1946 Morris 8 Series E - off to storage

Not great progress today.

First stop, I was fedup with the mess the benches were in.

Before





After





lathe de-swarfed and given a clean over along with a re-grease / oil on everything



and the mill



I can think again now....

Right, 10mm thick block cut in half tidied up and put on the rack mount



extra spacer shims made up to shim the rack up if needed in the future





A balls up was made :-(

I didnt take into account the rack position jig incorporated the rack mounts into it, so my nice bracket is 10mm too tall for the right position. Balls.

Apply hacksaw



notches made



This lowers the rack down to the correct height, and also means the rack bracket now picks up on the cross bracing, so it attached to the chassis in more places.

measure

Measure

Measure some more

Hold breath, tacked in









Measure again.

Longitudinal = OK

Lateral = OK

Horizontal.... 5mm too high drivers side, 6.5mm passengers side

Balls, Balls, Balls, Balls, BALLLS!

I measured all these before tacking in and it was fine, I must have been having complete and utter brain fade. :-(

I threw a wobbler and came in. FU Car.

Next weekend will be cutting the tacks, cleaning up, and re-welding it properly. :-(

I was still in a sulk with the steering rack, so went to the local farm supplies place and got some springs.

I didnt know what length would be best so bought a few





Set them so there is enough force to happily return the foot pedal, but not too much



Not the neates solution, but they are closed end springs



adjustable return stop






.... then thought I'd better face up to the rack mount.

cut cutting :-(



cutting the rack mount, and mocking it up again with measurements taken about 50 time



holding breath, tack it in



Measurements come out ok this time. Thankfully. within 0.5mm lateral and vertical.

Welded in solid. The rack mount feels like it has no flex. Which is good.





This gives an idea of how much I dropped the bracket / rack down.



I stuck the suspension back together and tried it. I now need to shim the rack up to get to a neutral bump steer position which is exactly what I wanted. I now have adjustability depending on how I setup the suspension.



Next stop was a quick coat of paint on the shrinker / bead roller stand.



Just painted in hammerite rather than sprayed.

then remembered I'd never welded in the screen support brackets, so welded them in







Then decided to add a stiffening edge to the top of the damper mount.







And finally got onto the passenger side rear arch supports.







Also did the rear mount but forgot to take a picture.

Slowly getting some progress.

Not great progress this weekend.

Saturday was spent re-cementing the chimney cap as its cracked through. Still dealing about next door in order to get agreement to get whole lot replaced but progress is slow. In the meantime it leaking heavily so spent nearly 8 hrs making temporary repairs.

Got out the workshop today though. As it was nice all doors open to get some air through and dry it out a bit as was feeling damp.

Onto getting arches set.

Mocked up front.



and rear



rear is a lot more tucked than the front.





but still has potential i feel



To try and get the front into some sort of correct location I need something to set it off. The arch needs moving out by about 100mm and I don't want to put extensions on the outside if I can help it, or widen it in the centre (as it'll look heavy), so opting to space it out from the wing mounts.

Make a flange





and start shrinking it to shape.



continue shrinking (much easier to use now I have a foot pedal for it :-) )



Bolt it up to the handy captive nuts fitted months ago.







then onto the front half.

Make a flange



shrink it to shape with lots and lots of shrinking / stretching (as it curves both round and backwards to the nose of the car)

And bolt it up






weld it together





On this last one you can see how much clearance there is on full bump and full lock to the scollops I put in the inner wings.

muck about with wood, metal, anything I can find to get the position that clears on full bump and full lock.

Which looks like this on normal ride height



and on full bump



I thought i'd check against a VX220 to see how the clearance is on normal ride height



They have huge clearance around the wheel, and even on heavily lowered ones there is usually still 25mm plus clearance of wheel.


Its not the look I wanted really, plus the door catches on the raised wing, so que a few hours of moving the wing up, down, fwd, back etc.



This location works and looks quite good for standard ride height location.

But this is the clearance arch to wheel to achieve :-(



Looks curse word in the flesh.

Reset again for where I want it to be



Clearance is much tighter (arch lips will be rolled up tight)



No matter what I do I cant get it looking the way I want and getting full bump clearance on full lock.

I think i'll have to re-profile the arch to give the clearance needed, with possibly the addition of a slight arch extension to get me there. Next weekend job.

That looks a tough job to get right, lots of complicated shapes going on. If you just wanted it to look good it'd be a lot easier, you could compromise much more on the mechanical side of things. Is it wearing headlight extensions in the mock up?

It's really amazing to see all that work come good now, even though you're just in the mock up stage it's starting to look so right. I questioned the choice of wheel early on but with the bodywork looking like it does it doesn't really need anything. Seriously impressed with this build and very excited to see where you go from here.

Cheers dudes.

The headlight extensions are a standard feature on post war morris 8's. I really don't like them so will be looking to do sloped inset lights. Sort of like beetles lights.

Sorting that is somewhat further down the list though.

I shall give it some consideration.

At the moment I have negative clearance on full bump and lock so something needs modding.

I've also ignored the fact that to get full bump the bump stop would need to be squashed out of existence as well. There may be more pressing things to consider if i've ever managed to achieve that sort of bump :-)

Its nice to see some, but when I look at the car I just see a lot of things I need to do still. Perspective is difficult.

although it has to be said, with the DTM style wheels it does make it look like a "fun cup" beetle

So... about the same as a Citroen AX then. Looks like the biggest hindrance is the cage and there's not really anything you can do about that at this stage.

The main culprit of the restricted footwell space in pushing the engine / gearbox back and raising them up into the body.

In the original car and with most hotrod the body sits over the gearbox to some degree.

Unfortunately there is little room left to bubble into the gearbox tunnel. I've already narrowed it as far as I could but am limited now by the space needed to remove.

From yesterday's experimenting it should be ok to use. I'm also looking to make a button actuated clutch from the gear lever, ala audi quarto s1.

When I do this the clutch will mainly be for setting off.