1946 Morris 8 Series E - off to storage

Is there a bit of a story behind the Eight? It looks like it's had an interesting previous owner.

I'm sure I've seen that Morris somewhere before. May have been in Practical Classics. That's gonna annoy me now! The Avenger, by the way, is awesome.

Yup, me too! The skull & x-bones and weird 'lattice' effect is hard to forget. Sadly I can't remember where either but I think Practical Cl***ics is the most likely place

I've just checked the logbook and Mr Lillywhites names on it, however it must have been a good while ago.

There's no dates for transfer of ownership, but there is a letter from DVLA to owner me - 2 back at the start of 2010, and the logbook transfer slip from lillywhite to him (no date on it though).

Its not very complete at the moment as is missing most bits.

Hmmmm.

We'll today I was driving a hire car at work a BMW 120d. I was quite impressed by how well this went really for an oil burner.

It's half got me thinking that I might look at putting something like an engine and box from on of these into the morris. 122 BHP from the normal or 163 from the Msport one. Theres also 280lb ft of torque out of it too.

If it can move 1340kg of 1 series well, should do good in the morris. Will need to have a bit more of a think.

Started some very rough and ready CAD models to try looking at the chassis design.





As I said very early rough model to get an understanding of what may fit where. the strange lines are rough profiles of where the body line is.

Chassis positions are based off some rough calcs for suspension mounts, but not really finalised yet. Will probably move about a fair bit.

The S type bending in the chassis are also me being lazy with my modelling and will disapear to straight joints when i'm settled on a design. Currently its been "triangle spammed".

Its been a pretty busy weekend as been of doing lots of other things, mainly indulging in my other passion - playing in a ska & punk band (www.facebook.com/akaizenblitz) so not been out the workshop much.

Saying that, I managed to get an hour or so in the workshop today so made a start taking the morris appart.





Was quite impressed by how easily the bolts undid, considering I was using metric spanners as I think the bolts may be whitworth not imperial (at least my imperial set fit worse than my metric set).

I was less impressed by the poor poor quality of the [previous bodges at the bodywork.



Not the best pic, but probably the best set of repairs made to the bodywork and their bad bad bad!I have a lot of cutting out and making new patches to do.

The wings were nicelly bodged too where the lower inside faces were coated in fiberglass.

This is the strangest bit though. Not sure what someone was up to, but it looks like they screwed a plate over a slot they cut in the body.



Its got traces of filler round it too.

I've also decided that when the car is complete and ready to go again i'll pay homage to its current paint job, so i took some photos for scale.



I think a 2" brush is probably the right guage.

I also decided I needed to upgrade the stereo in the workshop so have made use of the cheap spare PA system i've got lying around. It'll go loud enough to enjoy music over the top of grinding noise whilst wearing ear defenders, but suspect that wont make me popular if I try it....



This is also whats stopping me hitting the morris so far.





I bought this ages ago and have just about got it ready to MOT and put back on the road. Its my workhorse for carting round any car parts / rubbish / moutain bikes. It needed a fair amount of repairs but is just about good to go now.

Its painted very badly in satin black, my present favourite absence of colour.

I'm also thinking about going for this material on the door cards etc. Currently on the bulkhead sound deadning panel.

really looking forward to seeing this progress. Would love it if the rollcage at the rear could be extended a little to make it less obvious through the side windows (and give you a little more interior space). Brilliant engine idea too, very keen to see how the fit-up works

Thanks for the comments.

I absolutely love the look of old cars, but i really want something that drives really nicely. Hence the significant changes. Saying that, its not really any different than if I was making a hotrod as they arent exactly brimming with original features.

If you were looking to restore a Morris 8 (or lightly modify) then this wouldnt be the starting point. It's do-able with the chassis / shell but there are better examples out there to start from. Pretty much the reason it was being broken when I bought it. The seller had another 6 or 7 of which 3 / 4 were deffinately for parts only, 1 was very restorable, and 1 was minty mint.

I was thinking something similar about the rear part of the cage but it may compromise it too much. I'll be doing some experimenting in CAD to see what I get. Irrespective of how the design goes, I'm still likely to be going for black limo tint in the back so you wont really be able to see the cage through there.

I'm away on holiday for a week, but i've spent the last few days working on some suspension designs. Once i've got something of note, or at least changed CAD models, done i'll post up about it.

Great posts so far dude nice to see a really retro motor too