With nothing else to do today I decided to complete my Morgan budget calucation spreadsheet for this year. The file was created on the day the Morgan made its way into my garage back in April. It started of as a link collection for various spare parts. Everyime a new item was added to the repair list I searched for potenial suppliers and price. By the end of April two sheets were added for the different repair/restauration approaches. One was for a partial repair (engine, steering, suspension), another one included some upgrade thoughts (e.g. dual weber DCOE40, stage 2 cylinder head, etc).
With the first expense for the sandblasting back in May I created another sheet called “total budget”. There are of course a million ways to organize a restauration project. For both, parts storage in the grey crates I bought as well as for budget planning and expense tracking, I decided to use the top categories that are used on Melvyn Rutter’s page https://mogparts.net/ This worked well for my previous project (Miffi – the Mini Cooper) where I used the categories from MiniSpares and helps to at least keep a close look on the budget.
The categories “Bodyworks/paint”, “Tools & Consumables” and “Other” (mostly logistics and delivery cost) were taken over from the Mini project. With this my orignial budget plan by the end of May looked like this:
- Body/Chassis parts (incl wood): 1600€
(I already had a quote from Melvyn for the wooden parts) - Bodywork/paint: 4500€
(guestimate based on the experience I had from the Mini and MG) - Brakes/Clutch: 400€
(lookup on MogParts without doing further research at this point) - Brightwork: 1200€
- Electrical: 1500€
- Engine: 4000€
- Steering:800€
- Suspension: 1500€
(Mogparts prices) - Transmission: 1000€
(had a quote already for both the rear axle and gearbox) - Trim: 4000€
(just a guess at this point.) - Wheels: 0€
(wire wheels still look great – new tires will be needed at some point but not now) - Tools/Consumables: 800€
- Other: 1000€
This adds up to a budget of just above 21300 € for the restauration. This did not include any upgrades and for the most part by taking prices from Melyvn Rutter’s website.
But even the best budget plan goes south on the day you start digging into options. In my case this happened in July when I couldn’t really work on the Morgan because I had to take care of family things. Not being able to get into the garage I surfed the web in the evenings and eventually ran across the Mulfab, Wolf Performance and NewElms sites. The first “additional” part or upgrade I wanted to get was a scuttle rollbar. A call with Tim Ayres later an entire Rutherford suspension and upgraded brakes were on my expense list.
But I also was able to save on a number of components and parts by looking for alternative suppliers. Take the CVH throttle cable for example. Budget (based on Mogparts) was 45€ – but after some research I got it from AutoDoc for 10€. While often these were small parts – the amount quickly added up.
So how far am I off from my budget by now? Well, with a number of upgrade decisions made I am of course above the 20K budget I originally set for myself.
Tools & Consumbles: 800€
Body/Chassis incl body works and paint: 6600€
Brakes: 890€
Brightwork: 250
Engine: 4390€
Eletrical: 500€
Steering: 2500€
Suspension: 2700€
Transmission: 2625€
Total expenses for the Morgan this year were 21315€. Spot on? – No, not quite. This includes 5350€ spent on “upgrades” that would normally have cost approx. 700€. The unplanned EzPower Steering upgrade (the only request my wife had for this car) and the fact that I had to find an alternative specialist for the rear axle added up to 3000€ alone. I also decided against engine upgrades for budget reasons – which saved budget.
The observant reader might have already noticed two categories are missing: Other and Trim.
As my son moved to the UK this year – I used his move as opportunity to a) collect all parts from NewElms and b) drop of the rear axle and JB-Engineering. This enabled me to save shipping costs – but logically added travel costs. I did not track this – sometimes it is just better not to have all the details 😉
The last category is Trim. The first quote I got for the trim was far off my initial guess. Almost 2.5 times off…. I got a good price for the front seats now. This will hopefully be documented in a January 2021 update on this blog. In order to stick to my budget – I will (have to) attempt to do the rest of the interior myself. But I will cross this bridge when I get there.
Hopefully this overview helps others that plan to do a full Morgan restore. It always depends on the condition of the car and how much you can/are willing to do on your own. I am a learning weekend mechanic and have spent 300hours+ so far. An expert might have done a lot of things quicker. My assumption is that labor costs alone for a completed car would been around 25-30k € (if done by a professional). Share your thought in the comments if you think I am wrong on this.
Overall my currently estimated total restauration costs will be around 25000€. A really cheap Morgan 4/4 can be found between ~10K to 20K € once in a while. Will my car be worth 40K € after the rebuild? Who knows and I don’t care about it. This car has been in the family for 30 years and I hope it will be for the next 30 🙂
Fixing C6622 