June has arrived and some small-scale outdoor events have finally manged to take place, it’s great to see pictures of these trips out including some of our youngest members.
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Brandon Young kindly sent in a feature about a past
Morris Restoration
Project, on behalf of one of our longstanding members, John Hanna, who recently passed away. John and his wife Nadene were regular travelling buddies to our area shows in his GMC or their Bedford Green Goddess. Back in 2019 Hazel Coulson decided to convert her Morris MRA1 back to an original petrol
engine. TheTruck had been converted to a Leyland 4.98 4-cylinder diesel from a Leyland FG truck, gearbox and clutch had also been used. Although the Morris had been running this well with conversion for over 12 years - it was noisy and hard to drive. The clutch was fierce and very heavy and it was prone to running hot. John and Brandon offered to help out and set to locating an original engine and
transmission. After a lengthy searchfor that“green unicorn”a wrecked donor truck was located and secured, with engine and gearbox transfer etc. unfortunately the engine had suffered water damage into the cylinders and the bores were very rusted
in. With the engine in the workshop, dismantled and inspected, cylinder block and head were sent over to Ashby Anderson in Leeds for a set of liners bored to standard and head
skimming. Reassembly of the engine using new parts took place, with fuel system was modified to take a weber 34ICH from a Land rover, utilizing electric pump and new
filters. The water pump housing was machined to take a modern rebuild kit for a Nuffield
tractor. With a 4.25 Litre Morris S.E.A ohv Engine now painted up, she was then ready for its first test run.
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The Gearbox was then dismantled and rebuilt, the clutch was remanufactured, starter motor was kindly donated by John Hanna, some gauges and a carburettor were donated by Graham
Golder. The new engine was fitted and a new fuel system installed. However, a new exhaust system had to be fabricated, new wiring had to be created front to back this involved making a dashboard and gauges warning lamps sympathetic to the Morris and workable. Previously the truck didn’t have a working temp or fuel gauge. Modifying a Series 3 Landover cluster with some classic car parts got us a suitable working
instrument. The engine ran smooth with the weber carburettor without making any changes to the jets, a larger jet was added later as it lacked a little on the test drive. New fuel sender from an early Landover fitted into the original tank and worked correctly with the land rover fuel gauge unit. A facet electric pump was used and a fuel pressure filter regulator along with modern fuel lines. The test drive went well the clutch and gears smooth the engine runs quiet and has lots of power. It was defiantly lighter on the steering and it then possible to talk in the cab.
Many people helped make this project happen John Hanna, Graham Golder, Lee Jowit, and Dale Shipley for his help though out the project. Thanks to all for their support donations of time and materials – it was a great team thing.
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Simon Robert's boys
following in dad's footsteps, playing with the Jeep in their grandad's field on
D-Day.
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Best wishes from all our area members, let’s continue to keep safe and well and here’s to a safe road ahead for us all.
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