This was quite a productive weekend. On Saturday I woke up early because I could not get a thought out of my head. Last week, when I built the metal crossmember for the Mini seats, I fetched a single piece of square tube from a metal bin. But there was quite a bit more in the container. This was all metal that was in Stephan’s workshop during the fire back last December. It has surface rust but should be OK for a proper bodyshell dolly. A project that is on my backlog for quite some time – and for whatever reason I suddenly had the urge to get this done.
Getting the stuff out took quite a bit of time – as it was at the bottom of the container. After storing approx. 10m of square tube in diverse sizes back in my garage the rest of the day was dedicated to gardening and building an additional firewood shelf. While at it, I also cut some old roof slats to length intended as protective frame for a Britax sunroof I bought a while ago. Somebody cut the whole thing cut out of a roof and there is still some sharp metal around. I cleaned the vinyl, screwed the metal to the slats and added the rest of two beams from the firewood shelf to protect the plastic wind deflector.
The sunroof won’t be needed anytime soon. Due to limited storage space, it is one of those items which is ideal store under the garage ceiling. For this the MGB shell had to be moved out of the garage. Instead of working on the Morgan I decided to use the opportunity and clean up my left garage – which I primarily use for storage. This was mainly sorting new and reusable parts for the MGB. Over time I only want MGB parts in the left garage – some Mini and Morgan parts need to be moved to the shelves in the right garage.
With a pair of MGB front wings as well as a LHD dashboard were in my way. This reminded me that I must tap and die all nuts and bolts on the MGB bodyshell. The outer to bolts for the dashboard were OK, but the center bolt is slightly bend. I could only rethread is up to the middle. The workaround for this is adding four washers – replacing this bolt would be fiddly. I tapped all holes in the front of the car for 1/2″ and 7/16″ bolts. Unfortunately, there are at least 15 broken bolts that need to be drilled out – I marked all spots that need attention with small pieces of tape…
Four hours later I finally got started on my Morgan task list. And as it turns out – a few problems were related to poor ground connections. I already knew that the voltage stabilizer had an issue. At least I thought to. When testing the DC stepdown unit I bought – I noticed that while I had 10V output in the bench – it also shows 12,2V in the car. I checked all black ground cables on the dashboard – the one I added for the voltage stabilizer wasn’t working. I crimped on a new terminal – and viola: the problem is sorted.
Another poor ground connection was the reason the new digital Smith speedo wasn’t working properly. Occasionally the needle flickered. This was working before I redid the wiring loom. I decided to check the ground connection here as well – and sure enough a nut on the earth connection point wasn’t tight. I switched this to a self-locking nut and filed away some paint to be on the safe side. As I had to remove the seats (again) to get to the tunnel – I also took the chance to fix a wobbly seat rail by drilling out the old rivet and replace it by a screw and nut. A few small cotton pieces wrapped around the oil stick tube, the dipstick, and the oil pressure line hopefully show me where the oil leak is coming from.
After the test drive I was able to tick off most of the small issues on my Morgan problem list. With the steering damper blades removed and the EZ Powersteering turned on – it is a breeze to steer the Morgan. Ideal for parking and city traffic. I disconnected the steering power cable to see what difference it makes. It is a bit heavier – but nice for country roads and the Autobahn. A hidden switch behind the dashboard for the Powersteering has now made it to my task list.
There is still some work left to do – with the interior upholstery being the biggest one on the list. For now, the dashboard I built will do. With a bit of luck there are still some nice sunny days left this September and October to get a few kilometers on the Morgan.
Fixing C6622 
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