Semi Sports Body.

[Mike Stubbings]

When laminating ply I always used a good Finnish birch ply and used a type of glue the boat builders use. Always cut the pieces oversize as they can slip slightly during clamping. You can do this with the ash frame as well. Strips machined to about 1/4in can be glued together and pulled and clamped around a jig. Make a good strong frame. Good English air dried ash I always found was best. I found that kiln dried split easier so I never used it. That is easy for me to say as I purchased quite a lot at once and it allowed me to have a stock to choose from. Air drying I would allow an inch per year, so a four inch thick board would take four years. If you are painting the body frame I found that zinc chromate red oxide was a good primer and if thinned with the appropriate primer would soak well into the ash or ply. If you are not painting it then a good dosing of cuprinol would help. When building a body which is not required to be a true copy it is worth looking where you can lighten the timbers and save some weight. A heavy chamfer on the inner edges is one way and this always looks neater and less heavy if it shows in the boot area for instance. One way of marking out you new timber sections from an old pattern is to cut a good cardboard pattern of each face you can then use these patterns for marking out a pair by reversing them for each hand.I have built numerous bodies over the years (it being my job) but never built a Minor frame of any type. The nearest being an MMM which I will ask Chris to load a couple of pics which may be of interest to someone. Mike.

[chris lambert]

The pictures from Mike are shown below.

[Ian Grace]

Nice work Mike, and thanks for posting the pics Chris. Whose M is this?

The Semi-sports is not very different from this in line, but the ash frame structure is completely different - far heavier, and also far heavier than the GE Stadium it was developed from - obviously the influence of Morris who prioritized sturdiness above sportiness - not that this resulted in a better survival rate than the M - quite the reverse. But then again, we appear to have not a single surviving GE Minor of any description, which is a great pity.

[Mike Stubbings]

I do not know who owns this car now as I did it many years ago and it was sold uncompleted not long after I believe. The timbers are far heavier than they need be but I copied the original frame in this case. A body of this type with ply cladding is immensely strong when complete so the frame could be reduced considerably. Thanks Chris for loading the pics once again. I really must find out how to do it. Mike.

[Tony Gamble]

Super job Mike. That brings me back down to earth with a bang !!

Although you have clad the frame with ply it is not possible to do that all over the semisports due to compound curves, but you have done an excellent job on the M Type. The boot lid looks really amazing.

I shall now crawl out into my workshop and start all over again !!

Tony G

[Mike Stubbings]

Hi Tony, I think you have done a great job with yours. As for ply cladding it is suprising what you can do. The ply on the scuttle of the MG is one piece right over the framework. It is 3mm birch ply. It can be done within reason by damping the ply in the right places with hot water. If I were able I would load a picture of a Riley I did but I do not like to keep asking Chris to load them for me. Keep up the good work. Mike.

[Ian Grace]

Mike,

Just send me your pics and I will upload them.

Ian

[Ian Grace]

Here's the Bed-Pan showing the ali (originally steel) panels:

[Tony Gamble]

Latest picture. Just need 2 doors ! MFI ?

semisportsbody54.JPG (109.75 KiB) Viewed 3011 times

Tony G

[Ian Grace]

The doors are where it really gets serious! The issue, apart from the obvious is that you have to leave enough gap to contain all the fabric and ali strips that end up going on when you cover them. The front, back and lower edges of the doors have metal strips (was originally steel, I used ali) tacked on which cover the gap when closed - they stick out about half an inch. The fabric goes over these, but then you have the problem that in the shut faces, the fabric is concave as it doubles over the metal and then folds to cover the door shut face, if you see what I mean. The trick I used was to add another ali strip down the shut faces and cover this with fabric, doubling it over the strip, then taking it behind where the interior trim panel is, and then all the ali is cover, and the main door covering fabric cannot pull away from the shut face. So the net result is three layers of fabric and a thickness of ali to leave a gap for. But then you also have a strip if fabric and an ali strip on the body, so that is five fabric thicknesses and two ali thickness, plus then you need about a quarter inch of air gap, so the actual gap in the bare ash frame is considerable. This is particularly important across the bottom of the door because if the door sags even a tiny bit in the future, then it will foul on the threshold. The original Semi-sports had a long ali threshold strip with Morris Motors stamped into it - like the fabric saloons had (Halbe, has your car still got these?). On the Bed-Pan, I used a plain strip of ali and then tacked the saloon-type German silver threshold plates over the ali, and this plus a small amount of space for the tack heads makes it even more important to end up with enough gap under the door.

So you do all this and calculate the width of the door cover strip overlaps to cover all this and the gap, and then you find the door won't open because the cover strip at the front edge of the door (actually three pieces fitted between the two hinges) fouls the fabric on the scuttle when it turns inwards as you open the door, so you have to make sure you mount the door out a bit from the rest of the frame to cope with this and also the fact that this cover strip and the fabric over it have to lay on top of the body frame when the door is closed.

To prevent any possibility of the doors sagging, I added a non-original diagonal steel strap from the top front to the bottom rear of each door - letting it into the frame so it didn't interfere with the trim panel.

As for the trim panels, with so much of a necessary gap between the ash frame members of the door and the body, you need to be a bit careful with the trim panels, making them very slightly oversize (after allowing for the thickness of the fabric turned over their edges), otherwise you end up with large and ugly gaps in the trim when the door is closed. Also, if your instrument board/cubby assembly is correct, you'll find you cannot close the doors if you don't make a small rectangular cut-out at the top front of the door trim panels to accommodate the lower/outer corners of the cubby face plywood. That means that when you do the door shut work I described above, you'd better make a neat job of folding and tacking it in place around the door in that top/front corner, because it will show where the cut-out is. Also, the ali cover strip above the top hinge on the front face of the door has to fold in over the radiused top rail member, and it also has to have a cut-out to accommodate the cubby board.

As I said, this is where it gets serious!

Here's a pic showing the driver's door as yet uncovered, showing the ali strip and diagonal steel strap:

[Tony Gamble]

WOW !

And I thought I was nearly there !!

Thanks for the info.

Tony G

[Ian Grace]

My experience has been that 90% of a rebuild is in the bodywork - if not 90% of the cost, as Halble points out elsewhere. I had the Bed-Pan's chassis rebuilt ten years before the photo above was taken ... in fact, by the time the body was ready, I took a few weeks and rebuilt the chassis again!

That's probably why we see so many cheap, fibreglass Austin 7 Ulsteroids out on the trials hills - they can be thrown together at the kerbside and you can have a ton of fun in them before you start drawing your pension. And if you roll them you just patch them up with a piece of glass cloth and some chemical goo and you're good to go the following weekend!