Morris Minor Owners Club

Well went over today and my Dad, David and me got the engine and gearbox out of the car.

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One engine out and ready for a clean up and some work. The Engine and Gearbox were a bit difficult to separate, but the bolts came out easily.
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Next was the gearbox. The only difficulty was the cross member bolts on the passenger side. As that chassis leg is knackered the bolts were thumped repeatedly then drilled out. It appears to be a gold seal like the engine, but the release bearing will need to be changed,[frame][/frame][frame][/frame]

next we took the timing cover off, no need to change anything here, all looked good.

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With the sump off the amount of gunge in the bottom was unbelievable!!!!! The bearings look to be okay but the piston rings will be changed as a matter of course.[frame][/frame]

This last picture isnt oil in the sump, just pure gunk!!!![frame][/frame]

The oil strainer is completely blocked up with that thick treacle like stuff. Its been left hanging to try and get as much to drip out as possible before taking apart to clean. Sump has now been cleaned out and the head is all back in one piece, the valves didnt take much grinding in at all. Valve stem oil seals are a fiddly little fecker to fit, glad Im not doing them every day!!

And heres some before and after snaps of the gunged up strainer.[frame][/frame][frame][/frame]

A friend of ours had bravely volunteered to give us a bit more practice on how to MIG correctly.... brave many Paddy thanks!!

So the rest of the day was spent sorting out the boot floor to have another go. The bottom edge is very thin in places. The boot floor strengthening for holding the wooden boards had been badly bent as mentioned in earlier posts so was cut out and will be replaced by a straight one out of a scrap saloon after the floor is sorted. (the other car was really bad.. I meaning really bad).[frame][/frame]

The shells look to be in very good condition given the nastiness of the sump and strainer.
Old fashioned oils worked like this, letting the crud drop out of suspension, modern oils keep it in suspension to be filtered out or removed when the oil is changed.

Your making great progress !! (Pity your back to work come monday )

You certainly struck it lucky with the engine, you shouldn't have any bother with oil pressure anyway. If the gearbox and axle are as good then your flying (running gear wise). Well 803 type of flying

Yeah really happy with the state of everything. My piston rings arrived today, so just need to order engine gaskets and im going to replace the oil pump just in case, then everything can go back together. The gear box is also a gold seal, so hopefully all will be good.

minor65 wrote:Your making great progress !! (Pity your back to work come monday )

You certainly struck it lucky with the engine, you shouldn't have any bother with oil pressure anyway. If the gearbox and axle are as good then your flying (running gear wise). Well 803 type of flying

Can 803 fly? we will see, you'll have to have a go when its back together...

Fantastic work
keep us all posted and more pics please

Well yesterday saw a flurry of activity. Paddy arrived to give us a crash course in MIG, cant say i picked it up very well, but practice makes perfect.[frame][/frame]

I wire brushed the Driverside inner wing. As expected around the bumper was rotton, as was the bottom of the C post. Here you can see a bit of rot around the jack point.

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We cut out the rot and made a new piece to weld in. The jack point spot welds were removed. The piece was then welded in and the jack point reattached.[frame][/frame][frame][/frame]
You can see that either side of the bumper irons were rusty, this piece was cut out and again a piece made to fit and then welded in on both sides of the car.[frame][/frame]

The new boot floor panel was welded along the tank side and the boot catch fixed and attached. The outter edge after much debate was left as the outter panel was too thin to weld to. This has had to be ordered so welding stopped here. (The new boot panel came with the hole for the spare wheel clamp, but the threads are different to the clamp bolt, does anybody know the thread size so I can beg borrow or steal a cutter to recut the threads, so i can keep the original bolt?)

With Paddy and his welder there we decided to have a go at the front panel.[frame][/frame]

As is usual the bottom edge was in a poor state. Thanks to a scrap front panel from Doagh MMOC (cheers Bertie) we cut the bottom from both then reattached the repair section. ( the scrap panel was red - you can see the section added to the original panel)[frame][/frame]

The profile is very slightly different and it took some fiddling to make sure the bottom hole lined up with the radiator support panel, but I think its a good job. The bottom rectangular holes around the starting handle hole were measured several times before it was welded. We only need to add one small piece beside the Driverside bumper iron hole to finish the job.

Bored of welding we then decided to finish striping the engine, the crank, end plates and oil pump were removed. Unfortunately the timing gear was damaged when it was removed ( bottom picture) so I think a duplex timing chain is the way to go (I hope it will fit under the 803 timing cover). More updates when I finally get back to it again. Many thanks Paddy and David!!!!! [frame][/frame][frame][/frame][frame][/frame]

A lick of paint and it will be good as new

beware, I have just purchase the duplex timing chain kit (10M820) and I have found that the camshaft sprocket wont fit the camshaft locating plate 10M140, see here its approx 0.1" larger diameter than the original I took off. I didn't find out until I had assembled the timing gear and tightened up the nut, tight as ducks bill. Not pleased I can tell you Something else not fit for purpose.
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The new duplex has arrived, I will have a look at it tomorrow.

The piston are all cleaned, crank cleaned and oil ways blew out with an airline, side covers off and cleaned - getting there!

Had another blast at it today. Left the engine as the bores still need to be honed before reassembly. Instead we tackled the drivers side rear floor. After deciding to replace the panel, a new one was ordered and arrived earlier in the week. The new panel has part of the inner step sill attached so would tidy up that areas as well as the floor. First we decided what to keep and trimmed the floor, then trimmed the repair panel. David welded in the panel (cheers muchly ) and I got to further practice my welding and did a bit along the tunnel and cross member. Started to get the hang of it a bit better. Progress continues. [frame][/frame] (deciding what to cut)[frame][/frame][frame][/frame]
All Jenolited ready for final finishing.

Other side today. Fixed the rear heelboard on the passengerside and the inner step sill. We left the floor until the inner sill is fixed when the car is flipped on its side as part of the floor will be covered by the new panel. hope that makes sense... till the next time. [frame][/frame]

before cutting

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New step repair

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Amazing what a lick of paint can do.

The cars now up on its side and most of the ps chassis leg is cut out, Stevey has pictures! Get the finger out and post them

Heres some..... really should be workin though.. [frame][/frame][frame][/frame]

Whats left of the chassis leg is cut out. The inner sill is nearly all ripped off and ready for the new panels.[frame][/frame]

The rest of the chassis leg was removed today and all the surface rust around it cleaned off. I had to weld a few cracks up to the right of were the eyebolts fits as they had cracked, I except due to flexing when the steering was turned as the chassis leg was so bad.[frame][/frame]

The gearbox crossmember was refitted as its a really good guide that the legs are in the right place again.[frame][/frame]

Also got the front half of the inner sill sorted and ready for fitting the new panel, I made up a piece to replace the bad edge on the bottom of the boxing panel.

Great progress, must get a run over to see before its back on 4 wheels.

Well BIG progress recently. A megga big unbelievable thanks to David, Paddy, Andrew and uncle Robert, who all decided that it was time to work off that Christmas dinner, came and set to on PZ. To start with David and I had previously ripped out the old chassis leg and lined up the new one, after painting the inside of the panel and box section. We used to engine tower mounting bolts and gearbox crossmember, as well as copious measuring to ensure it was in the correct place. Paddy welded it all into postion in no time at all, luckily we had also sorted out the front inner sill to be fitted as well, but he had that done so quickly he had time to sort out the rear!!![frame][/frame]

Next David and Paddy started at the back around the spring hanger, im sure David will be on later to explain the fabulous repair, but I was other wise occupied, as Andrew, Uncle Robert and myself started on the engine rebuild. We started cleaning everything, moving on to replacing the crankshaft after liberally coating everything in oil and replacing the semi-curricular gasket at the scroll oil seal. Torquing up as we went and checking that everything rotated easily. Next job was fitting the duplex timing chain, which did need modified to fit. Both keyways in the new gear wheels needing filed to allow them to fit over the shafts.(the front plate had be countersunk previously) Next new piston rings fitted, after some head scratching as they were slightly different to the original rings. Pistons fitted, Sump on, new gaskets, then head on and torqued up.[frame][/frame]

And the body work went from this, to this[frame][/frame][frame][/frame][frame][/frame]

SMASHING

Great progress was made yesterday, she will be running in no time

Not much progress lately. Put the timing cover on, getting the bottom pulley to to fit into the felt oil seal was a bit of a pain. Got some gold paint for the engine so might do that next.