Morris Minor Owners Club

So my repair of the front door has escalated, as ever prodding and poking has revealed more rust, not bad but there and hiding.

The door bottom has had a patch welded underneath, folded and then onto the skin for about 4" towards the front, so whats under there don't know.

The flange of the door bottom where the skin is folded over is looking bad, and there are some pieces of the skin missing where it was once folded.

The rest of the bottom is sound, where it comes up to the inside of the car, everything outward from where the seal strip thing clips in I reckon needs replacing and the lower part of the skin.

From what I can see on other posts the door bottom panel is spot welded in, is best to remove and replace it as one, or cut the rotten bit off, cut the repair section down to suit and join it in ?.

I want a nice neat tidy job, as the car is a keeper, plus I like things done right.

Before folding the skin over when I get that far is it worth a coat of paint all over the flange and that part of the skin, or even a wipe of seam seal before folding ?, or just fill it with cavity wax when done - which I will do whatever anyway.

Seam sealer is a good idea but the rigidity of the door is also somewhat reliant on the bottom of the skin staying still against the frame so a couple of spot welds were there, IIRC. One visible about 2 inches in from the corner and several on the short adjacent edge.

None of the repair panels were all that good in terms of shape so I made my own. It was important to get the right size of radius on the flanges. This one was obviously too large and rounded.

Got there in the end.

Thanks for the pics, useful. Where you have the Cleco in you picture are there spot welds along there, took the paint off along there and I am sure there are. Probably best to do that whole panel and easier / neater.

Also discovered this mess near the top, someones been there before, and overworked the edge as they have gone right through the skin.
And the bottom edge

I drilled out any spotwelds and then used them to site some 1/8 holes in the new panel so I could still adjust as necessary and then TIG weld in afterwards.

Thanks, sure I can see them along the edge, and once I get a few free and can start teasing it apart sure I can work them out.

What started as a simple job like everything else escalates

First job is to sort out the top of the door by the handle and work out how to tidy that up, the edge of the skin I will very carefully build with tack welds and re profile by draw filing it.

Spent some time today taking some measurments of the door for reference and started have a dig at the bottom. Found the spot welds along the long edge and popped them apart, rolled the skin up along the bottom edge.

Quite a lot of rust in there so glad I am sorting it properly, at least I know its gone, I can take my time and treat everything thats not being replaced, things can get painted internally as required.

Need the skin repair now so I can mark the cut and cut the lower section off.

Someones certainly been there before, as I removed the patch that had been tacked on the bottom. Any effort in trying to tidy this up and paint would have been wasted time and money.

Seems I am the first one to take the hinges off in 52 years as there is bare metal behind them.