Morris Minor Owners Club

The 803 will soon be nearing completion once the crank is reground. It will have new main and big-end bearings plus new rings. Everything else is fine and the bores are in top condition even after 88k. Will the 'new' engine require running in? In the handbook it says take it easy for the first 500 miles and change the oil, then progressively increase speed. Your thoughts please.

You may as well! Nothing to lose. But really it's the bores/rings that you 'run in' - the crank doesn't need any special treatment.

"Taking it easy" in an 803- that's not going to be very fast, is it???!!! As BMC said, if it's just bottom end, you probably don't need to worry too much- I think keeping below 3000 rpm and only using part-throttle would be fairly hard to do without grinding to a halt. Good luck with it!

JOWETTJAVELIN wrote:The 803 will soon be nearing completion once the crank is reground. It will have new main and big-end bearings PLUS NEW RINGS. Everything else is fine and the bores are in top condition even after 88k. Will the 'new' engine require running in? In the handbook it says take it easy for the first 500 miles and change the oil, then progressively increase speed. Your thoughts please.

Yes, take it easy, but don't take that to mean don't rev too high, just gradually increase revs rather than going flat out (it's an 803, but you know what I mean!).

When I rebuilt my 1098 (same as you, new shells, no rebore but new rings) I did an oil change after 1000 miles, then another after another 2000 miles. And now carry on every 3000 miles as recommended.

OK, thanks for the tips.

From a book of the period....

I love the old books and the style they are written in. Is this the Cassell book of the Morris Minor by any chance?

I like the reference to power flushing.
When was it written?

JOWETTJAVELIN wrote:I love the old books and the style they are written in.

Yeah, you can kind of imagine a suited man with tosh and pipe reading it out loud.

No messing about in those days. People were encouraged to 'have a go' yourself at home. Can't beat a good pipe when working on some mechanical conundrum in the garage (plus it's the only place I'm allowed to smoke ) Oh for the days when men were real men, women were real women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centuri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centuri.

Yes, it's the Cassell's book of the Series II published 1960. In the days before workshop manuals these little books offered the owner information that went beyond the owners manual. Yes, the style of writing is wonderful, so correct and polite.

Was the Author Ellison Hawkes or Staton Abbey? I have both books tucked away somewhere and yes they make interesting reading from the owner/driver point of view, as opposed to the clinicism of the workshop manual.

It's an Ellison Hawkes. What I love about these old period books is finding which jobs the previous owner carried out, identified by the pages which are covered in oily finger marks!

I did two running in routes ( though later both engines snapped main bearings/ crank rods ) , one to the girlfriends , 5 day tour London->Bath->Glastonbury->Chesterfield->Doncaster->Lincoln->Peterborough->London. collecting bits from MMC bath and woollies for interior work. All using A roads only at 50mph max in a 948.

The other was a couple of afternoon tours of the Surrey /Kent Hills , using 2nd a lot in slow crawls over Ide Hill and the like.