Morris Minor Owners Club

Incredible but true.

I had to climb a very steep hill in reverse gear and due to the rear of the car being lighter (and not due to an excess of horsepower) can only describe what happened as axle tramp.

Needless to say, the recon engine will not be seeing hills like this until properly run in.

Judder rather than tramp I think...

Must have been some hill - thought you could drive up the side of a house in first gear in an 803

About 40 years ago I had an 803 into which I inserted a 948 engine, gearbox and prop shaft which I got from a scrap yard. The gearing was all completely wrong so that axle tramp made first gear unusable. It would still take off like a rocket in second but was pretty much flat out at 50 mph. No syncro on any of the gears changing up or down but I quickly got the hang of double de-clutching so it didn't really matter. Happy days!

XWL61 wrote:Must have been some hill - thought you could drive up the side of a house in first gear in an 803

No - as you should know that's a flat twin Jowett.

JOWETTJAVELIN wrote:Incredible but true.

I had to climb a very steep hill in reverse gear and due to the rear of the car being lighter (and not due to an excess of horsepower) can only describe what happened as axle tramp.

Needless to say, the recon engine will not be seeing hills like this until properly run in.

What side of the road did you use to go up the hill?

The left (or right sitting in the car going backwards), but it was quite deserted so didn't really matter much.

Go a different way next time

True, but where I live we have a lot of empty country roads and a lot of hills, which make excellent test routes to put cars through their paces!

The poor car would not set off in 1st from standing on the hill, hence the reverse manoeuvre.

Move to cheshire its Minor friendly