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.
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