other way.
He said that there would be no problem with trimming the pipe from the radiator, and that a raised lip wasn't needed, as there are plenty of hose unions with just a straight pipe and no lip. So - hacksaw here we come......

That is what I did with mine before I discovered the conversion housing

Birmingham MMC are kindly emailing me a photo of the said housing - but it is around £25 though! I could be tempted though - it does go against the grain to chop into an original rad.

Does the Minor housing not fit on the marina 1275 head? Would have thought that was a workable fix? I wasn't aware that there was any difference but I may be wrong. Here's one on e-bay for £11.20

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MORRIS-MINOR- ... 27aefc1828

It's exactly the same....no advantage. I believe it needs to be an MGB housing, although surprised to hear not all B series covers are the same.

and here's the job done... I finally decided to trim the radiator pipe, making sure the hose is not under any tension.

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Perfect!

Ah, you beat me to it. Many years ago, I had the same problem when I fitted a Midget 1275. I did a similar thing except I took a blowlamp to the joint where the top connection is soldered into the rad, sweated the pipe out, cut it shorter (and square) so I retained the beaded end and then soldered it back in. Its been working ever since with no problems at all. I use a shortened bottom hose which gives a nice preformed radius. I wondered if being a rigid rather than a bellows hose if it would have no give in it but its been absolutely fine. It looks exactly the same as your set up except the top rad connection is at right angles to the rad rather than on a slight angle.

The radiator I have just taken out had been treated as you have yours Colin. I was tempted to try that too, but have never had a great deal of success with soldering, and was worried I might merely melt the join between the top tank and the core! It certainly gives a stronger end to the pipe the way you did it.
Dom.

Hi Dom,
I must admit I wondered if everything would drop to pieces when I did it but it all went ok when I tried. Maybe as I just used a "diy" type blowlamp, there was enough heat in it to do a local solder but not enough to loosen the whole thing. Perhaps worth playing with the one you've taken out if you want to try and see what happens? What you've got looks tidy enough though and it works too. Perfect.
Cheers, Colin.

Glad you got that all sorted. I have a 1000 with a marina block plus other various bits elsewhere (Wheels included sadly!) and having ordered new hoses for both top and bottom I discovered I needed to replace both waterpump and thermostat housings as the shoulders under the hoses had seriously corroded away! ( Purchased the car last year from a "Dealer" but enough of that!) Anyway there seems to be an issue with the copper pipe that runs alongside the rocker cover as it doesnt want to meet up correctly with the take off feed for the heater. Anybody else had any issues with replacing the bottom hose where a Marina?Minor hybrid have been formed. Im a stickler for "as standard". As much as I love the car Im keen on originality 99% of the time but Im lost as to why people cant do things accurately on the first attempt! Cheers.

I found that the new bottom hose I fitted really didn't want to line up with the heater pipe. I then realised that in my box of spares I had a new old stock bottom hose, that fitted perfectly, with no sideways stretches needed. The new hose however wasn't wasted, as I cut out a section to act as a new top hose. I've since done about 500 indicated miles (550 actual when allowing for the fact that the speedo / mileometer now reads about 10% slow due to a 3.9 diff) with no problems.