1967 Morris Minor

The Fiat engines in Minors sit quite low and forward of the front wheel-centres making the the sump vulnerable to being hit by speed bumps. I don't hoon around but some of the humps are quite nasty even at slow speeds. Time for a sump guard. I asked on here & aluminium seems to be the stuff to use.

Square of aluminium sitting under car



Cut to a shape where as much air as possible is still free to escape the engine bay without compromising protection. Hole for sump plug added. Heated and bent into shape with a club hammer. Or for the engineers, annealing and work hardening through plastic deformation.



Extra chunk of checkerplate at the front. The checkers are ground down at the bolt area to allow the domed bolts to lie flush on the surface.


Visible part blacked out


Finished. Just visible is camping mat foam between the sump and the sumpguard to prevent any stones getting in there and hammering their way through the sump (with thanks to J Beardmore for inspiration).

Minors have bolt-in gearbox covers which is really handy when you are fitting larger gearboxes. You can pull the cover and chop it about in a more comfortable place. My first effort, many years' ago did the job but was a nasty mix of ugly welding and fibreglass.



The next effort was a bought modified cover that needed further modifying for the Fiat gearbox. Again, does the job but not something I am pleased with



So, time to make one from scratch. This will be kevlar sandwiched between fibreglass. The flywheel area of the gearbox is forward of the cover in the engine bay, so there's no question of a burst flywwheel coming through. Just in case anything else on the road wants to come through though the kevlar should keep it out.

First step, templates made from old lever arch folders



Transfer to MDF




Foam packing used under bendy MDF and plastic tube to keep a minimum distance between cover mold and gearbox. Looked nice enough to use as the cover


Layer of fibreglass over the MDF will be the buck


Holes drilled through from MDF so positions known.


Much laying up and trimming later

Finished item, large washers to spread load. Bottom is coated in stone chip protect. For Minor owners, the master cylinder is no longer in the r/h chassis rail so cover can be one-piece.

Excellent work!!! I'm inspired to do some work on my minor now... shame i live 150ish miles away from it

Some top quality work going on there, can't wait to see this finished!

Bits of the old wiring loom. Anything in the engine bay was burned. Given the modifications it's quicker to start with a new Minor loom. I salvaged the useful parts of the old loom, (mainly the wires going to the rear lights and the bulb holders that fit in the speedo), cleaned them up and rolled them for future use.

Where the function already existed on the Minor Eg lighting circuits, I used the new Minor loom shortened or extended with wire of the same colour and rating. For additional items such as reversing light, electric radiator etc I went with the Lucas wiring codes. That way, a Minor wiring diagram and an A4 sheet help me trace future problems. I hope there won't be any though.



The beast to be tamed. I've diverted the loom from the rear lights into the cockpit via the transmission tunnel rather than have it go first to the engine bay then back. In effect the centre of the loom 'spider' is now in the cockpit with wires spreading outwards rather than the rear of the engine bay. The only parts of the loom now exposed to the outside elements are the wires to the rear lights. These are armoured.

A roll of masking tape is great for labelling wires.



Phone camera handy for noting positions of connections that have to be taken apart again.


Test wiring of a Maplins wiper delay circuit board. I use a Mercedes wiper arm which is a bit clunky but it's worth it since it controls, indicators, wipers, wash-wipe and light dim/dip/flash. It's a bit of a challenge to wire in but once done it eliminates a lot of extraneous buttons and keeps the cockpit simple. I made up a second one and use connectors so if the fitted one plays up I can easily swap it out. They're pretty reliable & robust but also a bit of a show-stopper if the smoke escapes so might as well have the spare ready now.

I'm using a 2 speed mini wiper rather than the single slow speed Minor one. The Merc has three speed options so with the delay I sort of have 3 speeds. The long black button on the circuit gives 4 delay settings. But they were all a bit slow so I used a smaller capacitor in the circuit to give me a faster range (the kit explains which component to change).

As I changed the brake lines and servo in the cockpit (in case of heat damage) for a Mini servo, the brake bias might well be out so I fitted a bias valve in the rear line accessable via the cockpit.



Delay circuit boxed up and hidden but reachable under the dashboard.

Knocking up a coil pack mounting

R1 fuel pump, accusump, starter & alternator wired in. They will be mostly hidden by an air box


I'm using a couple of blade fuseboxes (12 fuses) hidden away in a void by the drivers foot. The indicator relay, hazard relay and a warning buzzer all fit in there too meaning the engine bay can remain cleaner. In the opposite side I have some relays fitted.

The panel hiding these will be quick-release. The buzzer will have a few functions.

1) lights on warning. Easy to do by wiring from light switch and courtesy light switch.

2) rev warning. The Megajolt ignition system has some programmable user outputs so I can set it to switch the buzzer at say 6000 revs. If I'm doing 6000 revs I don't really want to be looking at the instruments or light at all but keeping my eyes on the road. I might change it to intermittently buzz from 6000 and continuous buzz from 6500. What's also handy about buzzers is they don't have to be somewhere in your line of sight like a warning light.


Picked up a nice condition courtesy light. They often yellow in the centre. I'll use an LED bulb here as they burn cool - like methanol but without the mechanics dancing and screaming around.

Talking about the temperature of bulbs. Those crafty Germans have gotten around the totalitarian EU ban on incandescant light bulbs and you can do the same by using heat balls:

heatball.de/en/









Medusa's serpants slowly being tamed. Reprogramming the spare outputs of the Megajolt to switch on buzzer at 6000 revs and radiator fan at 5000.

Thanks, have you got a build thread? Have you decided whether to go carbs or throttle bodies yet? Do I know you by another name on a Minor forum by any chance?

Looks great! I also have a spare Skoda Estelle rev counter, which I want to fit at some point...

Well it's been 9 months since I last updated. I got the car running and MOT'd just in time for the Morris Minor National last week. There are a few refinements to do (there probably alway will be) but it;s on the road and barring major problems will be coming to RRG next month.

Leading on, the Skoda rev counter did work with Megajolt once I removed the diode and got the wires round the correct way.

I planned to fit an airbox to the R1 carbs this time around with ducting to the front grill for a cold air supply. I considered trying to use the standard Yamaha airbox




but everything is very tight in the engine bay and it's not even close to fitting.



Not even worth chopping around so I kept the rubbers and traced the hole spacing (not symmetrical) and sold it off on Ebay.





Lemonade bottles could make a good sausage shape for a mold for fibreglassing.











Unfortunately the pictures above don't tell the whole story. With the first attempt the resin didn't go off as it was too cold. For the second attempt I upped the catalyst to the maximum of 4% and it still wasn't going off in the very cold garage so I used a hot air heater to keep the temperature up. I turned my back to get on with something else and when I turned back the lemonade bottle mold had softened with the heat, distorted and lost my shape. Long story short, when I eventually made a mold then an airbox off the mold it looked rubbish. While I could just keep trying in fibreglass I decided instead to use aluminium and rivets which I can tweek and adjust until I have the exact shape I need.

So back to the drawing board...

Making up the shape with old document files as per the heater box and tracing onto thin aluminium




bending using bits of angled aluminium, a workbench and hammer









The white stuff is just the protective covering on the aluminium. I always leave on until I'm ready to rivet or rough up for spraying





Adding bellmouths to the existing Yamaha outlets, fibreglass and tigersealed into place then dremmeled for a nice join.










No 4 is shorter as there is limited room at the back because of the windscreen wiper motor and also the upper left suspension mount.

Starting up the car revealed that the engine is getting too hot and the carbs and airbox shake quite a bit. As the carbs are rubber mounted, I'm not comfortable with them moving about in case they drop off. Looking at other forums it's something others have come across. Just below the manifold is the starter motor (ignitor of the last fire) and alternator. At time of writing I'm planning to shroud them so if fuel ever leaked again it would drain onto the road rather than into spark-generating devices.

This is not the solution but rather a last resort extra level of safety.

The solution is to brace the carbs and to a lesser extent airbox so they are solidly mounted to the engine and the rubbers act merely as a seal rather than a structural element.

Bracing the base of the airbox


and the top of the airbox to the carbs


Screwed rather than rivetted as it means dissassembly is easier for maintenance, re-jetting etc.





removing paper towel that protected against swarf getting in the carbs



carb to engine braces, centre-punched to indicate to which carb they attach as they are all slightly different shapes. Lots of trial and error to get these right.



Was looking everywhere for this bit after I dropped it. Only found hours' later when I thought I had a bit of gravel in by boot.



Fitted. almost no movement. But enough, I found later to start to ease the carbs from the rubbers slightly. This is my number one to-do. Brace the underside and either superglue the rubbers or try the correct Yamaha ones.



Knocking up some air-filter mounts. Filter is a stainless steel one with stainless steel gauze with filter oil jobbie. Hopefully it means I can run it through the dishwasher and re-oil rather than replace









Making up a cowl. As said earlier, this radiator and fan isn't enough to cool the engine. I don't have much more space to fit something bigger and don't want a second rad in the boot. Talking to a few people with experience of cooling, doubling the fans and maybe adding an electric water pump will help. Getting desperate on the cooling but resolve to try both.


Boiling up water to soften oil hoses so they can be pushed onto barbed fittings.


New hoses made to relocate oil cooler behind radiator to make space for electric water pump



Not the ideal location for an oil cooler but it's a compromise with space. Rubber hoses are later cable tied so they can't touch any of the pulleys


This combination works. More fuses and relays fitted so if one cooling element (2 fans, one pump) fails it only blows its own fuse and not the whole cooling system.



Since the fire I have reinforced this panel as it was quite weedy. especially in the skinny lower section. Before I made my new kevlar gearbox cover I experimented with the material by adding some to this and also a fibreglass panel on a Royal Enfield (since sold) which was starting to crack around a mounting.

In contrast to fibreglass resin the epoxy doesn't smell much and takes a lot longer to go off.

Kevlar is more like a normal piece of cloth - not springy like glass and not itchy. But a scissors won't cut it. Well a John Lewis one with a slightly serrated edge will.

Whereas chopped strand mat will take a shape by virtue of the temporary glue being broken down by the styrene, kevlar (and woven fibreglass) doesn't take shapes quite so easily. Didn't matter here.



are-metalled and repainted cross-brace. chrome and new mesh added to front panel.



Front panel added, bonnet trial fitted. This bonnet has the swage line smoothed out by its previous owner. Rather than trust the filler I plan to make my own bonnet from fibreglass of carbon fibre by taking a mold off this one. But time was running short so I used it for the MOT and the Minor National.