Practically Classics Forum

I have always driven classics and restored many, several have been covered in marque specfic sites but I have now decided to keep it all in one place, here.

My first car was a anglia DHX 515A which saw me through an automotive engineering degree at university and ended up with a warmed over 1600 x flow, rocket box, disc brakes etc.

At the same time my then girlfriend now wife had a sucsession of mk1 and 2 escorts, they were cheap and disposable in the 80's. On turning 25 and having bought a house we decided to get married and rather than a fancy wedding bought a v12 xjs.
It was cheap because it pinked, it also broke down on the way home, the breakdown was a faulty pcm failing to switch the fuel pump which was fixed by adding engine run relay, and the pinking was a failed plug lead causing the spark to arc to the preceeding cylinder. We had this until 2001 when I spun it on some ice and wrote it off.

In the meantime around 1993 my wife decided she wanted a sports car, as an every day car, we could not afford a new MX5 so ended up with a rusty TR7, which I restored, I will see if I can scan some photo's to add later, we still have this car now and until 4 years ago it was still being used every day.

In 1995 I worked in Germany for a couple of years, the money was good and I treated myself to a lotus elan plus 2 for when returned to the uk at weekends etc, Everone said make sure it has a good engine, body and chassis, the ford gearbox and diff are no problem. On driving it back from Hereford the diff fell appart, pinion nut came undone, and it was obvious the gearbox layshaft bearings had seen better days, the engine was and still is fine, over the years it has aquired a 5speed type 9 , become a cabriolet and been almost written off but we stll have it.

In 1997 my daugter arrived and we needed a family car so bought a triumph 2000 as well, I treated this as a rolling resto and we ran it for a couple of years until I was lucky enough to get a company car, when we sold it.

Then in 2010 we decided we needed something more practical, so I bought and restored in 3 months a series 2 landrover, I still use this most of the winter.

Finally earlier this year we bought a morris minor fo my 11 year old son and myself to restore.

Over the next few weeks I will load some pictures and details of the older restos and update progress on the ones I still have.

Kevin

kstrutt1 wrote:Over the next few weeks I will load some pictures and details of the older restos and update progress on the ones I still have.

Kevin

Good stuff Kevin, thanks, I shall look forward to that!

Cheers

Me too! Excellent choice of venue, thanks for sharing with us.

I have started trying to pull the photo's together, attached is a picture of the 3 roadworthy cars as they are today.

I will start with more detail on the minor as this is the one most of the posts will be about, being the current project.

ooohhh, toys. Nice collection you have there

and here is the picture I was really looking for of all 3 together

This will cover the minor, It's a 1969 2 door saloon, we bought it from ebay sight unseen but it is pretty much what I was expecting, most of the underbody is rusted and patched, the floors are not too bad though, the most diffcult area to repair is going to be the roof, the gutters have begun to go but these are available and pretty straight forward, the worst area is where the roof joins the rear panel, there is quite extensive rust in the joint here and it will probably have to be relaced completely bit by bit.

firstly some pictures as it arrived. this is the area of roof corrosion which is going to be the most difficult to repair The car is in the corner of the garage so we can only really work on one side and end at a time, we have also found some interesting history, gorg made a model of a bristol omnibus morris minor and it bears the same registration as ours, our also appears to have been painted in the bristol bus colours at some time, when I get a chance I will get the heritage certificate to see who the first owner was.

We started the repairs with the front rear spring hanger, a repair section was bought and welded in, a new panel for the outer edge of the floor and the lower sill was formed and fitted, then a small area of the inner sill was replaced around the seat belt mounting (to replace previous repair held on we 2 tacks of braze!). finally a rear sill boxing panel was made and fitted

a few more photos of the repairs in this area and what it looked like to start with

next we moved rearward, the wing mounting flange had been badly repaired with new panel tacked on and covered in filler, some areas were replaced, others cleaned and seam welded, at the same time we did away with the spot welded seam to remove one rust trap.