Parcel Tray Crash bar - nut accessibility?

[Chief]

Hi,
Does anybody know if the crash bars' captive nuts (where it connects to the car at the A/Door pillars) are accessible from outside of the car? (or if the nut is within a panel and inaccessible?) as I'm missing one I've discovered.

Thanks

[taupe]

The 1/4" BSF captive nut is within the A post.....Its a fairly easy to do a smart 'bodge' repair just weld a nut to a plate...drill out the old one and weld the plate over

Or you can remove the whole captive nut from inside using a large hole saw cutter..repair or replace the captive nut and weld it all back

Taupe

[Chief]

Thanks for the reply.

I was afraid of that being the answer since that's beyond my abilities

When I was removing the crash bar, the side with the nut missing had a self tapping bolt/screw but it was hanging down at something of a 45 degree angle - maybe a huge dollop of glue over it would suffice?

[philthehill]

The captive nut for the parcel tray/crash bar is attached to a vertical plate that sits in and across the hollow of the body section adjacent to the 'A' Post. See photo below:-

Parcel tray fixing bracket.JPG (1.56 MiB) Viewed 1195 times

The captive nut is behind the vertical plate which makes it not easy to get to for replacement of the nut. I would remove the panel and check that the nut is in place - if it is and still retained by the captive nut holder I would run a tap through the nut and replace the bolt.
If the captive nut is not in place you could try and bend back a non welded flange of the holder and slip a new nut into place and then bend the flange back into place. It is not an easy job but is doable.
This is the type of holder for the captive nut.
https://www.morrisminorspares.com/body- ... me-p829143
This is the type of nut fitted into the captive nut holder.
https://www.morrisminorspares.com/body- ... sf-p829141

[Chief]

If I understand your photo correctly then that's a modification to your car, because the crash pad on both mine and my mothers (un-molested) car screws into this hole on your photo:

Parcel tray fixing bracket2.JPG (1.09 MiB) Viewed 1186 times

And the hollow of the body (I have all the trim out on mine) has no such vertical plate on either side.

That said, I don't recall there being the larger hole underneath, if there was maybe a nut up through it and onto the hole above and some super glue would be feasible....

[philthehill]

My Minor is a 1958 two door saloon and the parcel tray was fitted to the plate shown in my photo above.
On further investigation it appears that the later cars had the parcel tray fitted to the 'A' Post by a captive nut inside the pillar.
If the nut is not there you could use a 'Riv Nut' placed in the existing hole. They do come in various sizes and threads.
You may have to compromise on the thread though i.e. metric instead of the original captive nut.
Below is a 'Riv Nut' kit that may be of use:-
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/254953996348 ... SwKaxgg538

[ManyMinors]

As Phil says above: From 1959 a deeper parcel shelf was fitted and captive nuts were used within the pillar area. As he suggests, it would indeed be easy enough to make an effective repair.

[Chief]

Thanks for the replies.

Not entirely realising the time I went out around midnight and had another look using my phones' torch.

When looking from the outside looking in, the angle actually illuminated the captive nut as still there.

My worry is that whoever fitted that self tapper either did so because somehow the nuts center is now too large for a tap, or that its destroyed the thread beyond repair. I did try to take a photo, forgetting that if you have the torch on, and try to take a photo requiring flash the whole phone instantly crashes - so I never got one

As the cost of rivnuts, metric bolts etc. came to about the same price as a tap, I've now ordered one and will hope for the best since maybe if it's of no use this time, it'll come in handy in the future.

Thanks to looking up about rivnuts, I found out that a special tool isn't entirely required, what you can do is use a bolt and nut of the correct size for the rivnut, and a nut that's too big and slides up and down the bolt. Use two spanners, one to hold the spacer nut, the other to turn the other which compresses the rivnut.

An alternative to the rivnut was the jack nut, this also is meant to have a proepr tool, but as long as you can hold the outer metal disc (the site I saw used vise-grips) while turning a bolt within it, this is enough the compress the jack nut and fix it in place.