Panel gaps on the Minor Tourer
With Lily my 1967 Morris Minor back on the road and my 1950 Morris Minor Lowlight saloon stored in a serviceable condition (ie. with no long list of jobs to do over the winter!), dad and I have found time to crack on with the winter project. The target is to finish the body work on the 1950 Morris Minor Lowlight Tourer to enable us to get it painted some time in 2024. (This was a Californian export model so fitted originally with highlight front wings, although a Minor of this age in the UK would have had lowlight wings.)
It has survived storage in less than ideal conditions rather well with almost no sign of rust reappearing, so the thick coat of epoxy primer was clearly a good idea. With the doors now fitting nicely, the front wings have been offered up. Although I do have the original highlight wings, I was lucky enough to buy quite cheaply a pair of lowlight ones. These are 70+ years old and have already been repaired before in places by brazing, which makes welding tricky. New lowlight front wings are available, but at a price! I could have used some fibreglass ones to save time, but I much prefer metal wings, so repairing the ones I had acquired was the best option.
The nearside one just needed some adjustment to an earlier repair and some extra metal welding in to reinforce some splits at the edges. The offside wing was a real mess though, but having been here before with my Lowlight saloon project, I repeated what I had done with that. The rusty, distorted and much-repaired rear of the lowlight panel was sliced off and substituted by the rear part of a highlight wing we had in the loft. With careful adjustment, tack welding and then repairs of the thinned areas, it fitted nicely, although much filling and smoothing will be needed to get a good paint finish.
With the wings in place and an acceptable door gap near the A-posts, the front panel was offered up. I had two of these, one left over from my other lowlight project that came from New Zealand and one that came with the wings I mentioned earlier. Both were pretty ropey, but these panels are rare. Working on the best of the pair, I managed to straighten and reinforce the damaged lower part, but no amount of adjustment would allow the chrome grille
to fit. After much thought, dad offered me a spare early highlight grille, from which he cut out the lower section. We used this to replace the lower middle of the lowlight grille. This was then offered up with the chrome grille in place and tack welded. This way we could be sure it would all fit, but the join will need grinding flat and smoothing with filler.
Next, the doors which I had kept on to provide a datum point for the front wings were removed, sandblasted and repaired. We decided to cut out only the minimum of metal to avoid distortion, which can so easily happen. Relative to some of the other repairs we’ve done on doors, these were quite minor. The boot lid was another reject for the previous project, being off the lowlight saloon (once again we had sourced a better one). Initially we'd hoped to patch repair this, but although not rusted through, the metal was too
thin to weld which resulted in holes round the edge of the patch. A well-made repair panel is available and it was not too time consuming to cut off the bottom of the lid and fit this. Again, this was tack welded and tested in situ; some adjustment was needed to get a nice fit, although this is much easier than adjusting after welding the panel on completely!
We can’t be far off finishing the long angle-grinding and welding stage, but before a big clear up I want to tip the body on its side and check underneath. I think there are a few knobbly welds that need grinding down, and I want to ensure the car looks as good as possible, even from below.
The bumpers have also been fitted up. Once again I was lucky enough to find an original lowlight bumper and iron at an MMOC national rally many years ago. Although this needed to be straightened up, the iron is the hard bit to find and I’ve not seen one for sale since. This will be next month’s focus.
Meanwhile, Lily tested me out for a few days when she developed a slight sputter, especially when cold but also when pulling at low revs. Using the choke seemed to cure the problem, so I decided to richen up the mixture. She then ran fine for a while, but the splutter returned, again cured by pulling out the choke. I was starting to suspect a fuel blockage, pump problem or carb fault. Eventually, when revving hard to accelerate onto a dual carriageway, I lost all power and had to coast to the side of the slip road. I was glad I had fitted some hazard lights.
Opening the bonnet to investigate what I thought was a fuel fault, I found a wire had fallen off the coil. Investigation showed the connector had lost all tension and was rattling on the coil terminal. A quick squeeze with pliers made it fit tightly and I was soon mobile again with no splutter! When I got home I readjusted the mixture and all was well. I hate intermittent faults like this as they can be so hard to trace. It’s much easier for fault diagnosis when you stop completely!