Enter the Morris Minor Van

After sending the valves for my side-valve Minor’s Alta head conversion off to G& S Valves Ltd (www.gsvalves.co.uk), I received a very favourable quotation for their remanufacture. This means that I’ll now be able to get a batch made and this should help any Alta owners who may be trying to source a new set of valves for one of these heads. So if any reader knows of anyone who owns an Alta headed engine and needs a new set of valves, please tell them to get in touch with me through the magazine.

Because of the lag between writing an article and when it appears in print, it’s always somewhat hard to know what the weather will be like when the magazine finally hits the shelves. However, it really feels like autumn is closing in now and winter is not that far away.

This means it’s time to consolidate and get the cars back in one piece as soon as possible, then settle down for a winter’s worth of work in the shed on various projects. Top of the list will be getting the Lowlight Minor back into working condition and making sure Lily (my other Minor) is ready for the winter ahead. This is because I don’t want to use the Lowlight on salty roads in the dead of winter if I can get away with it.

Turning to the longer-term projects, I have finally bought a roll over jig to put the Tourer into. Some of you may remember that for the previous three restorations that covered Lily, the convertible and the Lowlight I’d made use of a car tipper. This worked quite well and made the restorations considerably easier but the tipper was reliant on the

Will carefully taps away at any suspect areas on the Minor van to get a better idea of the amount of rust in the body.

It looks like the van’s body sides will need some metal replacing. Other than that the body seems to in okay condition.