1966 Morris Minor Zetec saloon

[dan]

About time I set up a build thread so here goes. The historic stuff is from my old Minor Mania thread.

This was my first car when I learnt to drive in 1993 and 14 years later I'm turning it into the car I have always dreamed of. It's the one on the right in this early photo. The other one was bought for spares but was too good to break and eventually sold for restoration.





Seven shades of dark blue and getting a little frilly around the edges. Here it is the week before checking into the JLH workshop and it was fitted with an Owen Burton telescopic dampers, anti roll bar and Ford vented disks. All of this has been ditched and replaced with a coil sprung front and a five link rear. I'm going to lose the rear bumper, most of the trim and clean up the lines a little with a smooth bootlid.

I change my mind almost daily but at the moment it's going to be finished in a fetching shade of Luftwaffe grey.



and the stripping begins prior to major surgery.



Fitted with ecoated bonnet. Notice the louvres on the lower leading edge. I really like this colour - it's similar to one used on the early lowlights.



Smooth fibre glass bootlid makes it look better already.



First new engine ;D This was a new crate 1.8 VVC lump which came via an MG Xpower auction after the Phoenix Four broke the company.

[dan]

More pics starting with a pile of panels :-)




The driver's door off and apart.

Dan hope you don't mind me adding to the thread, just some grot ones :lol:

[dan]

Coming along nicely and the nearside is beginning to near completion :-)

[dan]

Slight change of plan in the engine department. Now going down the Zetec route as it's going to work out more cost effective. I bought OMEXs trackday / test hack mondeo which came with 1800 lump and saved some dollar.



Zetec sized hole.



Most of the metalwork has been done now and she's off for dipping and ecoating in the next couple of weeks :-D

[dan]

Engine out and suspension off. The shell is off for a few weeks to be dipped and stripped prior to ecoating at www.surfaceprocessing.co.uk

[dan]

Back from SPL following it's electrophoretic Immersion Coating. Doesn't it look good now it's just one colour :-P They had changed the recipe so it's black rather than a murky greenish grey.

I'm doing the car properly and want it to last. The good thing about ecoating this is that it gets into all the box sections and cavities.





Engine bay has been tidied with unnecessary brackets removed and holes welded up. The notched and reinforced cross member for the zetec's clearly visible. Wiper motor will go inside the car.






Battery box under rear seat.




Turrets for rear suspension and boxing for the 4 bar.




The lead in the rear quarters has gone too.

[apbellamy]

loogs good

[dan]

Seeing that I'm intending to do this properly I sold on 1800 Zetec silvertop from the Mk1 mondeo which found a home in a marina retrorides.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=readersrides&action=display&thread=36887 and got myself engine no3. This time a Omex built 2Lt Zetec blacktop in 200bhp spec.




The car then sat in the workshop for a while while I built my funds back up. IIRC the red one in the background was originally going to be the JLH racecar.

[Waxoyling Lyrical]

Always good to see another Minor being preserved. Do you notice significantly better handling with front coil springs compared to the standard torsion bar setup?

Also, how much does it cost to have SPL strip and electroplate the shell?

[dan]

Just as it was about to kick off again the bankers then broke the world and I found myself with more time on my hands and less money in my pocket so I did the sensible thing and refurbished my garage.

This involved upgrading the distribution board in the house to run power, installing lighting, fitting a door, painting the walls with masonry paint and the floor with epoxy paint. After getting a new workbench and vice for £50 off ebay and some old kitchen cupboards the morris was ready to come home for the bodywork to start my new garage

I'm doing the prep, shaping, stone chip & reface and then it'll go back to JLH for fettling, primer and topcoat. It's depends on my day job but at the moment I think I'll probably end up putting it back together.

[dan]

Sept 3, 2010 11:59:13 GMT Waxoyling Lyrical said:

Always good to see another Minor being preserved. Do you notice significantly better handling with front coil springs compared to the standard torsion bar setup?

Also, how much does it cost to have SPL strip and electroplate the shell?

I can't really comment on the handling yet as the car is still under construction. Having said that, JLH have a Traveller and Saloon which they take round race circuits and there's no way standard suspension would take the punishment they give them.

For rust prevention on older vehicles the ecoat is the best solution around. SPL offer a couple of processes and I think the one I went for it was around £2.5k

[Waxoyling Lyrical]

Cripes, fairly steep then! I wonder how much they charged to strip that immaculate looking to begin with Ferrari 250SWB shell in their website gallery?

[Seth]

Wow, this is a stonking looking build

[Soopahfly]

That engine looks lost in the engine bay.
Was the minor originally intended for a heaogue engine?

[dan]

Not huge, just wide. It was originally designed to accept a flat-4 engine but late in the development stage it was replaced by a 918 cc side-valve.

When the suspension and ancillaries are fitted the space will be filled.

[dan]

Armed with an idea of how heavy it was likely to be, I rolled the bodyshell onto five, fat, worn tyres which I got free from my local tyre place.

I was anticipating the worst but with 4 men and a woman to position the tyres we made very, easy work of it. I reckon the stripped shell is around 200kg and there's not much lifting as when it's rolled most of the weight is on the tyres rather than being carried. I was going to buy a rollover jig but I'm glad I didn't bother now.

[dan]

Which finally takes us up to today.

I'm on the process of seam sealing and stone chipping the underside which I intend to do this weekend. The ecoat has been keyed, the car & garage masked and my tack cloths arrived this morning

On these photos the visible alterations on the underside are the turrets for the dampers and boxing for the 4 link rear axle & panhard rod. At the front the battery has also been relocated from the engine bay to under the rear seat, while you can also see the beefed up JLH front suspension points and the notched front engine cross member.

[zetecvan]

I'm loving this... So much so that I did a little sex wee...

[simes]

Lovely build up it's going to be amazing.

....I think this maybe Nick Mann's old car....spotted at Goodwood earlier this year.

[dan]

Thanks.

No, that one is very similar with twin turbo rover, manual box, jaguar running gear and was the CCC car of the year around 10 years ago. It was blue with a white roof (the opposite of Nick Mans) and had the radiator in the back and IIRC a home brewed engine management made out of a fruit machine. Motherofgod took some cool photos with it