‘The 75 miles of M1 with no overdrive did nothing to sell the experience’
All of this is just a hunch, however, until I’ve had an expert eye cast over the bores. I therefore packed the block and crankshaft into the back of the trusty MGB and dropped them with Owlesbury Crankshaft Service in Winchester for an opinion and a quote. Fingers crossed!
Back to the workshop and back to the scary rear scuttle. I took some brave pills and chopped the back section of the Minor’s roof away. I then made a paper template of the remaining section, using the boot aperture and hinge holes as datums before transferring this profile onto the new section. Much measuring and cutting later it’s nearly the right shape, but it needs to be millimetre perfect in three dimensions, so I’m taking my time and will report back next month.
Winter is coming
With so much to do on the Minor it would be mad, surely, to take on another project. With winter drawing in though, I needed to fulfil my promise to my dad that I’d get his Land Rover Series III ready for the cold. He bought it last year and has fallen completely in love.
I hadn’t experienced Series Land Rover driving for any further than around the block before collecting ‘MBX’ from mum and dads in Buckinghamshire and driving it to Peterborough via Derby for an Morris Minor Owners Club open day. Some 75 miles of M1 without overdrive in a car with no sound deadening and chunky tyres did little to sell the experience to me. However, romping through B-roads and single track lanes between Melton Mowbray and home certainly made up for it. The car had belonged to an estate and been used as a shooting wagon for most of its life. Last winter it proved itself to be a superb snow-plugging machine.
Underneath it’s very sound, but for a small area of bad repair to the passenger footwell. A quick conversation with our friends at Land Rover
Owner magazine confirmed my suspicions – that it would be far cheaper and easier to order a replacement panel from Britpart and replace the lot. Panel in hand, that’s my next task as it needs to be perfect underneath before its planned visit to Rustbuster next month for a total underbody treatment. A car this good needs protecting: Rustbuster HQ near Spalding is the place to do it. It’ll get a thorough steam clean with traffic film remover then a salt remover before being dried and any loose rust or coatings removed back to a solid edge. Any surface corrosion will then be attacked with Fe-123 Rust Converter before the underside cavities are injected and the underneath fully coated in Techshield underbody wax. Finally, all the topside cavities will get a good and through blasting to ensure it remains solid for years to come, giving dad the peace of mind to use it regularly throughout the winter.