Another project. CRAPPY MINOR.

[Lankytim]

Hi all,

 

As promised here's a catch up on one of my shite project motors. Its a 1957 Morris Minor with the "powerhouse" 948cc engine

 

I bought this via a poorly written ad on ebay earlier this year. I already had a 1969 Minor on the road but it needed a few odds and ends such as wings so I scouted out a suitable scrapper to pilfer parts from. 

 

This particular Minor had had a very turbulent life. Garaged in 1990 in Kenilworth, it had sat undisturbed until quite recently when the local youths broke into the garage, daubed it with paint, smashed every window and finally shoved a rolled up newspaper into the glove box an set it alight. This resulted in the dashboard, scuttle and bulkhead being badly burned, along with a patch on the front of the roof. The owner lost heart and rang the scrap man to cart it away.

 

The poor moggie was on the way to the scrap processing plant on the back of a transit beavtertail when the guy I bought it from spotted it at a set of traffic lights. Thinking quickly he flagged the driver down and did a deal at the side of the road. Instead of being crushed the Minor was delivered to the guys home and safety. Phew!

 

As with many projects time got the better of him and the new owner stuck it on ebay. 

 

Nobody bid on this Minor so after the auction ended I arranged with the seller to take a gander. A deal was struck and I carted it away on a borrowed trailer.

 

Turns out that bodily it was much more solid than my '69 Minor, so that was sold to a young lad as a rolling resto which enabled me to focus on getting the '57 back on the road.

 

Stored for 25 years, vandalised, burnt, sold for scrap, saved, bought for parts and spared. Quite a history! 

 

Work-wize it needs a small amount of welding in the floor, a repair to the boot floor at the rear end and the obvious fire damage repairing. The rest of the bodywork is amazingly solid and laughs in the face of the "screwdriver test"

 

So far I've removed the old burnt and vandalised interior and bought a set of black leather Ford KA seats complete with new door cards and carpets ready to go in and replaced the burnt bonnet and rotten bootlid with items removed from a sectioned Minor that had been used in the Cath Kidson shop in Picadilly. That Minor was a lucky find and has supplied many parts for this project. Marina disc brakes, telescopic shocks and a new brake master cylinder to name a few parts. Last week I swapped the rear axle complete as the Kidson axle has the modified mounts for anti tramp bars, shocks and new brakes, plus an uprated diff. Today I removed the seized front drums and fitted the marina hubs, The calipers need to be reconditioned at some point.. Or just painted I guess...

 

 

Anyway.. here's some pics..

 

 

 

Partway through the disc brake conversion..

 

 

This is the main isse, but should be easily fixable..

 

In case it's not obvious, My inlaws have been using it as a shed...

 

 

Tomorrow it's off to the workshop to have some welding done, along with some paint and to have the glass refitted. After that it's just a case of replacing the wiring loom, installing the interior, finishing the brakes, including adding a remote servo and hitting the road. It's MOT exempt, which is nice, but I'm not sure how that works... Do I just jump in and drive it?

 

More to follow...

[mercrocker]

Blimey, what a survivor.....From what I can see it looks remarkably sound and well worth doing.   Far less patches visible than mine has in that inner wing f'rinstance....

Look forward to seeing more progress.   Would also be interested how you get on with telescopic shocks - I am thinking of binning mine and going back to lever arms. 

Good save.

[MarvinsMom]

poor little thing......

 

i really love a minor. when we was little, a school friend bought a 1958 morris, we were 14 at the time!

 

while waiting to get behind the wheel legally we made do with driving it up and down his parents longish drive.

 

we'd drive it down, and reverse it back up....

 

we also learned about "fixing" body work with newspapers and filler. and brakes. and other bits on engines. it is i think one reason why i'm so very, very fond of the a-series.

 

nicholas's car had the twin gloveboxes like that, and trafficators too. do you intend keeping them or are you going to go onto flashers (!?!?!?) with this one?

[Tickman]

When I got my '57 it had been off the road for quite a few years and I just insured and taxed it with no issue at all.

 

 

Looks in good nick.

 

John

[Dick Longbridge]

That's a peach especially considering it was destined for frag. Get it back on the road and ask doovla for an age related 6 digit plate.

[Lankytim]

Yeah, I think it's been plate-raped in the dim and distant past. 

 

It's already had stacks of old skool welded body repairs done, new rear chassis rails, front chassis, floors patched up. Looks like arc welding too!

 

I'm not sure what to do with the issue of trafficators vs indicators. Indicators would be more sensible but trafficators would be infinitely more amusing. Would anybody even know what they meant though? I need to order a new loom, so i'll have to mike my mind up then.

[MarvinsMom]

thats why i asked. i used to get a lift with a fella who nearly ran up the arse of an early morris minor cos he didn't see the trafficators.

 

i really like them (trafficators that is) as the action of them is comical, in a really nice,sweet, all is well with the world type way, but todays aldi road warrior cannot see much past the end of their bonnet, so little orange sticks poping out of the side of the car may go unnoticed.

 

are you allowed to have trafficators and flashers, or do you have to have one type of indicator only?

 

flashing lights would be needed really if you are going to use it alot, but depending on how you intend to use the car, i would like to keep the trafficators. does that make sense?

[vulgalour]

With new LED technology you can fit a flashing light into the semaphores which makes them visible to other road users.  If in doubt, use hand signals.  Actually don't, I've learned on the three or four occasions when I've had to use hand signals that NOBODY under the age of 60 knows what hand signals are.

[RichardK]

With new LED technology you can fit a flashing light into the semaphores which makes them visible to other road users.  If in doubt, use hand signals.  Actually don't, I've learned on the three or four occasions when I've had to use hand signals that NOBODY under the age of 60 knows what hand signals are.

 

Not true. The universal hand symbol for "Follow me whilst angrily swerving around two inches from my bumper and flash your lights whilst going red in the face", index & middle finger raised, knuckles outwards, before forming a circle with the hand and waving it diagonally, still works perfectly.

[Ghosty]

poor little thing......

 

i really love a minor. 

 

 

Careful now...

[Alexg]

Smashing history with this, will put each subsequent owner under more pressure not to bail it. Best of British to you

[Asimo]

This thread is cozy.

How did a '57 get an A (1963) plate? Were "newer" plates allowed once?

I had traficators plus indicators on my Minor. The traficators seldom worked and mot man ignored them. I would just wire them so the traficator lamp flashed with the indicators.

[Dick Longbridge]

This thread is cozy.

How did a '57 get an A (1963) plate? Were "newer" plates allowed once?

I had traficators plus indicators on my Minor. The traficators seldom worked and mot man ignored them. I would just wire them so the traficator lamp flashed with the indicators.

There was one point (in the 1980s iirc?) where pre 63 plate donors were reregistered with 'A' suffix registrations. I've read elsewhere that DooVLA will now reregister pre 63 vehicles with 'A' suffix plates to something more appropriate - usually 6 digit, if you make them a cup of tea and ask nicely. And speak with a Welsh accent.

[the judge]

^^^Normally after plate rape so the A suffix one couldnt be sold

[Cavcraft]

Yep, they put A and B prefixes on, then 'age related' ones (which were usually something like HSU, I think) that couldn't be sold on. Is it worth lobbing a 1098 in to it, Tim, or not worth it for the extra 'power'?

[danthecapriman]

Looks a great little car. Would have been even better if some little shit hadn't smashed all the glass and set it alight!

Looks a really good project though.

[anonymous user]

There was one point (in the 1980s iirc?) where pre 63 plate donors were reregistered with 'A' suffix registrations. I've read elsewhere that DooVLA will now reregister pre 63 vehicles with 'A' suffix plates to something more appropriate - usually 6 digit, if you make them a cup of tea and ask nicely. And speak with a Welsh accent.

I did this with my A35, it was a 1959 car, but had the plate removed long before i bought it so it came with an A suffix plate. At the time I took the car and paperwork to the local DVLA office and they changed it on the spot free of charge. The new plate was non transeferable, not sure how it works now there are no local offices.

 

I'm also impressed that, as well as doing overpriced polka dotted stuff, Cath Kidston does Morris Minor spares, they keep that quiet.

[Lankytim]

Quick update. Today the Minor was A framed the 40 or so miles to a friends workshop to have a bit of fettling, At the moment all that's happening is the roof, dash, bulkhead and scuttle are being prepped and painted to repair the fire damage, the rear of the boot floor is being fixorated, along with the hole in the driver's footwell. I've been warned that the dreaded nail gun thing is coming out and to expect to find more rot, but I'm pretty confident it shouldn't be too bad. 

 

I want to have more work done but i'm financially embarrassed at the moment so things like painting the bonnet and boot the right colour will have to wait. I'd love to do a whole colour change to red or something, but meh..

 

Anyway, here's the PROOF that it was A FRAMED today. It was the first time on the road since 1990 for this little Minor.

 

 

 

 

 

And here's a few pics of the breakers I've purged for spares....

 

 

Someone had gone to quite a bit of effort on this to try and make it look good. Unfortunately the only tools they used was an angle grinder and they make good use of MDF and a hot glue gun. Apart from the obvious slice in the middle things like the engine, wiring, wiper motor e.t.c had also been removed with an angle grinder. Absolutely nothing had been unbolted. Frigging butchers.

 

 

 

The front end (complete with swapped fire damaged bonnet) was sold and is being turned into a trailer by someone.

 

 

Here it is in use in the Cath Kidson shop in Picadilly..

 

 

This absolute POS was purchased from ebay and supplied a disappointingly small amount of  spares as it was so fooked. It was hanging rotten and stretched 4 inches when I strapped it down to the trailer. I still have the unknown 1098cc engine though and sold a few other bits to recoup my money.

 

 

It was cut up and scrapped. I ended up having to sweep up half a wheelie bins worth of rust and fibreglass from the drive!

 

 

Thanks for reading, more updates to come!

[Lankytim]

Ah, so you enjoy miserable pics eh?

 

Here's some more...

 

 

The guy in the background of this pic sat and watched me eat a sandwich for a whole 10 minutes and literally wouldn't take his eyes off me. The pervert.

 

I picked this cut up job up from a Wincanton warehouse just off the A40 in west London. They had been told to dispose of it by the owners as they'd finished with it. Halfords also used the yard as a trunking hub and I was gleefully shown the two double-deck trailers that had recently struck bridges and were sat around looking a bit sorry for themselves. The slogan "We fit" on the rear doors of the truck wedged under bridges made them popular memes for a while. No pics though as I forgot.

 

This was weighed in for a grand total of £4, which is too little to actually pay out on, apparently. 

 

Note the torsion bars sticking out. Educational eh?

 

 

Despite being annoyingly shite, this hulk did provide a "Pink Floyd, the wall" window sticker, which now adorns my XM.

 

[darkfour]

I know this isn't really the right thread for this but it is Minor related and amusing nonetheless

 

This has just popped up for sale locally. The new convertible roof looks worse in every picture

 

All original

 

[stuboy]

Many sacrifices to make a whole movie I hove

[lisbon_road]

Thanks for sharing the story.  Always liked a 50s Minor, though I am not sure why.

[garethj]

For the indicators you might want to look at how American cars did theirs - the sidelights had dual filament bulbs like a stop and tail light and a special relay and switch would make them flash.  On the rear it would look like the brake light was flashing and worked when the brake lights were on too.

 

1961 VWs had the same but the indicator switch had some fiendish internal wiring to make it work.  But it would give the best mix of flashing lights and not having to put later lights on the bodywork.

[Asimo]

This thread is making me want a Minor really quite a lot! However the pics. of those wrecks is a warning of how utterly knackered they can be.

 

To return to indicators; my '54 Minor came with an aftermarket kit that flashed the brake lights for rear indicators. They are really pretty useless as the lenses are small and low down, no one could be blamed for not seeing them. With this in mind I fitted '65 VW Beetle rear light assemblies, with nice orange lenses and seperate bulbs together with a proper flasher unit. They sat at a slightly odd angle but I felt a lot happier about their visibility.

 

I don't think you can beat a proper orange indicator lens for visibility. Orange bulbs and clear lenses are not as good, and many of the LED arrangements on moderns are all about styling and not about visibility. VW now make some of the worst rear light clusters out there. (Passat)

[Dick Longbridge]

That two-piece trafalgar blue minor reminds me of my old one, shortly before it went for frag. Rotten to the core and drivers door had fallen off. Still got the back number plate though, so it's all ok.

[cros]

948 is very nice, I wouldn't kick it out until you've tried it. Likewise, the earlier gearboxes are fine if in working order and used with a bit of care. Engines over 1098 not worth the bother in a standard car, esp. B series in my opinion. Have fun.

[vulgalour]

Save money, don't repaint!  The boot and bonnet are blue, the rest of the car is blue, there's no problem.

[Lankytim]

The rest of the car is grey!

 

Sent from my Y635-L01 using Tapatalk

[Richard]

TADTS

 

[Mr_Bo11ox]

More great shitery!!!! Splendid work. What happened to the greeny brown 1100 automatic??