Morris Minor Owners Club

Having fitted the doors after repairing and replacing two of them,I fitted the glass and chrome frames.Not an easy job,but three went well and the doors fitted well with the frames on.However the front o/s door though fitting well without the top frame in ,became a different story with the frame on.I was surprised how thick a shim I finally ended up with,to get it to fit correctly,this was a replacement door,but they must have had a similar problem when building the cars.I worked at British Leyland for some years ,and friends who worked on the "track"told me they had a plank of wood,to lever the doors into position .What always amazed me was,if I walked to the end of the track where the cars came off to be parked,the placed was littered with nuts and bolts.Who`s car was short of these..The cars where then parked in the multi-storey car park,where they were there for so long,some of the chrome went rusty and had to be replaced .Len

Could be an early symptom of the decline of the indigenous British car industry. I bet the Toyota production line didn't have miscellaneous nuts and bolts lying around...

Using a plank of wood to align a door is a skilled job. The skill lies in where to place the plank and how much leverage to give the plank.
Even though the Minor body was assembled on a jig it was no guarantee that all panels were exactly in the right place which could result in the plank of wood being used to correctly align the doors.
It is no different to using a body repair jack/pulling beam - knowing where to push or pull is the skill - a push or pull in the right or wrong place can make or break a repair job.

I use a lump of wood from time to time when restoring Minors to tweak a door fit. Its a very skilled job

IaininTenbury wrote:I use a lump of wood from time to time when restoring Minors to tweak a door fit. Its a very skilled job

I hope it's an Imperial piece and not the shabby modern metric stuff as they don't make it like they used to !!!!!!!!!!!