Morris Minor Owners Club

It will have been said many times by many people but for those whose brains occasionally go awol heres a tip when working on the inside of the car up under the bulkhead. This might be when doing some work on the wiper rack, or heater vents or the like. ALWAYs make sure you block the access to the inner inner wing on the right or left hand side of the car. Things can and do fall down the gap between the inner part of the inner wing and may well be lost for ever to rattle around ad infinitum!

My goof today was to lose the end part of the wiper rack - what made it worse was the fact that initially, and without realising it, the end part had just fallen onto the ridge on the top of the inner wing panel. My groping around knocked it off and down to the bottom it went

Tomorrow I will attempt a rescue using a magnetic catch from a cupboard tied to a length of string. Hopefully I can lower this in and pick it up but if not I'll be spending some more money on line shortly

Maybe a magnet on the end of a bendy piece of wooden stick might be the better option; would avoid the magnet sticking to the body on the way down/up.

Good thinking - will probably use some electrical flex or a thin plastic tube

Perhaps one of those claws as per the bottom of this page..

http://www.vehicle-wiring-products.eu/V ... tools1.php

Is this near the A pillar? I hadn't heard of this danger zone until now! Thanks, I'll take extra care.

Oh yes. I was working on a very rotten traveller once. Out of the bottom of that black-hole appeared a permanent marker, a thimble, several fuses, and a lot of pre-decimalisation change!

One of my cars has a socket stuck down there, with lots of waxoil to try and stop it moving about......

Yup. Lost my favourite chubby screwdriver to the 'inner inner wing'. Very annoying having it just cm's away from the passengers foot

Well, my magnet on the end of a length of electrical cable worked - I now have my wiper rack end back - yippee! not so yippee is the fact that, having now reassembled the whole thing and mounted all the wiper spindles etc. I now find that i have put the captive nut, that fits into the end of the wiper motor gear, on the wrong way round So I now have to dismantle the whole thing, withdraw the cable and turn the little blighter round - doh!

I lost a socket down there on one Minor saloon more than 10 years ago - most dangerous time is when a glovebox liner is removed, then anything goes! (it usually goes rattle clunk..)

On my 71 pick-up I had this area apart (bottom of A-post, inner step etc..) for repairs
I found a previously lost chewing gum packet & assorted nut shells and debrid. The mice had nicked the chewing gum from the dash and hidden it away! Fortunately they did leave half for later so I was happy with that (not).

anyway back to the previous story I was doing the A-post bottom on my saloon, so decided to open up the inner inner wing bottom section just to re-aquire my socket.. only to realise that it was a different saloon that it had fallen into

Snap on do an electromagnet with a long flexible end about 10 mm dia. I bought one years ago when working on Locos. Very useful, I still use it occasionly.

I lost a socket down there to. If I am working in that area I now 'bung' it up with a large cloth (old T-shirt). I still miss that 11mm socket .

My old interior light switch is down there; had to buy another at £3.50!!!!!

Maybe there should be a hinged panel at the bottom of the A post

A roll over jig works well to retrieve things, unless you think that turning the car upsidedown and shaking it is a bit extreme...