1970 Morris Oxford - 20/9/24 -

[Seth]

g51nav said:

I'll wait for all the hate mail but I thought it looked much better before you touched it. Looks more like an old banger ready to be mashed in the next race now tbh. Wheels look bare without the trims, sprayed up "banger-racing red". Just needs a big number 17 on the side or summat. Sorry: I suppose you can't please em all. What ever happened to it?

Fair enough Wheels later alternated with various combinations of caps, trims and whitewalls.

Oh, and its still around. There'll be some more "updates" once I scan some more photos

[gotwood]

g51nav said:

I'll wait for all the hate mail but I thought it looked much better before you touched it. Looks more like an old banger ready to be mashed in the next race now tbh. Wheels look bare without the trims, sprayed up "banger-racing red". Just needs a big number 17 on the side or summat. Sorry: I suppose you can't please em all. What ever happened to it?

Oohh,thats a bit harsh

I think it looks great anyway

[SilverMachine]

don't u still use it regularly seth??
or have you recently sold it?

[scrappylad]

I agree that your Oxford looked good when you first got it.

I bought a 'restored' Wolseley 16/60 in 1995 too, mine turned out to be rotten (under the shiny new paint) on inspection the following year.

My car, whilst I still have it, is mostly stripped & parts have been sold off it. All in all its very sad.

Yours looks a menace to society & pretty cool with it.

So there.

[Seth]

silvermachine said:

don't u still use it regularly seth??
or have you recently sold it?

Nope still sat outside here, got SORN'd a in the middle of last year after dropping on to 3 cylinders and needing some more work. Hoping to get on it soon as we miss it!

[Seth]

OK, Here's part two of the story!

This is pretty much where we were come the summer of '96. Bullets added over sidelights/indicators (side repeaters used under bumper), whitewalls and Minor commercial (smooth) hubcaps



A suprise find at the supernats that year was this chrome dash for sale (by Frank Pelosi, now of Karma Kustoms). It would have been rude not to!





This photo was also taken that year I think and is one of my favourites. Its behind the London Palladium theatre and the blurredness of it just seems to add to the murky atmosphere.



Back at uni not much more occured but this was a relatively common sight in Fallowfield.



By the following summer the headlight area on the drivers side was starting to go so I used money from my summer job to buy a mig welder and got stuck in. This was the first time I had done any such work and it was done over a period of weeks outside on the street, making sure it was driveable, if not pretty at the end of each session.





The reason for the Minor type headlamp rim (and the fact the headlight is recessed slightly) will become clear....





....Time to get peaky!





I was pretty chuffed with the end result which can be seen here after other bits of bodywork had been attacked too, oh, and the hubcaps had given way to bullets and trim rings. The car stayed with one peaked headlight for a long time!



Then one day someone junked a bull bar in my neighbours front garden. I can make use of that thank you....







To be contiunued....

[425ci]

seth said:

To be contiunued....

Come on then, hurry up!

Mike

[Mr K]

seth said:

To be contiunued....

***COUGH!*** I'm loving this, i need my morris oxford hit!

[Seth]

Sorry! Will need to sort out some more of the photos......

*wanders off

[Seth]

OK, due to popular (OK then, two bits of) demand here's a part 3

We're up to '99 now. We got married in June of that year and moved into our own place so for the first time I had some off street parking. I'd done about 70k in the car by then and that autumn the engine burnt another exhaust valve and was starting to look pretty tired. Since I had the space and a mate knew of a complete mostly good Marina TC I could have for £50 (find one for that now!) the only decent thing was to take the car off the road to do the "big block" engine swap I'd wanted for ages.

This was back when I had a proper job and salary so I bought an engine crane knowing it'd get plenty of use in the future and hoiked engine and box out.



That winter I set about stripping out, cleaning and painting the engine bay, laying new brake lines etc.



I also modified the g/box cross member so that the exhaust would go over it not under it giving me a couple of new inches of ground clearance. There is a bit of engineering work to go into fitting a later B series to the Farina box so that was done too. A recon box was also bought (ah, memories of regular pay packets!).



With the engine and box ready to go in I got fed up with them sitting around (it was Autumn 2000 by now) and on getting home from work one day though, "Right I'm doing it now!" Had to get Katie to lend me a hand when she got home and we had a late dinner that night!





So I had a running driving car and it was fun blatting up and down the service road we lived off but I knew bodywork was needed. So I got chopping on the passenger side.



New inner and outer sills and bits of floor were required. I knew the front wing was in a state too and bought a couple of the larger repair sections as new wings are over £500 each. The A pillar was substantially reconstructed too.



The work took me a long time as it was all done outside and I'd never tackled anything like it before. We moved flat in 2001 which obviosuly needed time spent on it and this is how the car was in possibly Spring '02. I remember long periods especially over winter when nothing was done at all and I'd hit quite a low with it all really.

But I was determined not to let it beat me and slowly started piecing more of it back together.



I remember distinctly feeling better when I could put the grill and bumper back on and it started to look like a car again. I modified the bumper irons to lower it by an inch or so and you can also see that the pass side headlight finally got its peak too - about 6 years after the other one!



Tune in again at some point for the final push to get it on the road!

[rob0r]

Great story!

[trg1984]

is this up to date now or is it back on the road again???

[Seth]

trg1984 said:

is this up to date now or is it back on the road again???

It was on the road after that and is now off again!

[st182]

Nice one seth, great thread, its had me sucked in all the way through- look forward to next update!

EDIT> poo poo spellin'

[qwerty]

Awesome thread Seth. Its great to see how you and your car came together and what you've been through. Very much looking forward to the next part.

[Pid363!]

Seth i don't like soaps but this one is well worth watching. don't know if you know of it but i went to Valley gas speed shop today to see a friends V8 farina which is being put together they had some call cars in there.

[coggers]

seth said:

The work took me a long time as it was all done outside and I'd never tackled anything like it before. I remember long periods especially over winter when nothing was done at all and I'd hit quite a low with it all really.

But I was determined not to let it beat me.

fcuking well said ,that man !!!

i've been trying to get my 30 yr old kadett back on the road for nearly 9 years now, what with no garage , little or no skill,sh1tey north east weather and neighbours who think primer means i'm a traveller

good for you , nice to see i'm not the only one ..

[sky]

Great love story Seth !!! Great to see you have a cool old lady who will help you and get her hands dirty !!! My girlfriend wrenches with me and I love it !!! Oh and coggers I'll trade you your' neighbors for the Albuquerque Government !!! I just got my 13th fine for none operable vehicle not in a garage or carport I'm forced to move 6 of 12 cars to my shop , or they are going to impound them Tuesday afternoon !!!! That means a full day -n- a half of towing and rearanging the shop yard plus the latest $ 500 fine

[tigran]

A most excellent story Seth! Can't wait to see the next installment.

[Seth]

I suppose I ought to finish this story in some way before detailing the work that is now going on.

At the end of the last instalment I had done the LH sills and a bunch of work around the front end. The RH sills still needed doing so that was tackled next. I'm pretty sure we're into 2002 now. Having learnt how it went together on the other side I feel I did a more thorough job this time (though it is now obvious I should have paid more attention to the floor pan ). I was still learning and now have the benefit of experience at a restoration shop so I can say hindsight is a wonderful thing! Some pictures...







Not much there and still the door closed properly!





New inner sill added right to the top not overlapped like on the other side. Experience and learning pays!



The edge of the floor pan needed some bits and the chassis needed a piece where the rear outrigger fits. Oh, new outrigger as well of course!



Nearly there. New outer sill fitted and just patching up the front wing.





March 03...Now this was a momentus occasion. The car rolled out with solid sills etc for the first time in years! Notice that there's still no front valance. I had a cunning plan! This was the old bootlid that had gotten pretty rusty along its lower edge but was otherwise sound.



Hmm, that shape looks just right! Welded to the other end of the car with early Watts striping still nearly intact!



That was it! Once reassembled it wasn't pretty but was actually ready for an MOT! This is how it actually looked when I took it for its test...



...which it actually failed but only on sticky brakes thanks to 3 1/2 years of standing mostly still. A quick front brake re-build and it passed. I was so chiffed to be out driving it again. This was the beginning of May 2003. I spent the next few weeks working really hard to get it looking presentable. New paint (all rattle canned) on the front wings and fresh whitwalls gave me this cool photograph.



Obviously it was looking a bit plain again so it was time to get out the fineline tape and newspaper once more with a few tweaks to the design.







The I just got on with driving the wheels off it again, but now with the 1800 lump making it much more interesting. An early MGB 3.9 ratio diff found its way into the rear axle and an oil cooler landed in front of the radiator, improving oil pressure during motorway use. The bodywork was still scabby in places and in summer '04 I decided to tackle the right rear arch, modifying it as I went so that the wheel sits centrally. (When they extended the Oxford's wheelbase in '61 they just moved the axle back on the springs so the later cars always look like the wheel's in the wrong place )





I used Herald front arch repair sections to remake the inner and outer arches.



I never 100% finsihed this job, hence the primer when it went on the Modified Farina shoot for Classics magazine.



Even so I was dead chuffed to have it in print ;D



Another year or so's driving and there's a few bits and pieces still looking tired though I did manage to sort out a good pair of doors for the drivers side. Thoughts of taking it off the road again are accelerated when it burns an exhaust valve out having put about another 25,000 miles on it by the winter of '05.

Then I poke big holes in the floor pans and all of a sudden its the middle of '07....