Headlight Troubles

About three weeks ago my driver's side headlight gave up the ghost. The timing could not have been worse. A few days from then, I had to drive 110 miles home for a family event, and then drive all the way back to university. Unfortunately, I left too late in the day, and the darkness caught up with me while I was on the motorway, so I had no choice but to press on with my one working headlight, and be very very careful.

Typically, being England, the weather decided to make things worse. It started raining, and a thick fog started enveloping parts of the motorway, forcing me down to a very low speed. It took an age of driving with my nerves on edge, but I made it home eventually. On the return journey the weather was clear, but I still had to make some of the journey in darkness. I arrived back at my flat and parked the car, and it has not moved since. I then set about getting a replacement headlight.

After asking on the Young Morris Minor Owner's Facebook group, I learned that replacing the headlight yourself is a very simple task, but I needed to make sure I bought the right sort of headlight to replace the broken one. The two main types are sealed beam units, and halogens. Sealed beam units are what the Minors rolled out of the factory with, and what my car clearly had. Halogens are an aftermarket upgrade that people often install, due to the halogen bulbs being far brighter than the sealed beams. They are very common, due to them being a factory item on Minis later in production, and the parts are directly interchangeable with the Minor. Halogens also differ from sealed beams in that the actual body of the headlight with the reflector has the halogen bulb inside it, as a separate entity. This means that, when the light dies, it's just a matter of pulling the old bulb out and replacing it with a new one. Sealed beam units, however, do not have a separate bulb. The filament is contained inside the headlight unit in a completely sealed cavity, hence the name. Essentially, the headlight itself IS the bulb. This means that when the filament burns out, the whole headlight has to come out and be replaced.

I was told that, just to make 100% sure, I should look very closely at the front of my headlights. If they were sealed beam units, they would say "sealed beam" at the bottom of the face. Nice and simple. They did indeed have this marking, but I also saw, in the centre of the headlight that the maker's name was not Lucas, as it should have been, but Wagner. Upon even closer inspection, I saw the very tiny words "USA LEFT DRIVE" on the face as well. My car is fitted with left hand drive USA spec headlights. This must be a relic of the time about ten years ago that the car spent a few years in Holland, where, of course, it was driven on the right hand side of the road. However, since getting back to the UK in 2003, this car has been running around for 9 years with wrong hand drive headlights, and not a single MOT station, including the one I have just been to, have managed to spot it. How bizarre. I will definitely have to change both the headlights. This is, however, not really a problem, as headlights for Minors seem to be always sold in pairs.

I then needed to decide whether I wanted to stick with sealed beam headlights, or upgrade to the halogens. I have decided to stay with sealed beams. You might say this is a stupid decision, since the halogens are brighter, and therefore safer. You would be completely right, but having driven for 10 months with sealed beam headlights which are meant for driving on the other side of the road, I haven't had any problems with seeing at night. Also, the front face of the halogen headlights is less convex (ie, flatter) than those of the sealed beams, which "bulge" more, and I much prefer the look. A new pair of sealed beam headlights also cost about half as much as a pair of halogen units.

Fortunately, I didn't have to buy them at all. A fellow young Moggy owner who happens to live in my city contacted me and said he had recently upgraded his car to halogen headlights, and so had a pair of perfectly functional sealed beam units that he didn't need, and so offered me them for free. What luck! I went round and picked them up from his flat the next day. I must remember to buy him a drink sometime.

I then started with the disassembly of the headlight surrounds. The first challenge was to remove the chrome outer ring that sits around the outside of the headlight. On my car, it also holds on the chrome headlight peaks that I had installed when I bought it. The first step is to remove one screw at the bottom, but on my car it was missing anyway. The next task was to actually get the ring off, and here I was stumped. There were no fasteners or obvious little things to work at to get the ring off. After searching on the internet with little success, I gave Stewart at Sussex Classics a ring, the person I'd bought the car from. I remembered that he had managed to remove the rings very quickly to install my headlight peaks. He told me that you basically had to push a flathead screwdriver in between the back of the ring and the rubber gasket that sits behind it and prise it off. After trying this for a few minutes, the ring reluctantly popped off, letting loose some alarming chunks of rust in the process.

With the ring off, I next had to tackle the components holding the headlight onto the car. The actual headlight unit is contained by a small metal bowl at the back, which screws onto an inner chrome ring that fits tightly around the edge of the headlight, holding the headlight into the bowl. The bowl itself is then secured using two adjuster screws and a hooked spring to an even larger bowl behind it, which is firmly screwed to the wing of the car. It was at this point I discovered how the previous owner had managed to use left hand drive headlights in Britain without being picked up the MOT man. He had simply adjusted the headlights to point over to the left, so the beam did not point into oncoming traffic. Quite resourceful really.

I undid the three screws holding the inner chrome ring onto the smaller bowl, and the headlight unit started to come out, exposing the wiring behind it. This simply attaches using a plastic connector to three metal contacts on the back of the headlamp. Remove the connector, and the headlight is free. Next, the spring holding the small bowl to the large bowl comes off, and then you twist the small bowl clockwise to break it free of the two adjuster screws. The adjuster screws themselves just unscrew from the larger bowl.

I could have then just re-installed the new headlight, but the larger bowl that holds it onto the car was in very poor shape.

The old headlamp bowl

The bowl is fastened onto the wing of the car with four screws, and behind it is a thick rubber gasket that prevents metal to metal contact, and also protects the adjustment screws from becoming rusty and jammed. But, as you can see in the picture above, a large part of the lip at the bottom of the bowl has completely rusted away. One of the four screws was in that area, and was therefore not holding the bowl on any more. I therefore decided that the bowl had to be replaced with a new one before I reassembled the headlight, which meant the old bowl had to come out. This meant taking out the four screws. These four screws are exposed to dirt and water being flung up from the wheel on the inside of the wing, and so are very prone to becoming jammed up with rust and muck, so I was prepared they may put up a fight.

The top two came out without putting up too much hassle, but the third one came out a few turns, and then refused to budge. It was the only screw still holding the bowl on, as all the metal around the fourth screw had rusted away, and seeing as the bowl was scrap now anyway, I just mangled the bowl off over it. The wiring for the headlight comes into the back of the bowl through a tiny hole, far too small to allow the plastic connector to pass through. Instead you have to undo the three wires from inside the engine bay, where they are connected using tiny bullet connectors. The connectors then slide out through a hole on the inner wing, which then allows the headlamp bowl and the wiring to come free from the car.

Unfortunately, progress then ground to a halt, as I was at a loss for ideas on how to get the stubborn screw free from the car. I discussed it with my friend Rob, who is a structural engineer and likes mucking about with tools and things. We concluded that perhaps the best way to remove the screw was to use a hacksaw to cut off the protruding length of it, and then use a high speed steel drill bit to drill through the length of the screw, causing it to collapse. Unfortunately, the only drill we had available was Rob's Stanley hand drill, so it would be slow going. I bought a hacksaw and some drill bits from B&Q, and Rob came round one afternoon and we set to work.

After Rob had experimented with screwdrivers and pliers, to no avail, we were about to resort to the drill, when Rob struck a brainwave. If we were to hacksaw off the top of the screw, as planned, he could then grab the shaft of the screw inside the wing with a pair of my beefy pliers and twist it out backwards. After taking it in turns and a lot of struggling, this eventually worked. We then released the final screw using a similar tactic, but this time we were able to plier it out from the front without resorting to the hacksaw. This finally released the old rubber gasket from the car, the last part of the headlight assembly remaining.

All six parts of the headlight assembly, in the order they come off

We then went inside to extract the headlight wiring from the old headlight bowl. It was held onto the small hole in the bowl that it passes through by a thick rubber grommet. However, over the years the rubber had become rock solid, and clearly it couldn't be saved. We had to cut it off carefully with the hacksaw.

By this time, the replacement parts I'd ordered from ESM Minor Spares had arrived. One shiny new metal headlight bowl, a new rubber gasket, some new screws to replace all the mangled and rusty ones, and a couple of odds and sods. There are also plastic headlight bowls available, which obviously do not rust, but I chose a metal replacement as it is both more original, and tougher; at least until it rots away. We managed to find a packet of rubber half-inch blanking grommets in a local motor factors, and after squeezing one into the wiring hole in the new headlight bowl, we used Rob's hand drill to make a small hole in it for the wiring, and slipped it through. I also had to remove the two locators for the adjuster screws from the old bowl and install them on the new one.

The new headlight bowl, with wiring installed

That is where the headlight replacement stands at the moment. Reassembly should be fairly straightforward, but work has so far not given me a free moment of daylight in which to do it so far. Hopefully I will get a chance to reassemble it soon.

MOT

A month ago I took my Minor for its MOT. It was the first time I'd ever MOT'd a classic car, and it didn't go quite as smoothly as I'd hoped.

I have put a car through an MOT before though, so before I prattle on about how my car fared in the MOT station, I have some advice about taking a classic car for an MOT or service at a garage. This also applies at a lesser extent to cars in general. Here are the tips I have learned along the way:

1. When choosing a garage, use this website:
http://www.goodgaragescheme.co.uk/
The Good Garage Scheme does exactly what it says on the tin; it is a list of trustworthy car garages that you can use to find a local garage that (hopefully) won't rip you off and will do a good job. Garages that are part of the scheme have to adhere to a strict code of conduct from the scheme, who will also conduct random investigations to make sure they behave. Customers can also rate them independently on the website. This website is indispensable when looking for an independent garage.

2. Choose a garage that prices by the job, not by the hour. This is not always easy to do or even possible, depending on where you live, but if you can do so, it can potentially save you a lot of money, and also speaks volumes about the garage's reputation. With a garage that prices by the job, they will discuss the price of the repair with you beforehand, and make an agreement with you. It then doesn't matter if the job takes 1 hour, 3 hours, or a day; the price will stay the same. Garages that price by the hour sometimes try and lure you in with low hourly rates, but they can end up deliberately wasting hours of time on a job and charging you for the privilege. This is not to say that all garages that price by the hour are unscrupulous or dishonest, but it's better to be safe than sorry.

3. Make sure the mechanics know that you know your car. Or, at least, if you don't know your car that well, make them think that you do. If they think that you are knowledgeable about your car, they are far less likely to try and take advantage of you, and this can save money. Furthermore, if you suggest that, once problems arise, you are prepared to go home and fix them yourself, you might find the price they offer for the garage to do the repair is rather less than you were expecting. If you do the repair yourself, obviously the garage makes no money from that, so it is therefore in their interests to persuade you to pay them to do the repair; bringing the price of the work down is the obvious thing to do.

4. Make the mechanic's job easier. If there is something wrong with your car, and you take it in to get it fixed, try and gather as much information about the problem as possible, so that when you arrive at the garage, you can tell the mechanic straight away what the problem is, which will save him/her spending valuable time trying to diagnose the problem for themselves. This is something they will definitely appreciate, and it also contributes to the impression that you know the insides of your car. Another point; if your car needs replacement parts (such as mine did) it is very unlikely that the garage will have them in stock, unless it is something generic like tyres or wiper blades. If you've brought in a classic car, the problem is greater, as the mechanics will not have the faintest idea where parts can be purchased from, or even if they are available. So, offer to buy the parts and bring them in yourself, and be as quick as you can about it. They will appreciate you doing the legwork for them, and it will also stop them charging a markup on the price of the parts.

Now that I've passed on my wisdom regarding garages, here's how my car got on with its MOT.

My car only had one major problem that I knew would have to be fixed for it to pass; the exhaust leak. I've posted about it before being fixed, but it just kept coming back, so I decided to turn it over to the professionals. The garage carried out the MOT first so that any and all problems that arose afterwards. Aside from the obvious blow in the exhaust, the mechanic also found a split in the driver's side steering rack boot; this is a round tube of stretchy, accordion-like rubber that slips over the end of the steering rack and stops the oil inside leaking out. A split in one could potentially compromise the operation of the steering, and is therefore a failure in an MOT. At first it looked like the boot would have to be changed, the procedure for which is doable at home, provided you have sufficient time and the right tools, which I, unfortunately, did not have. The garage would have charged £20 for this, plus another £5 for me to buy the replacement boot. Later, when the car was put up on a lift and the mechanic was able to inspect the boot from below, he was able to repair the split using some industrial sealant; only charged me £5. Splendid. 

However, my good luck ran out after that. When the mechanic attempted to repair the leaking exhaust, he discovered that there was now a split in the top of the exhaust pipe, meaning that attempting to repair the leak was futile. Because the exhaust pipe on a Minor is a one-piece system, I now had to replace the whole pipe. Modern cars have their exhaust systems divided into two or three separate pieces. This not only makes they easier to transport, but if a split or damage occurs on the pipe, only that section has to be replaced, not the whole thing.
I could have bought another standard, mild steel exhaust system like the one on the car; only about £40 brand new. However, having seen the lack of quality of my current mild steel exhaust, I was not really keen on replacing like for like. I actually have the receipt for the old exhaust in my service history. It was fitted in 2000. 12 years is a semi-reasonable lifespan for an exhaust, particularly on a car which did not cover a great deal of miles in that time. However, I wanted something better.

I had a look through some Morris Minor parts stores online, and I found that you can also buy a stainless steel exhaust system. This costs just over £100, well over twice the price of the mild steel system, however:
1. It is made out of a thicker gauge of steel than the mild system, so is therefore tougher.
2. Stainless steel does not rust, at all.
3. It has a slightly different shaped bend in the downpipe near the front of the exhaust, which allows it to clear the bulkhead of the car much more easily; no more pesky knocking.
4. The store I bought it from offer a lifetime guarantee on the system, meaning that if it does break during normal use, I will get a replacement for free.

After ordering in the stainless exhaust, I took it to the garage to have it fitted, and my MOT was then issued. I accrued four advisories:
1. Engine oil leak (well, naturally)
2. Tyres slightly worn (but still with plenty of miles on them; don't know why this was listed to be honest)
3. Front suspension bushes slightly perished (news to me)
4. Slight patches of corrosion on the underside of the car (You don't say?)

At some point I shall buy some new suspension bushes and fit them, along with some new steering rack boots on both sides to stop the same problem cropping up again at the next MOT. However, I am pleased with my shiny new exhaust, and even more pleased that my car is now on the road for another year with very little in the way of advisories.

So, what's it like to drive?

Before I get started on what it's like to drive a Morris Minor in 21st century British traffic, it's important to put it into context, chronologically.

The Minor was designed in the early and mid 1940s, and at launch in 1948 was incredibly advanced for the time. However, it was made up until 1971. It did undergo three very important upgrade phases throughout its production life, as well as many other smaller adjustments here and there. Fundamentally, however, it still remained very much a car of early 1950s standard. That means when my particular car rolled off the production line in 1967, it was already a decade or so out of date. To put this into a more modern perspective, this would be the same as Vauxhall still selling the old Nova today, as a brand new car. Was this down to the Minor's excellence as a piece of design, or due to the British Motor Corporation's lack of ingenuity and new models? I choose to believe it was a bit of both.

You would probably imagine then, that such a car would be hopelessly out of its depth in 21st century British traffic, where even a basic hatchback can top 100mph and the average saloon can push on past 120mph. However, you'd be (mostly) wrong. It would be churlish of me to suggest that the Minor is unfazed by modern traffic, because that's simply not true. However, if you're willing to have a bit of patience and adjust your driving style to the car, you can manage very well indeed.

Getting going in the first place is a bit more involving than your average modern car. First of all, you produce your keys. On my keyring, I've got a brass key that unlocks the doors and turns on the ignition, a large steel key that unlocks the fuel cap, and a strange looking key that unlocks the Stoplock that I've clipped onto the steering wheel. Of course, you can have your Minor without a Stoplock, or a locking fuel cap, in which case you'll only have one key, but both of these are welcome additions to my car. I'm also fortunate in that my car has never had new doors and that it has never been forcibly broken into. If your car's had its locks screwdrivered by a thief at some point, or it's had new doors fitted and the mechanic didn't change the locks over, you'll have separate lock and ignition keys. 
You put the key in the door and turn the lock. No fancy remote central locking system here; just good old fashioned lock and key action. If you want the passenger door or the boot open as well, you'll need to use the key on them separately, or unlock them from the inside. If you've got a four-door, then you've got even more unlocking to do.

It's worth mentioning at this point that the Minor has little in the way of security. There's no alarm and no built-in steering wheel lock. All you have is the door locks. It's possible to break into a Minor, without causing any damage at all, with a long screwdriver; trust me, I've done it (at least I got my keys back without having to phone the AA). I haven't tried hot-wiring my car, but I'm sure it wouldn't prove a challenge to even a novice thief. That's why I have a Stoplock. It means that the car can't be driven in anything but a straight line, and it only takes a few seconds to fasten and take off with the key. They are proven to deter amateur and opportunist car thieves and I thoroughly recommend them. There are also devices that fasten around the clutch pedal of the car, meaning it can't be depressed, so the car can't be driven at all.

Next, you climb into the driver's seat, which is quite easy, even for a 6ft 5" person like me, and shut the door. The doors need a bit more oomph to close properly than those of a modern car, but you get used to it. After removing the Stoplock, you stick the key in the ignition, located in the centre of the dashboard, not on the steering column. Starting the Minor, even on a cold day, is pretty easy, thanks to the manual choke. You pull it out a couple of inches, and then turn the key. Providing your battery is healthy, it should fire up in a couple of seconds. Then you can use the choke to bring the revs down to a good idling speed.

Now, before we move off, I must touch upon a very important subject; safety. If you're lucky like me, and have a Minor to which a previous owner has fitted three-point inertia reel seat belts, strap in. If your car is unmodified in the seat belt department, but was made in or later than 1967, you'll have very basic, non-inertia reel belts that were the minimum legal requirements back then. The back seats have no seat belts at all. If your car was made before 1967, it will not have any seat belts on any of the seats. I would strongly recommend that you have three-point inertia reel belts fitted to your Minor if it hasn't got them, especially if, like me, you plan on using it as your primary car. Throughout the years there have been many innovations in safety, but the one that consistently saves the most lives in most situations is the seat belt, so get some. That said, the Minor still lacks all other modern safety features. There are no crumple zones, airbags or side impact protection systems. The steering column isn't collapsible, something which we've taken for granted on cars since at least the early 80s. This means that in a head-on crash, the steering wheel will do quite a nasty injury to your ribcage, instead of falling away like a collapsible one would. The seats do not have headrests, so if someone rear-ends you particularly violently, you'll probably get whiplash.

It is safety concerns like this that cause a lot of people to steer clear of classic cars they otherwise like, and I can understand that. However, it is important to remember one of the most basic rules of driving safety; staying safe on the road is about avoiding accidents in the first place, not surviving them when they happen, and this is where I believe the Minor actually has an advantage. Because it's not that fast, because the brakes are not that good, and because there are no driver aids to help you, your driving style adjusts, and you become a lot more cautious. If you're a sensible driver, you'll be actively trying to be careful anyway. A line my parents trot out a lot, however, is that no matter how carefully I drive, I still have no control over the actions of other drivers, and that they could still endanger me. This is somewhat true, but by being aware of the road and cars around you, you can do your best to stay out of their way. Unless you encounter a psychopath who's determined to crash into every car he can find, you should be fine so long as you keep your wits about you.

Anyway, back to the driving experience. Once you've got the engine going, and you have (or haven't) strapped in your seatbelt, you're ready to set off. The clutch pedal hinges from the floor, so the action of pushing it feels a bit strange compared to other cars, where it usually hinges from a pedal box underneath the dashboard. What's more, you'll notice that the clutch is a lot heavier than in a modern car. This is because the clutch is operated by a cable, as opposed to the hydraulic system found in most modern cars. Although this requires a lot more effort to disengage the clutch, the system is much simpler and requires little maintenance, if any. But once the clutch is down, you can't just shift into first gear, no sir. You have to wait a few seconds for the gearbox to stop spinning, then select first. This is because first gear does not have any synchromesh on it. To cut a long and technical story short, this basically means you can't shift into first while the car is moving or there is motion in the gearbox, otherwise the gearbox will graunch horribly. However, since you only use first gear for moving off from stationary or ascending particularly steep hills, it's not too much of a bother, but more on that later. The other three gears have synchromesh, so you can shift into them any time without graunching. The gear pattern itself is as you'd find on most modern cars; first at top left, second at bottom left, third at top centre, fourth at bottom centre, and reverse at bottom right, with a blank spot at top right where fifth would be.

Once you're in gear, give it a bit of gas with the accelerator, and let the clutch up. The biting point of the clutch is quite low on the pedal's travel, and is unfortunately quite vague, probably due to the cable system. This will probably vary based on the condition of the clutch disc and the cable system. It is quite easy to forget where the biting point is after a few days of not driving the car, but after a minute or two you'll get into the swing of it.

As you move out onto the road, the first thing you'll notice is that first gear whines very loudly due to the lack of synchromesh. Then you'll go for a gear change. The throw, that is, the distance the top of the gear lever has to travel to change gears, is vast by modern standards. Most small cars nowadays have a 3-5 inch throw. The throw on the Minor gearbox is a good 10 inches, so snappy gear changes are out, and if you try to rush the gearbox the synchromeshes will probably complain at you. However, the huge throw is very reassuring, and it really feels like you've changed gears. It's fun too; moving the huge lever around makes you smile as it clunks into position, and really makes you feel like you're putting more effort into driving the car, which you are. You'll move through the gears quite quickly. If you're keeping the revs low, second will take you to about 13mph, and third to 25mph. Fourth is your final gear, which will take you all the way up to your top speed of 78mph. However, for pootling around town, where you seldom exceed 30mph, the Moggy will do just fine. 

Once you're on the road and have got some speed up, you'll instinctively check your mirrors and instrumentation. The rear view mirror is great. It's nice and large like a modern mirror, and show's what's behind you nicely. The wing mirrors, however, are a slightly different story. This is partly because, in some cases, there won't be any. Wing mirrors were not seen as compulsory items in the Minor's day, so a lot of cars were sold without them. However, most owners have fitted them to their cars themselves, as they add to the chrome factor. Door mirrors are also available but despite their convenience they remain less popular, due to the fact they often interfere with the quarterlight. My car has been fitted with wing mirrors, but they are of limited usefulness. The one on the driver's side does show what's behind me down the right flank, but because the mirror is small, quite a long way down the car, and not slightly convex like it would be on a modern car, the view it gives is very narrow, although having it on the wing instead of the door does put it closer to the driver's field of vision. The passenger side wing mirror is useless. This is because it points towards the ground, and does not have any vertical adjustment, so all you'll see is the gutter racing past. It is useful for parallel parking however. To adjust the mirror's horizontal positioning, you need to use a spanner, which means adjusting them correctly is the work of two people, or a very lucky guess.

You then glance at your speedo, which by now you've noticed is in the centre of the dashboard. It shows your speed up to 90mph (some also have it in kph), and has a simple fuel gauge at the bottom. Within the dial there are four lights to tell you whether the ignition is on/battery is discharging, whether your full beams are on, whether the engine has enough oil pressure, and if the oil filter needs replacing. That's it. There's no tachometer, temperature gauge, oil pressure gauge, trip counter or MPG readout. Just the basics.

Along the road, you need to take a turn. First of course, you indicate. The Minor 1000 has flashing indicators just like a modern car, and the stalk is on the right side of the steering column. When you flick it up or down to indicate the tip of it will flash a bright green light, and you will hear the flasher unit clicking on and off. The indicators do not self cancel, but this is bonus to me as I found the self cancelling sort often think they know better where you're going than you do.

Next, you'll brake for the corner. In my opinion, it is the brakes of a Morris Minor that will most startle a driver fresh from the world of modern cars. The Minor has simple, unassisted drum brakes. These differ greatly from the disc brakes of a modern car, which are much more effective, and do not suffer from brake fade (at least, not in normal road use). Modern cars are also equipped with brake servos. These are devices that mechanically augment the force you are applying to the brake pedal, making the brakes lighter and sharper. However, the Minor is a good quarter ton lighter than even the most basic modern hatchback, and will be half a ton lighter than the average saloon, meaning there is a lot less dead weight to slow down. This means that the drum brakes do actually work reasonably well, providing the system is in good condition. You do have to really step on the pedal though, not just lightly push it as you might do in a modern car.

As you take the corner, you'll notice the steering. This is one of the Minor's best features. The steering uses a rack and pinion mechanism to direct the front wheels, as a lot of cars now still do. This may seem like a pretty mundane and simple feature, but at the time it was a quantum leap forward in car handling. It means the steering in a Minor, although unassisted, is light, but extremely precise and pointable, helped in part by the independent front suspension.

After pootling about in town for a while, let's say you wish to take a trip along the motorway. Once you leave the slip road and join the motorway, you'll push up past 50 and 60mph. The noise at this point will probably be fairly loud; not deafening, but somewhat noisier than a modern hatchback might be. This is mostlt because 4th gear will run the engine at higher revs than 5th gear would, which you of course, do not have. It's also due to the fairly minimal in the cabin. On most cars, you'll get a slab of it under the carpets, and probably nothing else. Then there is the issue of speed to contend with. In my 1098cc car, speeds in excess of 75 mph are attainable, eventually. However, I find it much more agreeable to cruise around 60mph. It is possible to cruise at 70mph, but this of course puts much more strain on the running gear (my gearbox bearings sometimes complain at me at these speeds) as well as using up considerably more fuel. At 60mph, the car runs very happily and should return quite a reasonable MPG; I calculated 41mpg on one trip. However, your cruising and maximum speeds will depend quite a lot on the general condition of your engine, gearbox, axles, tyres, as well of course the engine's capacity. The 948cc engine is almost as powerful as the 1098cc engine, and is quite capable of keeping up a 60mph cruising speed. The 803cc engine has rather less power than the 948cc, and cruising speeds of between 50-55mph seem to be the norm for those engines. The 918cc sidevalve engine has a slightly higher top speed than the 803cc engine, but suffers from slower acceleration. Cars with the sidevalve engine are very rare though, so it's unlikely you'd use one regularly.

Of course, a cruising speed of 60mph will relegate you almost permanently to the outside lane, which is fine, until you meet a lorry in front that is going 55mph, and you have to overtake. Cars will be whizzing by in the middle lane often in excess of 80mph, so you must be careful. The wing mirror, as I mentioned previously, is of limited usefulness, so you'll be checking over your shoulder a fair bit before you pull out. Foot to the floor, and you'll slowly creep past the lorry, and probably build up a couple of cars behind you. Where possible, time your overtakes on a downhill stretch of road, so gravity will assist you.

Unfortunately, whilst you're driving, it has started to rain, so you switch on the wipers. Modern cars have variable speeds you can set the wipers to; usually Intermittent, On, and Fast are the three you can choose from. In the Minor, there are no speeds; on or off are your choices. However, the speed they have is a good speed, and should see you alright. I have heard from others that the wipers are only good in light to medium rain. In my opinion, this is untrue. I once drove my car at about 50mph along a motorway through absolutely torrential rain, and the wipers still allowed me to see where I was going. The only real problem with the wipers is at the other end of the rain scale, when there is only light spitting drizzle. The wipers will wipe away the tiny drops of rain too quickly, and will start to squeak against the glass, so you will have to manually turn the wipers on and off constantly until the rain gets heavier or stops.
What about if your windscreen gets dirty? My advice is, stop at a service station and clean it with their hose. The windscreen washer is a manual pump that you push with your thumb; basically a water-pistol aimed at your windscreen. The little jets of water it delivers are pathetic, and will probably just smear the dirt around rather than wash it off. They also have a nasty habit of getting airlocked and refusing to work at all.

What about if you need to travel at night? My car has standard sealed beam headlights, although upgrades to halogen headlights are very common. However, I find the sealed beam headlights to be perfectly fine. The peripheral light is not as good as a modern car, the light doesn't reach quite as far, and they are a bit low in their dipped setting, but on full beams they are absolutely fine.

Comfort? Well, for cold days, there is a heater. Actually, the term "heater" is a bit of a misnomer, as the device itself does not actually heat the air. It's just an electric fan that blows air into the car. This is useful in traffic jams when you are hardly moving, or not at all, but above 25mph the air will be blown through the car by itself far more effectively. The actual temperature of the air coming through the heater is controlled by a valve underneath the dashboard. Push it all the way in, and hot water from the engine will run through the heater, warming up the air as it passes through. Pull the valve all the way out, and the flow of water is shut off, providing no heat to the air. Once the engine is up to temperature, it can heat up the air coming into the car quite considerably. The heater panel allows you to shut off the flow of air, direct it at the windscreen through two vents in the dashboard, or vent it entirely into the car. However, I find the demisting function of the heater rather unhelpful, as it will actually steam up the windscreen before gradually clearing it again, so you will need to remain stationary while this happens. I choose instead to have a flow of cold air into the car, thus keeping an equilibrium of temperature between the air and the glass, thus preventing any steaming from occurring. Unfortunately, the rear window will steam up on damp days, or cold days when you are carrying passengers (all that hot breath). The only reliable way I have found of demisting it is to drive with your window down, allowing fresh air to reach the back of the car. A coat is therefore advised. The Minor is definitely more suited to warmer weather. There is no air conditioning of course, so if it is a boiling hot summers day you may get a bit sweaty. Fortunately, those days are somewhat rare in England. On warm days you'll be fine just rolling down a window or opening a quarterlight.
As far as seating goes, you may be pleasantly surprised. You get stylish 1960s vinyl seats; two in the front, and a bench seat in the back that is nominally for two people, but due to there being no seatbelts back there, you could, in theory, cram in as many people as will fit. I am 6ft 5, and I can fit into the driver's seat with no problems at all. This is not because the Minor is a big car; it isn't. It's because the interior is not crammed full of bulky plastic trim, so there is plenty of room for your limbs. The seats themselves are actually quite comfortable, and perfectly bearable on all but very long journeys. Rear legroom is somewhat limited, and although the driver's seat can be slide forward a bit, it won't help a great deal.

What about for moving things? The boot on the saloon and convertible cars is not exactly cavernous, but should be ok for day to day things. A reasonable amount of shopping can be fitted in there, or a couple of reasonably sized suitcases. One thing I do like about the boot is that it is dual layered. There is a gap between the floor of the car and the floor of the boot, above which luggage rides. About half this gap is taken up by the spare wheel, but the other half is a great place to keep tools and a box of spare parts.
I should stress, however, that if you plan on moving a lot of things around in your Minor, a traveller model would probably be more suitable, perhaps even a van.

I have waffled quite a bit now, but I believe I've covered all the essentials. To sum up, the Morris Minor 1000 is good, fun little car to drive. It copes well with city traffic, and motorways are fine too as long as you take your time and keep your wits about you. It is quite a departure from modern motoring, but it's very easy to cope with. I find it is its most fun when you get onto a country lane and get your foot down; it becomes a real roller coaster ride.

I should mention that I can only speak for cars like mine; that is, post-1963 2-door saloons, since that is the only sort of Morris Minor I have ever owned. I chose it because it is the latest and best equipped version of the car. If you buy an earlier car, you will have different features to mine, unless they have been retrofitted. I will cover the differences in detail in another article.
However, this post should give you a good indication of what it is like to drive a Morris Minor every day. 

National Rally 2012

About a month ago, the Morris Minor Owner's Club held their annual National Rally for three days (29th June - 1st July), so it's perhaps a bit late to write this post, but my Jeep has been keeping my quite busy :).
The National is basically where all members of the MMOC who can make it go and camp together in a huge field for several days. There are competitions, concourse judging for cars, parties and other general camping lulz, as well as the chance to walk round and look at everyone else's cars.

I arrived on the afternoon of the 29th with Matt, another young member who lives near me; he has a 1970 two-door saloon, similar to mine, but duck-egg blue, called Misty. He originally restored it, only to have an accident in it earlier this year. He had only just got it rebuilt with a new MOT in time for the National, and it was nice to see it turned out so well.

Overall, I had a pretty good time at the National. I met most people from the young members facebook group and had a look round their cars. One of them even let me drive her traveller, one of the other Minor variants, that I had not before driven; I've decided that if I get another Moggy, it'll be a traveller. I also drove another two-door saloon like mine, but with wider wheels, to see the benefit of the extra traction and stability they provide, which is quite considerable as it turns out. I also drove an Austin 1100, which one of the young members had brought along; quite a nice little car.

Undoubtedly one of the best bits of the weekend though, was the auto jumble. An auto jumble is basically a car boot sale, where only car parts and paraphernalia are sold. There is a huge one once a year at Beaulieu where anything and everything to do with any old car is sold, but the one at the National was only Morris Minor parts. You can, to a certain extent, get Morris Minor parts off the internet whenever you need them. However, the selection of parts will be limited, and the companies that sell them will usually charge slightly over the odds. You can also scour eBay for classic car bits, but that can often mean weeks or even months of waiting before something you want will turn up. However, at the auto jumble, anything you could want is there, being sold by someone. There's everything from original nuts and bolts, to super rare pieces of trim, to engines in all states of repair, to entire Moggies. What's more, because the seller is right there in front of you, you can haggle, and there's no delivery charges to pay.

I was mainly on the lookout for a new windscreen washer pump, since my current one was being not terribly reliable. I was expecting to be rooting around for ages to find one. I couldn't have been more wrong. After only 10 minutes, I managed to find a stall with a whole box full of them, all tested and working, for only a fiver a time. That purchase made, I would have been all set. But, like a child in a toy shop, I found several other things I just had to have. I noticed that most of the stalls had a few steering wheels for sale. This reminded me that my own steering wheel was incredibly sun damaged and scabby, and it would be stupid of me not to look for a better one while I was there. There were indeed steering wheels in much better condition than mine, but none of them were perfect, and they seemed to all be offered around £15; not an exorbitant amount of money, but more than I really wanted to spend, so I kept a lookout for a cheaper one. My persistence paid off. I found a chap selling lots of miscellaneous Moggy bits, including a steering wheel. Although not perfect either, it was in rather better nick than many of the other wheels I'd seen for sale, and leagues better than the one in my car. I asked the man how much it was, and he told me that the box I'd picked it out of was a "rummage box" and everything was on an offer basis, so he asked me how much I'd like to pay for it. I offered him a fiver, and he accepted. A steal!

Now armed with a new steering wheel, I thought it would be a shame to put my old, damaged and worn out horn button on it, so I set about looking for one of those too. I found a man selling two very nice original ones. One was in lovely, gleaming, unbroken condition, while the other literally looked like it had just come off a showroom car. However, for the first one the man wanted £15, and for the second, a rather substantial £25. I tried haggling with him on the first button, but he refused to budge, stating that they were the two best original horn buttons for a Minor 1000 in the whole auto jumble; quite a bold claim, but from what I had seen throughout the jumble, I had no evidence to suggest he was lying, so I forked out for the button. Still, £20 for a whole new steering wheel package isn't bad at all.

It then occurred to me that now would also be the perfect time to look for a new glovebox lid, as my current one has a hole in it. It took a bit of searching, but I found two at once with the same seller, one in burgundy, and one in the same green as my car. He let me have the green one for £3, another bargain. Granted, the paint on the green one is pretty badly faded, and there is a small amount of surface rust, but it's nothing that can't be sanded down and repainted with a spray can, and, crucially, the new lid is hole-free!

That was all the shopping I did on the 30th. I didn't plan on perusing the jumble on the 1st of July, thinking that all the good stuff would have been taken the day before, but finding myself with not much to do around midday, I had a stroll through and took a closer look at some other stalls that I had overlooked previously. On one chap's stall I found a new gear stick boot, something else which I had forgotten I needed. The gear stick boot is simply a square piece of shaped rubber that fits over the hole in the floor where the gear stick connects to the gearbox, with a small hole in the middle for the stick to protrude from. The one in my car had become dry and brittle, and part of the rubber had broken away, so a new one was in order. The chap wanted £8 for the boot, which seemed a little steep, but he insisted it was the last "New Old Stock" boot still for sale at the jumble and was "much better than that new Chinese stuff". "New Old Stock" is a term given to parts made by the original manufacturer, but have been never used. They are the holy grail for classic car parts. I had seen several other boots for sale, but they had all appeared to be second hand, so I gave the man his £8. Besides, I had the impression that he had tried to sell it for £10 the previous day and had been unsuccessful.

A couple of stalls along, I found an old lady selling bits and bobs, including a bundle of three head gaskets. There was a label on them for £5. She assured me that the gaskets were genuine New Old Stock ones, and although they were a little tarnished from many years in storage, were fighting fit. I know from other young members that the new head gaskets made by an aftermarket company are of inferior quality, but I didn't need a new head gasket, and didn't really feel like spending a fiver, but then the lady told me i could have them for a quid. Can't really say fairer than that, so I bought them. I later found out that two of the head gaskets are for a Morris Minor engine, and one is for the larger 1275cc A-series engine.

The last item I bought was a bit of an oddball. It was a jack, for lifting up cars. I already have a hydraulic trolley jack which I bought from Halfords, and very useful it has been. However, being a trolley jack it is rather large and a bit unwieldy, and besides, one jack is never enough. The jack I bought at the National for only a fiver is a rather antiquated but still fully functional screw jack. It is much smaller than the trolley jack, yet can still lift the same 2 tons. It has a long, S shaped handle that slots into a spindle on the side of the jack, and you turn like mad. The jack foot then rises out of the base. I've already used it to lift up my Jeep once. It's harder work and takes quite a bit longer than the hydraulic jack, but lifts a lot more smoothly and cleanly, and due it's small size, is a lot more handy and easy to position. In any case, it's very rare you see a tough and capable piece of workshop equipment like that for a fiver.

As for the rest of the National, when I wasn't spending money on parts, I spent most of the time getting to know the other young members, and having questionable discussions around a campfire. On the second evening, there was also an Abba tribute band and a 1970s fancy dress, but the less said about that the better. The weather wasn't exactly perfect; it was very windy with spatterings of rain here and there, but with some nice bits of sunshine, enough to give me a bit of sunburn. All in all though, it went very well.


The young members themselves are an interesting bunch; all quite eccentric in their own way (including yours truly), but then you'd have to be to want to own and run a 50-odd year old car. Generally though, they're all very nice people, and hey, we still did standard young-person stuff, ie, stay up way past our bedtimes in a field, eat copious amounts of fry-up food, drink a bit much, and suggest that the Minor Traveller should have been called the "Minor Dogger", due to being the ideal size to screw in.


Next year's National will coincide with the Morris Centenary, celebrating 100 years since Morris's first car was made in 1913. Needless to say, it will be a much bigger event, due to Morrises of every size and shape will be turning up besides the Minors. Perhaps some some trolling of the Morris Marina Owners Club might be in order.

Leak Fixed

So it's taken me another week to get around to doing it, but my exhaust leak is now fixed. I bought a cheap makeup mirror from a pound shop, and put it on the bottom of the engine bay so I could see up towards the underside of the leaking area. A bit more paste (actually, quite a lot of paste), and the exhaust is now leak free (I think). The sounds have disappeared so I'm going to assume the problem is dealt with.

Still Leaking

Yesterday I set about tackling my exhaust leak. I borrowed I trick I learned from  Wheeler Dealers (which is an excellent program if you're into classic cars), which is to get a bit of kitchen towel, and move it around the area where you suspect the leak to be coming from, with the engine running of course. Once you find the hole, the escaping gas will make the towel flutter, and you've found your leak. I found that my leak was indeed on the join between the exhaust manifold and the top of the exhaust pipe. This is clearly quite a troublesome joint on my car, as it was heavily coated in exhaust sealant paste. The hole I found was quite big; about 1 and a half inches long and a half inch wide.


As I was investigating a man who lives in my building walked past. He used to work on Minis a fair bit and told me the only way to seal the joint properly was to take it apart, readjust it and fit a new gasket. He's probably right, as more sealant is just going to wear away after a while, but it's a good temporary fix. I might be looking at a new exhaust system, as my current one is 12 years old now and a bit past it. However, that can be something for the summer, when I have access to a friend's ramp. However for the moment, some exhaust sealer paste should plug the hole quite well. I popped over to Halfords and bought some "Gum Gum Silencer Repair Paste". It comes in a circular tin much like shoe polish does, and it looks very much like wet mud, and it even has the same texture and consistency.


You simply warm up the exhaust pipe by running the engine, and then wet the gap, for some reason, and then cram the paste into the hole. Then you leave it overnight, and the next time you start the car, the heat will harden it up completely. Unfortunately, I found out today that it didn't completely fix the problem. The rasping noise and chuff chuffing are quieter now, but are still present. However the paste I put on the hole is holding firm. I did another tissue test, and found that the hole was a bit bigger than I though, and it seems to extend underneath the exhaust pipe where I could not see it.


So it looks like more paste will be needed, as well as a mirror so I can see where to put it.

Raspy exhaust?

Went on a nice long drive today, and took a couple of friends to Fareham to do some shopping. It's been a nice sunny day today, and all the classic cars came out of the woodwork. We saw a huge 1960s Cadillac, a Pontiac Trans-Am, two '65 Mustangs, a Porsche 356 Carbriolet, a Reliant Scimitar, a Cortina mk.2 and a Beetle. My Moggy made the trip faultlessly, although on the way home I noticed it had developed a rasping noise coming from the engine whenever I stepped on the gas. At home I opened the bonnet and inspected further, and I found there was an irregular but constant "chuff-chuff" noise coming from the area around the carburettor and the manifolds.


I suspected at first a leak from the exhaust manifold, and hoped it was nothing to do with the carburettor, since I don't know much about them and they're expensive to replace. I've just gone onto the Young Members facebook page and asked their opinion, and I've been told it is indeed an air leak, probably from the point where the exhaust manifold joins onto the top of the exhaust pipe. This actually makes a lot of sense, since that was the part that Sean at Sussex Classics had to wrangle with to stop the exhaust pipe knocking against the bodywork. There's a lot of white sealant all over the join, and I've been advised to strip away the old stuff and re-seal it. How I'm going to get the old sealant off is a mystery to me; chipping away with a screwdriver I presume. Luckily there's a local motor factors and a Unipart store within walking distance of my flat, so getting some new sealant should be fairly easy. I think first the priority is to ascertain as to whether the leak is coming from, and I really hope it is that joint. I'm pretty sure it's not the inlet manifold, as that would put extra air into the cylinders and make the car run funny. However, if it's where the exhaust manifold meets the block, It'll mean a lot of work with spanners and some new gaskets. Not that complicated, but fiddly and time consuming.


It's not like the car's any worse to drive, but exhaust leaks are an instant MOT failure, since the gasses can get into the cabin; not good. What's more the rasping is irritating. It is pretty annoying this happened now; I've just bought a new Jago Jeep for a bit of restoration, and I was going to go home and see it for the first time tomorrow. With a leaky exhaust however, a 100 mile drive doesn't seem very sensible. Hopefully I can have this sorted out by the end of tomorrow.

Living With It Since Then

Well, here it is; my Moggy. At the time of writing, I've owned this car for 4 months and 5 days. So I'm going to tell you exactly how this car has impacted on my life.


The first week I owned the car, I couldn't keep away from it. I drove it everywhere for the slightest reason; often for no reason at all. I poked and prodded every linkage, fluid container, pipe, valve, spring and whatever I could find. I bored my friends to death with it over facebook and whenever I ran into them. I stood for ages in the car park, looking at it from every angle. Essentially, I became obsessed.


After a week, I announced to my mum that I would come home that weekend to show her, my stepdad and my brother. I made the 100 mile journey home from university without incident. Well, almost. Upon pulling into the driveway at home, I signalled my arrival at home with a couple of quick toots of my horn. Except that, I didn't. Not a sound came when I pressed the horn button. So the first time my mum and stepdad saw my Moggy, it was in the driveway, with its bonnet up, with me prodding at things. Not a very good first impression.


After some brief investigation on the internet, I found that the most likely culprit was the fuse that controls the horn. The Morris 1000, being such a basic car, only has three fuses in its electrical system. One fuse that controls the horn and the interior ceiling light, one that controls the wipers, the indicators and the heater, and one that controls the side lights. The main and brake lights are unfused. So after opening up the fuse box, I found that the fuse for the horn and interior light was indeed blown. The fuses aren't like modern car fuses, with the plastic heads and the bladed connectors. They're the older, tube shaped glass fuses that you still find in wall plugs. Unfortunately, I didn't have any 35 amp fuses to replace the blown one. Luckily, I found two spare fuses inside, covered in grime, with the word "Lucas" written on each. These fuses must have been there all the car's life. "How cool," I thought "I get to repair the problem using an original spare part.". I was so pleased at finding these fuses, I threw away both the old fuses, despite the other fuse for the indicators etc, being fine, and replaced them with the spares. Big mistake. After doing so, not only did the horn not work, but also the indicators, heater and wipers. This got me quite irritated, to say the least.


Of course, in hindsight, it's easy to see what the problem was. The "fresh" fuses that I put in had degraded so badly over the past 45 years, that they were completely useless. Somehow I didn't see this at the time. After being frustrated for an hour, I phoned a friend of mine who works with his dad in their workshop turning mk.2 Escorts into rally cars and generally being awesome. I popped down to his, and after jumping the fuse box connectors with a bit of wire, we discovered the fuses were bad. Replacing them both with new fuses solved the indicators et al, but the horn still wouldn't work. After jumping the current direct to the horn from the battery, it turned out that the horn itself was bad. We also discovered that the circuit that handles the interior light has a short in it, which was likely what had blown the old fuse in the first place. I took the bulb out of it to stop it happening again. To this day I haven't attempted to mend it, partly because it wasn't that useful, and partly because diagnosing even a simple wiring loom problem is beyond me.


Problem solved, I took my mum out for a drive to get some shopping. My mum has some fond memories from the late 70s of the Minor, as her first boyfriend had one (it was even a girl magnet back then). Needless to say it's been a long time since she's been in one, and she told me about all the nostalgia it brought back for her. My stepdad also liked it, although back in the day he was more of a motorbike person, and still is. He had a mk.2 Jaguar though. My brother, on the other hand, was slightly less impressed. He is not a car person, at all. He's an environmentalist, and my car burns leaded petrol, which did upset him a bit. The main thing he didn't like was the safety, or lack thereof, of my car when I took him for a drive. But hey, not everyone is a fan.


That weekend I also picked up my 17 year old stepsister from town. She said it was "gay". 1650lbs of metal cannot possess a sexuality, as far as I'm aware. But hey, not everyone has taste.


Once I was back at uni, I got introduced to the social side of owning a classic car. I'll be honest, when I joined the Morris Minor Owner's Club (MMOC), I only did it for the insurance. I'm afraid I held an idea that a lot of people do, that members of classic car clubs are all old people, who are very anal about detail and all too ready to bore you with the intricacies of their 5 year restoration project, and, as such, I wouldn't really talk with them at all. However, after posting the video of my first day of Moggy ownership on youtube, someone from the MMOC Young Members Register found it and posted it on their facebook group. The head of the register then contacted me through youtube and asked me whether I'd like to join the register, and their facebook group. Every day since then, my facebook inbox has been filled with chatter and posts from people in the group, sharing tips and advice and swapping parts and so forth. If I need help with something, which has been mercifully rare, I can ask on the group and get a helpful answer. 


I suppose I should tell you about arguably the most important two areas of living with a classic car, or indeed any car, as a main vehicle; the cost and ease of maintenance, and the reliability.


As far as reliability is concerned, it has been almost faultless, besides the horn. Starting it up from cold takes a bit of practice, but is always easy enough, and never takes more than about 20 seconds at most. Once it is started, the choke will keep it ticking over till it's warmed up. I've done several long motorway drives in the Minor, and a great deal of stop-start city driving, and not once has it overheated, refused to move or broken down in any way. The brakes have always brought me comfortably to a stop, and the electrics, apart from that mishap with the horn, have been very good to me. The lights, wipers, heater and indicators always performing perfectly. A couple of times I've had to readjust the horn fuse, due to the fuse box being a bit tired. One time the pin that holds the driver's door handle in came loose; it took me half an hour to take the door card off, replace the pin, and put the card back on. The windscreen washer also stopped working soon after I got it, but this was due to the washer fluid being too soapy, and foaming up in the pipe. I replaced it with plain water and it has been fine. But these are just little niggles in the long run. Everything crucial that keeps the car moving, and allows you to drive it has worked perfectly.


So, it's a reliable car. I put this down to not only excellent build quality (the fact that it's still here after 45 years speaks volumes), but also to the ruthlessly simple and tough design. It's the sort of machine where you can tell how it works just by looking at the oily bits. But is it difficult to get at the oily bits? No, not at all, and you won't need friends at Fort Knox partswise, to quote Quentin Wilson. There are three companies in the UK supplying Morris Minor parts at cheap prices, and since the Minor shares a great deal of parts with other British cars of the era, certain parts can be found in places specialising in other cars, or no cars in particular. And of course, there is good old eBay. A complete, running A-series engine can be had for under £100 if you're desperate. But of course, you'll generally be buying more modest parts for your Minor.


I mentioned earlier that my horn bit the dust. A horn isn't really the best example of a replacement part, as they are entirely generic and fit on just about any car, even today. I've seen basic disc horns for £5. But what about Morris Minor horns? As it turns out, brand new Morris Minor horns are only £10 off the internet. They probably won't be as good quality as original parts; that's an unfortunate reality of re-manufactured BMC/BL parts, but at least they're there. I chose to opt for something a bit different. I bought a klaxon horn (the sort that goes "aroooga") off eBay for £10, plus £8 on some bolts and jubilee clips to hold it onto the standard mounting point. Getting the old horn out was easy; just a matter of unplugging the two electrical connectors and undoing one bolt, and it comes straight off. Being that the engine is quite small, there's plenty of room to maneuver in the engine bay. If it were a modern car, the horn would be inside a tightly packed engine bay where it would be difficult to reach, and would probably necessitate the removal of other parts to get to it.


Of course, replacing parts when they fail is essential, but just as important on  old cars is preventative maintenance, and constantly assessing the condition of your car. The Minor was made in a time when people who bought it probably wouldn't have had a car before, and wouldn't always be able to afford to pay a mechanic to service it for them, so routine maintenance is very simple. One of the first things I did after getting the Minor was check the oil. There was plenty of it, but it was a nasty black, and clearly had been there for a long time. So after asking about what oil to use on the Young Members facebook group (20W50), I invited a fellow Young Member round who lived locally to make sure I didn't break anything, and we made a day of changing the oil. I had previously inspected the air filter and found that it was filthy, and needed changing. I therefore decided to order a full service kit, which not only comes with a new air filter, and a new oil filter and O rings that I needed for the oil change, but also a brand new distributor cap, set of points, distributor rotor arm, condenser, and four spark plugs. All that only cost £16. I wanted to put on all the new parts of the distributor and replace the spark plugs, but Marcus, the young member who'd come to assist me, advised against tampering with the ignition system, since it was working perfectly and can often be a tricky area, and instead keep the spares in the boot should I need them. Sound advice, and the spares are still unused. Apart from a few spillages, the oil change went without incident, and I felt immensely satisfied. Incidentally, the oil was Halfords 20W50 and a 5 litre can cost £18, but Asda stuff can be had for £7 a gallon.


A couple of weeks later, I was bored again and wanting to do some more maintenance. I checked the gearbox oil, but that was full and fine. However, my differential (a big mass of cogs at the back of car that imparts motion to the wheels) had been a bit noisier than it really should have been, so I thought changing its oil would be a good thing to do. A litre of gearbox oil was £6 from a local Unipart store, and I purchased an oil pump can for £3.50 from Halfords for getting the oil up into the diff. I invited my friend Rob around to help, partly because he's an engineer and enjoys fiddling with things, and partly because I knew getting the new oil into the diff housing would require a lot of tedious pumping, and I didn't want to do it all myself. The actual operation itself was very simple. It didn't do too much to quieten my differential unfortunately, but I learned later that my diff is just a bit old and tired, and will probably need replacing fairly soon.


Even that still didn't sate my desire for tinkering. One of the trappings of classic car maintenance is valve adjustment. These are rather like the valves on your heart which let blood in and out, except on an engine, they let fuel and air in, and exhaust gas out. Over time, they gradually move away from their correct factory setting, and need to be readjusted, so the gap in the valve rockers when fully open is the correct width. This also needs to be done on most modern cars, but much less infrequently, and is also much harder to do due to inaccessibility, often requiring special tools, so is best left to your servicing people. However, on any car with an A-series engine, it's a doddle to do yourself. Two bolts hold on a cover on top of the engine, under which are all 8 valves, two per cylinder. You then use the starting handle (yes the Minor does come with a starting handle) to rotate the engine, closing each valve one by one so you can adjust the gap. This is done using what's called a feeler gauge, which is a thin piece of metal of an exact thickness, and you use this to feel the valve clearances, and adjust as necessary with a screwdriver. Sounds simple enough. I decided to adjust my valves because they were making noises when the engine was cold, but stopped once it was warmed up. Of course, I know now that noisy valves when cold is just part and parcel of an old A-series, and I'l just have to live with it. But at the time, I thought that adjusting the valves might make it go away. The clearances I needed to put in were .012 of an inch. Unfortunately, correctly feeling the gap with the gauge is a bit of an art form in itself, and doing it for the first time, I got it a bit wrong, and set all the gaps way too loose. It's better to set them too loose than too tight, but now the valves were even noisier, even when the engine was warmed up, and also made the cold engine a bit more tricky to start.


I decided not to tinker with the valves further, and next time I was at home in Oxfordshire, I paid a visit to Oxford Minor Parts, a specialist out in the countryside. The man there was very friendly and helpful, and not only readjusted my valves properly, but gave helpful information on how to set them properly in the future. He also spent some time looking over my car and giving me tips here and there about things. He told me that my valve rockers were not in fact original Minor ones, but were uprated ones taken from a Metro engine. He also managed to find my original chassis number, told me my diff would need replacing in the near future, and informed me my engine was not the one my car left the factory with. It is a Gold Seal engine, which apparently means it was bought back by British Leyland some time ago and rebuilt at the factory, then sold again. Interesting to know. Generally, however, he liked my car and said it was a good purchase. If you ever buy a classic car, it's so worth getting it looked over by a specialist. They have a wealth of knowledge and you can learn a lot about your car from them. I took up three hours of the man's time, and he only charged me £22.50. Not bad I think.


Since then my car has been tinker-free, and it's still fine. Since I've owned the car, I've spent less than £100 on maintenance. That might still sound like a lot for 4 months of ownership, but when you consider a full tank of petrol still costs around £36, it's not that much. I will say this though; classic cars, even simple ones like the Moggy, require much more attention and preventative maintenance than modern cars. However, parts are very cheap and the work can be done by anyone with the tools and a Haynes manual. Modern cars often require specialist tools or knowledge for repairs, which can get very expensive.


But, to see the benefits of a classic car in this respect, you must work on it yourself, and learn a bit of mechanical skill, because if every time your car has an issue, which, depending on the condition of your vehicle, could be quite often, you take it to a garage to get fixed, it will cost you a fortune. Case in point, my door handle pin which came loose. It took me an hour to fix. Cost: £0. If you took that to a garage, they'd charge you an hour's labour, sometimes over £40. This point is rather moot though, because if you've bought a classic car, you're not going to be afraid to get your spanners dirty; that's part of the fun.


So, so far the Moggy has been a perfectly reliable and faithful transport. My friends like it in varying degrees; some of them still prefer the old Swift, some of them express quiet respect on seeing the Moggy, and a couple of them squealed with delight upon seeing it for the first time.


Although my initial obsession with the car has now cooled, it has very quickly worked its way into my heart in a way that the Swift just couldn't. The Minor is the kind of car that you look out of your window at to make sure it's still there, or just to refresh the shape of it in your mind. It's the kind of car that, if you don't drive it for a day or two, you start to think to yourself that you really ought to. It's the kind of car that makes people turn as it passes them in the street, and makes children point it out loudly to their parents, and makes old people smile and reminisce. It makes car park attends and people in petrol stations compliment you on it. It makes you appreciate just what a car is, and just what amazing machines they are. Not just that, but the Minor is something quite special; a proper British creation. It was built by hand in a factory quite near my home a very long time ago, when we as a country were still a world manufacturing giant. And yet, 45 years later, it's still here, doing the job it was meant to do. I am immensely proud of it, and feel very privileged to own it.  


It may not be very fast, or very practical, or very safe, or the most efficient car, but it is a joy to own, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Prologue Part 6: Picking Up The Car

During the few days before I was set to go and pick up my new Minor, I asked my friend Channing if he'd like to come with me. With my Swift now sitting on a dealer forecourt, I was facing a 2 hour train journey up to Sussex, which I didn't want to spend alone, and I also wanted to spend the memorable first drive of my Moggy with a friend, since it was going to be a long one. Channing agreed to come if I paid his train fare. Seemed reasonable enough.


I used my new video camera that I'd been given for Christmas to film the whole escapade, which I subsequently edited and put up on youtube in two parts. You can see them here and here.


We departed at 11:20 on a cold Friday morning at the beginning of February, and throughout the train journey we managed to eat some sandwiches, Channing managed to coin the name "Shitchester", and I taught Channing Occam's Razor (look it up). Two hours later we arrived at Three Bridges station in Crawley, and Stewart arrived to pick us up in a Ford Transit based low-loader, which luckily has three abreast seating in the front, otherwise Channing would have had to sit on the back.


On the journey to the shop, Stewart told me that they had in fact sold quite a few Moggies in recent months, most of them to housewives who wanted something a bit retro and stylish to go to the shops with.


Once we arrived, I found out that not only had Sean fettled and finished my Moggy as best he could, and sorted out the exhaust, but he had given the whole car a thorough polishing, so even the 45 year old paint sparkled. It looked magnificent.


I went in with Stewart to sign paperwork and hand over the remaining money, and pick up my keys. Their duties had not quite finished yet however. A few days before, I'd ordered a few little bits and pieces to put on the Minor, just to give it a little more of a personal edge. I'd bought two chrome headlight peaks, often fitted to cars like Minors and Beetles, and a larger, wooden gear lever knob to replace the rather tired and smaller one on the car. Stewart and Sean very kindly helped me fit the new headlamp peaks (by which I mean I stood back and watch them do it), and I screwed on the new knob (watch it).


After flicking switches for a few minutes, revving the engine and giggling like a school girl, we bid adieu to Stewart and Sean, and set off. After a mile, we were presented with our first challenge of the journey; filling the tank. After spilling petrol all over the bumper and my shoes, we joined the motorway.


To say I was nervous would be a bit of an understatement. The Swift hadn't exactly been an ideal car for the motorway, and the Minor has just over half the horsepower, and no fifth gear. However, it did very well. We settled down to a constant speed of about 65mph, and had enough time to really take in the car. Channing started playing with the quarterlight on his door; he'd never seen such a thing, while I constantly wondered aloud if that squeak or that rattle was normal, or if there should be that much heat coming from that opening.


It took a very long time, due to both distance and terrible traffic, to get home. However, the car did perfectly well. It didn't strain, overheat, make any undue noises, have problems with power delivery or braking, or dump any of its fluids all over the road. We got home, parked, and went off to the pub for a celebratory pint.

Prologue Part 5: Insurance

In the following week before I was due to pick up my new Minor, I had to deal with anyone's least favourite part of car ownership; the insurance. Being only 20 years old at the time and not having any no-claims bonus also made it that much more difficult. If you're American, you may wonder why, even at this age, it would be at all expensive to get insurance on a car with a 1.1 litre engine made 45 years ago. After all, there are plenty of people my age in the states rolling around in fully insured V8 Mustangs. The short explanation is that the car insurance companies in this country completely take the piss, partly due to an inflated and misguided prejudice that pervades this country that younger drivers are the rolling apocalypse of Britain's roads, and partly due to the government, who make it compulsory to have car insurance, whilst at the same time failing to provide adequate regulation to prevent car insurance prices from rocketing through the roof with year after year of arbitrary premium hikes.


However, there are a couple of ways to beat the system, if you're clever. I don't mean using price comparison websites, although that does help. The first way to try and get prices down, if you're a young driver, is be a named driver on a car owned by your parents. In a lot of cases this can cut your bill in half. This is what my parents did for me with "my" Suzuki Swift. The other way to beat the system is to buy a classic car. Because classic cars have been out of production for many many years, they are, in most cases, no longer subject to the same area of the car market that deals with cars made in recent years; ie, their age-depreciation has bottomed out. This means that they are seen by insurance companies as much lower risks, for reasons too numerous to go into here, but it works.


The main advantage to insuring classic cars is that you can have classic car insurance (yeah). This is not only much cheaper than standard insurance, but often comes with extra benefits. I first tried getting insurance through comparethemarket.com, which is a price comparison website famous for advertising itself using bizarre CG meerkats. The cheapest price I could get was £920 for third party, fire and theft cover. I didn't think it was too bad, considering I had no no-claims bonus, had held my license for only two years, and had never held my own car insurance policy before. However, it just wasn't cheap enough. My dad had told me that he would continue to pay my car insurance for me, as long as it was as cheap or cheaper than it had been for the Swift. As a named driver on my mum's policy on the Swift, it was only £750. That meant £170 of it would have to come out of my pocket. Not the end of the world but not ideal.


So I investigated classic car insurance. Whilst poking around on the Morris Minor Owner's Club (MMOC) website, I saw that they had a special insurance agreement with a company called Footman James, and members of the club are entitled to discounted rates. I figured I wasn't going to get much better than that, so I signed up. It's £25 a year for an adult, by the way. Once I had a membership number, I phoned up Footman James and negotiated some insurance. I got quoted £517 third party, and £817 fully comprehensive. Both policies included breakdown cover and lots of other goodies, including insurance abroad for up to 35 days a year. I told my dad about this and he said he would pay the full £817, considering that he would not have to pay £100 road tax on the Minor, thus saving £33 overall in the end.


So, with my insurance sorted, I just had to put down my cash and collect the keys.

Prologue Part 4: Minor 1000 Test Drive

In the intervening weeks before I went to see the next Minor, I tried to find a buyer for my Swift. I was hoping for at least £4000 for the Swift, since it was a nice car with nice features, and I had looked after it well and not put many miles on it. Had I sold it privately I probably would have got that money for it, but I was unwilling to wait for people to come around, kick the tyres and test drive it only to bid me £3000. It could be ages for a real buyer to turn up, and I just couldn't wait. That left the world of the motor traders. I decided my first port of call would be to take the car back to the place my dad and I bought it from two years ago. That way they would know what they were buying back, and also how much we'd originally paid for it, so I hoped it would be a fair price. Besides, they were only 10 minutes away. When I turned up, I spoke to the same salesman we'd spoken to two years previous. He said he vaguely remembered the car, but instead of going out to see it, he pulled out a little book, thumbed to a page and showed me that the trade price for a Suzuki Swift was £3500, and that was what he would pay me for it. Now, £3500 is more than enough to buy a cracking Moggy, but there was no way I was going to accept such an insultingly low price for my car, especially not from the man we paid £6500 to for it only two years ago. I told him I'd think about it (yeah right) and left. I reasoned that he was a back street motor trader, selling high and buying very cheap. So I decided that I would take the car to a Suzuki dealership. They'd surely have honest, expert, polite people who'd give me a fairer price.


After driving to a local dealer in Bedhampton, they told me they were full up of cars and weren't interested. So I drove a little further to another dealer in Fareham, who'd said on the phone they were interested. I arrived and was dealt with by a nice chap called Russel, who gave the car a brief test drive and had a look round. He told me that the aftermarket alloy wheels didn't go down well with him, and he would have preferred the original Suzuki alloys. Well he would, being a Suzuki dealer. We went inside to his office, and the haggling began. I told him that I had been offered £3600 by the trade dealer, which I thought was a good move on my part, as it gave us a higher starting point. Higher by £50. I told him that £3650 was simply not enough. Russel was an expert salesman. I had never sold a car before in my life. I stuck to my guns however, and after a couple of "tell you whats" we shook on £3750, which I was assured was a "top drawer dealer price". I don't know how true that was but it made me feel better.


Russel told me that he'd need a week to sort out paperwork and things and to pop back next Friday. Now knowing exactly what my budget was, and when I would have the cash, I could now go and see a car that I actually wanted to buy.


Six days later, I found this:

Before you marvel at the ridiculously cheap price, I should explain that the tax disc is covering up the 5 at the end of the price. The first thing that struck me was that the colour wasn't my first choice. However, apart from the colour, it ticked all the boxes. It was a 2-door saloon, with the later engine and gearbox, flashing indicators, both wing mirrors fitted (not present on all Moggies), and the bodyshell was completely solid. It was even from my preferred year, 1967. The price of £3295 was quite high for a Minor 1000, but as you can probably tell by the other classics in the background, the car was being sold by a specialist classic car dealer, so I reasoned they'd know their stuff, and wouldn't give the car such a high price if it didn't warrant it. Besides, I reckoned there was plenty of room for haggling. This car was definitely worth a look.


I rang the dealer, who are called Sussex Classics by the way, and spoke to a very nice chap called Stewart, who was very helpful and told me lots about the car on the phone, and seemed to be very honest. I told him I'd like to come and see it that afternoon, which he said was no problem at all. I got in the Swift for its last great road trip, and drove a long way up to Sussex to the village of Crawley Down, just outside Gatwick airport, which Sussex Classics is based. I pulled up on their tiny forecourt, where the Minor was waiting for me. A man came out to greet me, and introduced himself as Sean. Sean is the place's mechanic, and as far as I can tell he and Stewart run the place together. Sean was incredibly helpful and friendly about the car, and answered all my questions very honestly.


The first thing I noticed about the car when I opened the door was how different the interior was from the Series II I drove a few weeks before. Gone was the red leather on the seats, which was replaced by green vinyl to match the paint. The vinyl is actually very good quality and holds its colour much better than the leather does. The seats had also been rebuilt at some point so they looked very healthy. The dashboard was different too, with a curvy lid now covering the passenger side glovebox, with the driver side one left open (yes, there are two gloveboxes; stick that in your 5 series, ha!). The speedo was no longer cream coloured with old numbers so it looked like a grandfather clock, but instead was a stylish black with white blocky numbers. True 60s styling. It was also surrounded by a chromed metal panel which also contained the switches, giving the dashboard a bit of sparkle. The switches themselves had also been updated to be a bit easier to use. Gone also was the pull start of the Series II. The Minor 1000 has a plain old turn key start. The steering wheel had also been changed. The white, metal tri-spoked and brass wheel had been replaced by a black plastic two-spoke wheel, with a plastic "M" horn button. I could also see that the gear lever was a lot shorter in this car. The old Series II gear lever connects to very near the front of the gearbox, so it has to be very long to stretch back towards the driver. However, in the Minor 1000 it connects towards the back of the gearbox, much nearer the driver, so it doesn't have to be nearly as long.


After looking the car over with Sean, I got the keys off him and took it for a drive around the block.  He'd warmed it up for me, so it fired right up. Turning out of the forecourt, I was so relieved to have proper indicators, operated by a stalk. Granted, the stalk was on the opposite side of the steering column to that of the Swift, so it would take some getting used to, but at least it was a stalk, that you pushed up and down, in easy reach of your hands. The indicators don't self cancel, but when one is switched on, there is an audible clicking sound as it flashes, and a bright green light on the end of the indicator stalk flashes at you. This is both extremely cool, and makes it impossible to forget the indicator is on. As far as the actual driving went, it was just like the Series II, but better. I found the driving position a bit better, and due to me wearing comfy trainers, pushing the pedals was much easier. Seeing out of the front was a bit easier thanks to the new curved one-piece windscreen, and seeing out of the back was also easier thanks to a much larger rear view mirror, and a larger back window. But best by far was the performance. Once I got out onto the main road, I shifted into second and buried the throttle. Doing this in the Series II caused you to gently accelerate. However, when I tried it in the 1000, I actually saw the front of the car rear up as we accelerated. I still wouldn't call it fast, by any measure, but it has some grunt to it now; it wants to go. Even in a 5 minute test drive, I could see how much better this Minor was to drive. I definitely wanted one.


As I got out back at the shop, Sean said to me "You're smiling James." Now that he mentioned it, I had been grinning from ear to ear like a loon. "It's a lovely car. Brilliant." I said to him. "It is a good one." he agreed "But are you going to buy it?". Well that's the £3295 question isn't it? It took me five seconds of consideration to come up with an answer. I hadn't looked at any other Minor 1000s; there might be a better one out there. But better how? This one was solid as a rock, had all the bells and whistles working on it, and ran like an absolute dream. "Yes, yes I will." I told Sean.


I decided not to waste his time, and told him flatly I wouldn't pay a penny over £3000 for it. He didn't waste my time and told me that that would be fine. We went inside to have a look through the service history, which there unfortunately wasn't that much of. It only goes back to 1988. We discovered a few interesting things. The car had had a full engine rebuild in 1988, and a reconditioned gearbox in 1989, as well as 4 new wings, which was only around 20000 miles ago. The car had also been professionally valued in 1997 at £2000 (which, incidentally, is about £2950 now). We also discovered the car had spent a few years abroad in Holland in the early 00s, before being repatriated. I then explained the situation of the Swift to Sean, and said I could not pay for it immediately. He said that was fine as long as I laid down a deposit of £100, which I gladly did. He also told me that before I came to pay for the rest of the car, he would look it over and correct anything that wasn't working, and also sort out the exhaust pipe, as it was banging against the body where it exited the engine bay, all free of charge. What a guy! It's nice to see a mechanic who takes pride in his work and won't see a car leave his shop that isn't as good as he could make it.


We agreed that I'd pick the car up in a week's time, and I drove home to a week of eager waiting.