The good and the bad
As always when restoring a car, there are some jobs that go just as you pictured in your mind’s eye and are a real joy to do. Reassembling the front panel of the 1970 Morris Minor van was a perfect example of this, complete with the shiny red paint and the new grille surround. It looks really good and bolting it onto the van will make it look much more complete, but of course there’s no rush to make access to the engine bay more restricted.
Another job completed with refreshing ease was fitting the windscreen. Regular readers will, I am sure, appreciate by now that we have become reasonably adept at Morris Minor windscreen installation; I have lost count of how many times I have done it! Of course, the Morris 1000 single pane of glass is considerably easier to put in than a split-screen Minor’s, and as we popped the van’s windscreen in, dad and I reminisced about the struggle we’d had with the one on the Lowlight. It was then time to reassemble the dashboard. Despite my earlier reservations, I must admit it looks rather nice in satin black with the contrasting aluminium and chrome centre fittings.
Naturally, along with ‘good’ jobs come the ‘bad’ jobs in equal measure. One that proved much, much more difficult than expected was fitting the seal between the cab and the rear body of the van. Indeed, it is one of the few jobs that my dad hadn’t done on a Morris Minor before, so we were both going in blind. Unfortunately, getting the rubber to lie completely flat and straight was almost impossible, even after three attempts. We had to accept that the finished results may not be as good as we had hoped, but were as good as we were going to get! That said, I don’t think we’ve done a bad job on the seal, and when the vehicle is back in one piece and on the road, I don’t think it will notice.
The problem was that the rubber strip has to be punched for the bolts to go through, and these bolts are then tightened, locating the body and cab together and holding the seal in place. That, at least, is the theory. Getting those holes in the correct places was tricky as the seal itself needed to be stretched to give it any hope of sitting correctly. The job was made more difficult by the many repairs the van has had over the years. Despite lots of practice assemblies before it was painted, for some inexplicable reason not all of the bolts lined up with the captive nuts as well as expected, requiring some adjustment before a good fit was achieved. The seal also seems to be influenced by how tight the bolts are holding the back to the front – too loose and of course the seal slips out, but over-tightening them pushes the seal out as well. One thing that did make the job easier was an electric socket driver. I purchased a Sealey one, recommended as the Best Buy in this magazine some time ago, and it really sped the job up.
A lot of components still need attention before they can be refitted. The heater was rusty and full of dust and gunge, so it had a good clean out and a few days in the rust remover before it was painted. While it was in
pieces, it seemed sensible to check the motor. These go on for a long time, but the bearings are prone to drying out after about 50 years, so it seemed prudent to put a small drop of oil on them. The brushes don’t last forever either, but the ones from this heater seem to have plenty of life left in them. All being well, they might last another 50 years.
There still seems to be a lot to do before the van is finished, although there’s no great rush (a welcome relief from the usual style of restoration). Most of the wiring loom was replaced about 10 years ago during previous general repairs, prior to my brother and I learning to drive it. A few wires needed replacing, but most are fit for further use, and some fabric loom tape was purchased to tidy these up.
Turning my attention back to my ‘core’ fleet, some readers may recall I’ve not been using my 1950 Morris Minor Lowlight saloon. This is mainly because the engine started to burn oil, making a little smoke. Although the engine was definitely tired, it still went well, but there was some vibration from it at higher speeds which I have never been able to get to the bottom of. The car wasn’t undriveable, but it was definitely not one I wanted to rack up too many miles in, particularly when I have another 1275 A-series Morris Minor in the fleet. I had some plans for replacing the engine, but life got in the way this year and I never even managed to take it out on the road.
Finally though, I’ve managed to remove the existing engine for replacement. It will be swapped for a spare Morris Ital 1275 engine my dad has had ‘in stock’ under his bench for the last 30 years. He swore it was a good runner, having heard it ticking over in the vehicle he removed it from, then filling the bores with oil when he stored it. Regardless of this pedigree, I thought it sensible to take the sump off to look at the bottom end and replace the main and big end bearings. Although in actual fact they looked almost new, it’s such an easy job to do now and relatively inexpensive that it seems to be asking for trouble not to.
Taking the engine out of a Morris Minor is a very easy thing to do, and only took a few hours. All being well, the replacement bearings will arrive soon so I can re-fit the engine in time to get some miles on the car in the spring.