Morris Minor Owners Club

I bought a SIP Autoplus 130A MIG welder 25+ years ago when we started the Minor's restoration in 1992, and it is still being used well today. From that experience I would suggest: 130A as a minimum - old adage of 1A per 0.001" material thickness. So fine up to 3mm, 0.125" or 10g material. ...

Oliver,

I have not come across 'tin plated' welding rods, what are they used for? The usual plating for steel welding rods or wire is copper.

Hardened or 'Competition EN24'? The Minor is well-known for breaking halfshafts and stranding the owner as a result! When we restored our Minor in the 90's, I fitted the 1380 engine and hardened halfshafts at the same time. These were absolutely fine and gave no problems UNTIL! Until I fitted a Tran...

MIG not TIG. MIG is reasonably straightforward to get to an acceptable standard, and creates the least heat of all the welding processes. It is also less cost, but don’t tempted to go ‘gasless’ as fluxed wire can get very messy.
Also get proper 95% argon mix and NOT CO2.

Oxy/Acetylene creates a lot of heat and will very likely distort body panels. MIG is very much better for body and thin gauge metal welding. During the 1990's I replaced the whole perimeter of the floor pan (sills, chassis rails, inner wings, rear boot floor, plus the central floor panels and the cr...

The original 948 in our Minor became a 994 (+060), and had around 50 bhp output (flowed 12G295 head, 2A948 cam, HS4 SU, LCB etc. and went very well with the standard 4.55 diff. It is now in a Frogeye Sprite, in the same state of tune, but with a 4.22 diff, and the first time the new owner tried it o...

Some late Minors were fitted with a +ve, yes, POSITIVE earth 11AC Lucas Alternator (45A) - I have one somewhere in the garage that was fitted to various cars of mine in the 60's and early 70's. The wiring is a bit complicated in comparison to the simple plug-in of the later ACR alternators, as it us...

Phil,

The head has the recess for the thermostat - why could it not be fitted directly to the head in the picture?

Paul, The significance of the Calver article is the combination of no by-pass AND the blanking sleeve . With no thermostat fitted there is plenty of water circulation at all times. The whole purpose of the 'blanking sleeve' is to create a good flow around the engine, without a thermostat in place. N...

The A-Plus engines used a different by-pass system that had a sandwich plate underneath the thermostat housing. This also provides the permanent feed of hot water to the heater. Despite frequent suggestions to ignore the original by-pass hose and just block it off, no production A-Series engines wer...

The table below is compiled from various sources and gives a good guide to suitable matching of tyre sizes with rim widths. Radial vs Cross Ply Sizes.jpg The only experience I have of mismatched tyres is a friend many years ago, who fitted 155R13 tyres to 13" x 5.5" rims and they were awfu...

Mike,

There is a 'sticky' in the Electrical section of this board, which is a video outlining the conversion process. Does this give you what you need?

The picture of the terminals looks like a classic Lucas alternator connector setup. If it is, then connecting a wire from the centre 35A Lucar terminal to the oil filter switch is pure madness! The terminal one of two on the alternator that are connected directly to the battery (no fuse), via the st...

Definitely need to see where the green wire is connected to on the alternator. I cannot see how any connection from the alternator would be connected directly to either the standard oil pressure switch, or the filter by-pass switch. They are both 'green/yellow' and both switch a bulb to earth - swit...

As above, NPT and NPTF (F= Fuel) is the US pipe thread standard, and BSP(T) (tapered) is the UK and ISO standard. Although some sizes have the same TPI, they are not interchangeable. Both are used as parallel threads (NP and BSP) and taper threads (NPT and BSPT) There was a debate on this forum some...

Phil, The flow through the heater is 'always on'. 2 reasons - 1 to get the heat away from the back of the head, and 2 to get the maximum flow through the heater element, thus hopefully 'warmth' out! The heater case has been fitted with a 'late' type classic Mini core that is claimed to be 'uprated' ...

All very confusing the mix and match of bits that you see The car is November 1958, hence the heater hose arrangement, and according to the receipts that came with it when my mother bought it when it was 6 years old, the original 'round' recirculating heater was fitted by the supplying dealer in 19...

Our hose arrangement is exactly the same as the link above. IMG_1694a.JPG When did the 'push/pull' heater temperature valve come in? ~1962? Is this the same point when the return from the heater was re-routed from the bottom of the radiator into the top of the bottom hose? When I fitted the 1380 eng...

From the Body Parts List for the M1000 (not SII), the 'original' fitment wing mirrors appear to be 'round' (Tex 'MR' version) in shape: Wing Mirrors.jpg Probably made by Tex, who still make them: https://texautomotive.com/classic_exterior_mirrors.html I fitted the 'spring back' versions to our Minor...

Autosparks also provide a new harness to the original specification by chassis number. I believe they will incorporate additional circuits as well. https://www.autosparks.co.uk/finder Your 1965 Minor will have PVC covered cables with a coloured braiding. Unless it has suffered physical damage, the b...