1960 Morris 850 And Friends

Projects Mini Saloons
1

Not got many pictures of it available yet but managed to get the old rusty cut and shut mini on my trailer, and the sadly deteriorating shell in the back of my moms truck, will need to get it up to my dads house to tear it down to see what I can salvage… the past 10 years or so have not been good on them :( The foor in the shell looks a bit better then it is, under the crossmember is a hole, and there is one hole in the sil after sitting.. I really should have worked on it years ago.. but I had no where to work on it. Oh well, it’s time to work on it now!

Chris

2

Bah and the trailer wiring is faulty…

First thing to work on tomorrow.

Chris

3

good luck with that! people on here have restored worse i can asure you! lol

4

Thanks I hope to have enough donor sheetmetal excluding usable front wings to put together the good shell… with extensive rust fighting

Got everything loaded! Weight on the trailer is good, wiring checks out fine just had a weak power level with the engine off so lights were pulsing as the voltage dropped slightly when the turn signals flashed and is good..

unfortunatly when I went to service the trailer wheel bearings and repack them that ‘good’ string ended, only have one wheel off right now but both bearings in that wheel need replacing $20 per bearing 2 bearings per wheel And I have to assume both wheels will need bearings.

Early tomorrow I will go purchase bearings, and with luck I can get on the road on schedule. With luck!

Chris

5

try get some more pics up if you can of the shell, and before you run out of space, sign up to photobucket, you’ll be able to upload tons more pictures than uploading direct to this site, as you’ll run out of space in no time and will end up having to delete pictures!

will be watching this thread, always love a good mk1 rebuild! (and it gives me tips for my own mk1 rebuild )

6

Sorry about the lack of replies, but arrived at home late friday and have worked the weekend like normal.. hope to start disassembling the cut and paste mini on the trailer so I can start planning on how it will be disected for panels… and what I can salvage >.< I do need to buy a new camera as well… my dads has dissapeared which leaves me with my old palm treo heh.

Chris

7

> people on here have restored worse i can asure you! lol
Haha well yeah, the shell in the back of the nissan is still rather sound aside from some holes in the sill panel, and aside from the rathewr.. uh.. large hole in the rear seat where someone tried to install another eghine As for the one on the trailer, it has a fair ammount of cancer, I have plans for it’s remains.. and about $3000 worth of panels… or something of the sort

Chris

8

Well got at the car with tools today, I picked up a Blair spot weld cutter today… though it does tend to skitter around a bit if I am not carefull D:

I started out removing the rear quarter rails from the cut and shut shell, I ended up having to get a die grinder out to break a few welds. to the rear seat brace and the b pillars.

the left hand one needs just a little cleaning up but the right one is rather damaged towards the front, likely I will need to splice it with the half remaining in the good shell.

After the quarter rails came out I cut out the whole quarter panel on the right side, I wont be leaving much behind the doors intact on this mini, But I am not killing it… I have… plans for it! *cackles like a mad man* but both quarters will be removed so I have access to the rear inner panelsto remove them with as little damage as possible.

An ugly view of the seat pan in the car I am salvaging panels out of.

and a rotten rear section I have had forever, I picked it up years ago for panels and sections I could salvage, I should be able to juggle and patch and use it to build a seat pan, I also have a pattern boot rear panel. there should be enough… we will see

and finally, a view of what I am trying to rebuild.. someone attempted to put a second engine in it years ago, I need to undo that

I had the sanding block in my hand looking for the spotwelds to drill out on the donor shell… and.. uh.. my hand jumped shells and lightly rubbed a bit watching the light surface rust dissapear.

Tomorrow I plan to remove the left side quarter panel for more access to the rear seat brace, and maybe get that rear seat brace out >crosses fingers< I am going to have to patch the hole cut in it for rear shock nut access, and the rust ont he bottom edge. I will also have to patch the holes where the rear quarter rails were removed, but that can be later.

Chris

9

before you go to mad cutting huge panels off i would get some decent bracing in there to stop the shell flexing, Use the door appatures as a brace point, or get it on a proper spit through the bulkhead

10

> before you go to mad cutting huge panels off i would get some decent bracing in there to stop the shell flexing, Use the door appatures as a brace point, or get it on a proper spit through the bulkhead

Sadly, this reccomendation is about 15 years too late, the shell was a rather poor cut and shut, enough to get me driving around in it back then in a rather ratty beater, It was my first car yes, but I still remember my first driving it and the unsettling feeling of the body flex when I engaged the brakes. The car was being held together by the windshield frames then and the remains of the lower left sil. We purchased the remains of the front of a later mk1 auto shell to cut into the car to get strength back in. Though being 17 at the time my father really “knew it all and decided how it was to be done” unfortunatly. I had expressed my desire to do a bit more work and split the whole forward portion window frame out of the front of my original shell and then the interior portion of the auto shell, but father knows best and said we were cutting the window posts and so that is how it had to procede. \

Currently the car has no indention for the windscreen seal towards the top of the windsheild aperature and the later indention for the seal around the bottom of the aperature… Really messed up in my opinion. It is how it is unfortunatly. So really, brace bars in that shell are far too late, it is going to take extrordinary work to get it square again, but as I have a project planned, I am not going to totally give up on it and will eventually do the work. Lots of work to make myself happy with it, but I will..

The other shell is still virgin floor toebord healboard sides etc, so still retains it’s propper shape. Thankfully… I just have to extract and rejuvinate the panels I plan on using it in from the bad shell right now

Chris

11

So… unfortunately the lifts are in use in the shop so I cant use them to hold the car as I remove the subframe and exhaust. Instead I rolled the good shell on its side and started cleaning the surface rust off using a wire wheel on a hand grinder, following that up with a good bath of phosphoric acid and rustoleum primer for a temporary coating.

It seems the only “Bad” tin worm is in a 7 inch wide strip across the floor where the crossmember covers. I will need to remove and repair the crossmember as well as remove the inner sills to take care of rust.

I will get some pictures up soon of the floor bottom.

Chris

12

Pictures as promised

The bottom, wavy as a breezy bay, but 80% still intact, about 90% of this floor (and 50% of the car ) has minor pitting from surface rust, I figure some decent high build primer will take car of the pitting, it is too sound of a car to worry too much about it. by the way, from the bottom, can you tell where the crossmember mounts? I dont think it would be that hard as it is almost the only place the floor is badly rotted.

And a couple shots of the left hand a-panel, gotta love early single panel construction! minor surface pitting, but only a couple dings.

I have seen minis in this forum restored, that were worse… and a fraction of this shells age heh.

Chris

13

Haha hardly anything left good effort tho mate

14

Seems like you got your work cut out for you. Where in the PAC NW are you?

15

Hey all, sorry, missed a day, was too tired after pulling the read subframe exhaust and sway bar out, but today I got to salvaging more metal.. I had taken several nice pictures in the sunlight… camera however had decided not to save them

As stated my plan was to remove the left hand side panel and work at freeing the rear seat brace and parcel shelf. Taking out therear quarter was no big deal, however when I started in on the spot welds that were still holding it, my blair cutter balked at the odd contortions and the blade busted so I resorted to a 3/8 drillbit. That was deffinatly not as nice as the cutter

The bottom edge of the seatbrace was rather rotted and will require fabbing up a new edge almost all the way across the bottom. However there is enough left I can use to duplicate the shape… and I do have plenty of scrap 1960 sheet metal… thanks to the clipped quarters

and I have to close that hole cut in the bulkhead for shock access when I am repairing it.

The rear parcel shelf is in fairly decent shape, just some random holes in it to repair that mounted a fan unit a previous owner used as a rear demister and a couple minor rust nicks around the panel edge.

I do have a later rear parcelshelf that will be donating shaped steel for filling the holes.. it is a vastly different pressing for the most part however so would not have worked in the car… to my liking at least

Then on to the rotted rear seat base/boot floor… One word, uggghhh.

It seems I should not have left my rear seat in the car all that time, the foam has destroyed the steel, oddly though, the boot floor is for the most part rust free. the Rotted out metal I should be able to replace from a combination of the remains in the other shell and the remains from the cooper clip I have. I am however kind of worried about the valley between the boot floor and seat bottom, It might be difficult to fabricate…

bottom side shows still smooth unpitted boot floor next to swiss cheese seat pan.

To get the parcel shelf out I had to cut a thin slice out of the rear panel, I didnt want to but needed the shelf off, well I cut a thin flat strip out that should be easy enough to replace if it’s ever neccisary.

Well, that’s all for now

P.S. Buddy, currently in vancouver washington, but could at any time be told to head back down the coast to my moms house..

16

I have gone down to my mothers house again to return her truck, so not much work on the mini for now, I do get to dig through my other stuff though

Found the date code on my old knackered wiper motor is oct 1959, I will have to try saving it now, rats

Hope I can find my 1275 crank… it might cost a bit to replace it if I can’t :confused:

Chris

17

Hey Chris,

If you haven’t already done so, become a member on the Seattle Area Mini Owners Association site www.seattleminiowners.com and the Oregon Mini Society Site www.oregonminisociety.com . Both of the sites can help you out with what you need and also tips and advice. The SAMOA site seems to be more active.

Ryan

18

Well I worked on it a bit this weekend, did some removal of the added in metal butchery in the ok shell, then while working went to strip the cooper clip down to see what I had…

and what I have.. is not good

Seems the front half is good on the cooper clip, and the back half is ok on the trailered one, but they just have rot where the two would connect >.<

I’ve not done any panel fab before, though actually repairing it is not very likely I had nothing better to do as I need a boot floor and seat base to continue much, I tried making a panel to see how it would turn out. I started first by pulling out masking tape and covering the area in masking tape. I then used a sharpie marker to trace out what I Planned to try making. Following that I carefully pulled up the low tack masking tape and applied it to a thick paper backing, trimmed it more and traced it to one of the cut out quarter panels.

which I proceeded to cut out with my cheepie 3 inch air cutter, it went fairly well, I used a vice and some various forms of persuasion to form the innitial bends.

with some gentle hammer work using a trusty ballpeen hammer it wasn’t looking that bad. I tried it on the clip,

and even walked over and tried it on the other one, seems to fit them better then some pattern panels I have seen… >.<

I wasn’t too happy with the flat top of it though, ended up using a large socket as an anvil to form a bit of a dome into the top, looks much better now. I finally wirewheeled it down a bit and tossed some rustoleum primer on everything to keep the peace.

I am not sure though if I will go through and patch together this boot floor sections, or if I will say screw it and buy a whole panel and mod it to be correct yet, it’s good practice though. Not sure if I will follow this through, but as I said, I might do it for welding practice.

Chris

19

Well I could never get the pieces the right shape.. they looked good, but they didnt fit.. so I have been going around trying to find panels, The whole bood floor uncut will end up costing me $400 from a US supplier or $700 imported from the UK, I am doing some checking around seeing if I can just get the sections I need right now, I have been cleaning around some of my donor sections though. One interesting tidbit, I found the battery ground nut and the fuel strap retention nut on the remains of the original car are actually 6 point nuts brazed on as opposed to 4 side nuts spot welded on in a cage. I guess that’s just more early car idiosyncracies that I will have to incorporate into the build

I have pretty much mutilated the mini on the trailer at this point heh, I have plans for it though, that doesn’t utilize any of the back half that I cut off… Pictures later.

Chris

20

It’s been a while, but more pics of my ‘mess’

I took some time waiting for an order to arrive from the UK, purchased a load of panels from m-machine. I had decided to purchase a whole boot floor panel and modify it to fit my application, unfortunatly due to shipping costs it needed to be cut in half to cut shipping in half

It’s not fully welded and ground yet, more work to do before then, but man, I understand why later minis rust so bad, this heratage boot floor is made of tin foil… hmm that might be a bit thick yet… tissue paper? I had a professional welder doing some tacking but as he generally deals with thicker stuff it took a bit before we got everything dialed in, It needs some grinding and rewelding. However I am going to wait untill I have the pieces cut out to change to an earlier fuel tank piercing and remove the lump in the middle of the seat pan.

But, well, I have been taking time carefully removing the reminants of the old boot floor from the “good shell” I have left a strip of boot floor over the toeboard temporarily as the moron who owned this one in the past chopped the middle of the toeboard out.. along with the rear shock turrets I have a couple options on rear shock turrets though, I have usable ones from the other “project” and ones from the cooper rear. I am leaning to using the cooper ones as they have seat belt mounts, then adding in the other seat belt points.

Also plan to pull the toe board section from that clip or from the other project, not sure yet.

As I need to remove the seat crossmember eventually in the good shell to repair it and to repair the floor, I started removing the rear companion boxes so I can get at the rear halfs of the inner sills. I dont need to repair them, but the crossmember streatches through them all the way to the outter sills so they need removed so I can loosen the crossmember and slide it back to get it out.

Love how solid the floors are for the most part in this shell. Just look at those rear subframe mounts tasty!


I plan on picking up some early mini rear valance closing panels from m-machine along with the floor brace plates and a battery box, I am going to need to make a patch plate for the rear closing plates, not because they are rusty so much as I had to cut them as they were spot welded, brazed, and all together fused to the rear companion box Going to be pulling the spare hold down bracket and the brazed battery cable nut from the early car, and the seat belt mounts(and inner arches) from the cooper clip.

Now on to the /other/ project. I am surprised that the center tunnel is almost completly solid (you can see where it was cut and shut… ) so will only need floor halfs eventually.

Now, lets see if anyone can guess what the ‘project’ is going to be…

Chris