Enter the Minor Tourer

With the Lowlight Minor providing reliable service and the days starting to slowly draw out again, I’ve decided to leave the heating jobs for the time being. This means I’ll probably revisit these tasks at the tail end of the summer, which no doubt will be here before we know it. There does, however, seem to be a number of ways to improve the Minor’s heater, but these require a bit of research and some fabrication. So it’s probably best not to do this job in a rush without all the parts to hand.

Meanwhile, back in the warmth of the shed, work continues on the van project. Dad and I have been focused on cutting out rusty metal and welding more patches to the cab and rear body sections. We never weld over rusty areas, as this just creates a double layer that traps water and rusts again quickly.

The next job will be to weld up the side windows in the van sides. We’ve debated the best way of doing this and the general consensus is to try and weld up the sides just around the side moulding, cutting a little more of the side out to hopefully avoid distortion on this large panel. I’ve offered up the side and will soon get stuck into cutting and welding. We do seem to have used the angle grinder and a stack of cutting discs a lot recently.

A fair bit of my time recently has been diverted back onto the Lowlight Tourer. As regular readers will be aware, I recently bought a Rollover Jig (www. rolloverjig.com) to use for this project. Since then the car has been stuck behind several others and covered with spare parts. Although I’m in no rush to get the Tourer back on the road, I thought it made sense to get it into the jig and see what welding will be required.

To assist with this job, I roped in Dad to help get the car into the jig but neither of us was familiar with the type, which bolts onto the bumper mounts,

rather than the hubs (as per the tipper I’ve used on previous restorations). This is particularly useful on the tourer, as the front chassis legs are rather rusty and in need of complete replacement. Avoiding any strain on these whilst welding is a welcome thing. It’s important to realise that this sort of jig wouldn’t be at all suitable for tipping a running car, but for a bare shell restoration, like on the Tourer, it’s perfect.

Before rolling the car I thought it prudent to weld some bracing into the door gaps and across the shell. For this, I used some angled steel Dexion and also took off all the removeable panels to reduce the weight as much as possible.

With that job done, we started getting the car ready to go into the jig by bolting the mounting brackets onto the front and rear bumper mounts. I was surprised that the body needed to be raised about 3- 4 feet in order to attach it to the jig and to save a lot of jacking and packing, we decided to use the hoist to raise it.

This part of the job went smoothly and we were soon in a position of having both the front and rear of the car up in the jig. Once it was in place I made a start on stripping out as much weight as possible and the first parts to be removed were the wheels and brake drums. The tipper works on a rotisserie system, so it is important to have the top and bottom of the car equally balanced, as this makes it easier to turn.

After double checking all the mountings, the Tourer was rolled over 90 degrees to assess the floor and remove the suspension and back axle. It’s fair to say the car’s surprisingly rusty underneath, but it’s definitely savable. I’ll do a full assessment of exactly what is needed in next month’s diary but I think the list of panels needed will be quite long!

We never weld over rusty areas, as this just creates a double layer that traps water and rusts again quickly

The Minor Tourer was finally moved out of storage ready for tipping after removing all the car parts that had been stored in the tub.

Using the hoist to raise the stripped out Minor off the ground made it easier to mount the shell onto the rollover jig.

The Minor Van’s old side window apertures were stripped out so Will could let in a pair of replacement steel side panels.

One new Van side panel ready to be trial fitted into the cleaned up opening. Careless welding will seriously distort a large area like this.

Will carefully assess the underside of his Minor Tourer once the shell was rotated through 90° degrees. Although it looks rusty, Will reckons its savable.

Plenty of work for the months ahead! Next job for Will is to make a list of all the replacement panels required to repair the Tourer.