Morris Minor Owners Club

hi

as ive mentioned elsewhere a piece of my traveller timber fell off over the weekend. its the foot rail (?) behind the drivers door. at least its the smallest piece to replace, and i have some seasoned ash logs in my wood shed i was going to burn but i suppose i can carve a piece out of one of them. the dovetail joint is still fully intact on the wheel arch but the bottom of the post thats bolted to the cab is rotten at the bottom about 3 inches or so. if i make the new piece flat on that side i can bolt it up into the post.

my question really is how much home repair is it safe to do to the frame ? apart from that there is only about 6 inches of rot on the passenger cant rail right at the back on the outside which ive cut out and after ive cuprinoled it all well, i'll fill it in with epoxy putty (milliput) and i reckon it will be solid. but yesterday in aberystwyth i saw a traveller (and im sorry if the owner is reading this) and the frame had been patched all over, it was a right mess, the cant rail had been cut out and a thin covering bolted on, both foot rails were bolted down to the plates underneath ... i wonder what the plate was attached to ? ... it looked like every piece of wood had been spliced or filled at some point. i wouldnt feel safe driving something like that, but a moderate amount of filler and a bolt or two shouldnt reallly compromise its safety OR its MOT-ability should it ?

cheers
grainger

Hi!

With the traveller woodwork being part of the MOT I wouldn't take any chances. - is there any way you can replace the whole bit of wood?

Nikki

hi, thanks for the reply

no, the bit of cant rail that has gone rotten is on the outside, from the top outer glass runner outwards. i removed the headlining and there is no rot inside whatsoever. if i removed the whole piece i think that would be reducing the strength of the cant rail.

altogether i only have about 9 square inches of rotten timber, it seems silly to replace the frame just for that, so i'll just have to make the best job i can.
cheers
grainger

In which case - why don't you ask your friendly MOT tester ;)

I mean, if there is someone nearby who normally does your MOT and you trust them to not rip you off by saying it'll need replacing when it doesn't

Nikki

Grainger,

If you can create a long "scarf" joint between 2 pieces of wood (e.g. the existing frame and the replacement) and join them with a good epoxy resin (I use WEST epoxy on the sailing dinghy) it will be stronger than the wood. That should produce a nice finish as well - only the join line visible.

You can, if you wish, use some woodscrews (use brass or stainless - find a local boat chandler for the epoxy as well!).
To make a neat job of that, drill the screw hole in 3 parts:
1) the full depth of the screw with a small drill (just smaller than the diameter of the screw without the thread)
2) About 1/2" with a drill the diameter of the screw just below the head (to allow the screw to seat)
3) about 1/4" with a drill greater than the diameter of the head (see below before drilling!)

The idea is to assemble the joint and screw together so that the screw heads are recessed in the wood.

Now for the careful bit! Local tool shops will sell you a "plug cutter". This cuts a small cylinder of wood from a plank. If you buy one so that the size of the plug is the same as the recess hole you have drilled, thn you use a bit of spare wood, cut the plug, adjust the depth of the plug, and glue it on top of the screw-head (making sure the grain runs the same way).
That makes an almost invisible repair.

If you use a waterproof wood glue (Epoxy really is recommended) with no gaps in the glued surface, the joint is far stronger than the wood - the wood breaks before the glue!

COlin

hi

thanks for the advice ... i havent got an mot on this traveller yet. the best one to ask would have been the guy driving that spliced up minor i saw, if he got THAT through an mot, mine should fly through, i wonder where he got it done.

colin. thanks for that detail, i will definately try this out, is a 'scarf' joint difficult to do ? i would much prefer to only have wood on the outside, it will look much better.

cheers
grainger

hi
as a joiner then to me a scarf joint is easy.

ok
it is not difficult just take your time and get a good fit, the only real problem comes with the feather edge at both ends of the scarfe joint, epoxy is good get the 24 hour stuff and not the quick setting.

a good ratio for the scarf joint !!!!! is about 3 1/2:1

get a tapered plug cutter and not a parallel cutter , that way the plug will be invisible so long as you choose the best offcut to get a good grain match.

or even a better way of doing this is to secret screw.
this entails lifting a piece of the timber with a gouge, just enough to put the drill hole through and screw.
you then glue the lifted piece back down with glue, use tape to hold it, when dry clean up and you will never know where the screw was, that is the way us professionals would do it !!!!!

if he got THAT through an mot, mine should fly through, i wonder where he got it done.

The MOT test is usually not the ideal way to find out what is safe and what isn't for car bodywork etc..

I've seen plenty of cover-up welding jobs done on cars that give no strength but allow the owner to get an MOT. I've even seen MOT garages do bad cover up jobs on seatbelt mounting points

Even if the MOT person is good (many of them are) they are unlikely to know the structural design points of every car on the British road, and they are not vehicle structural design engineers anyway so people expect a lot more of them than is humanly possible. To get an answer regarding what is a strong repair and what isn't it''s best to talk with a specialist who knows the car inside out. And for woodwork - tips from a joiner like those already given shgould do you well.

Thanks AUpickup,
That's something I didn't know...

Grainger,
the easiest scarf joint is to cut the two pieces of wood at the same angle (like 30 degrees). The bottom pices slopes downwards, and the top upwards. If you look at it from the side you'll see a diagonal line, from the top/bottom, just a line across the wood.

I wish I could draw!. If it's not clear, send me a PM and I'll try to sketch it!

There are lots of Internet references, but there are no clear pictures I've found... There are also lots of complicated scarf joints - fun to do, but overkill these days.

For the epoxy resin, try to get some glass ballontini (very small glass beads) with it. You make these into a paste with the resin and these help to fill up the gaps if your joinery isn't perfect (like mine). That makes it much stronger.

Colin

The MOT test is usually not the ideal way to find out what is safe and what isn't for car bodywork etc..

Very seconded. It really quite scares me that when I bought my Rebecca she had only recently lost her last MOT (she was tax'd and mot'd until a few months before I bought her). Unless the owner had parked her in a salt farm and sprayed warm water on her daily in the year preceeding my purchase then the MOT tester the previous year must have been quite 'lenient'.

There were plates all over the place, and a quick prod with a screwdriver removed a large chunk of the front chassis leg (don't ask why I bought her, I just did, okay ). I've seen some really, truely dangerous cars complete with MOT (mmm, filler instead of a sill, how 'nice') when I've been seeking out cheap transport in the past....

And someone I know swears by "strawberry jam tins (large size), a bit of araldite & a good dollop of underseal"....

hi

thanks for all the help, i think i know what you mean, its what i was thinking of originally but i thought it might weaken it. now i have the back windows out i can see that where the rot is on the cant rail is pretty much only on the surface anyway so if i take a slice off and replace it (great tips about the screws, thanks) its not going to be any weaker than it is now

im getting everything covered in cuprinol and then next week im borrowing a neighbours garage to do the varnishing in

ps anyone on here own that immaculate a reg traveller with browny green paintwork i saw going through aberystwyth yesterday ?

cheers
grainger