Vehicle Restoration

In 2008 we were involved in the restoration of a 1950s special Morris 1000 3 door traveller in conjunction with Woodies conveniently located behind Auto Bodies and who carry out ash woodwork on Morris travellers. When we first saw the car, it was a wreck.

The vehicle had to be carefully stripped down to bare chassis to keep the unique pieces as intact as possible. With the body removed, a complete new chassis was fitted and the floor pans where replaced with new.

With the chassis in place, the Traveller found itself in the workshop of Auto Bodies, where we did some final welding and fabricating, also checking the fitting of panels etc. before the preparation and painting. The traveller was then moved back and forth between Woodies and Auto Bodies as the body and painting work progressed.

Click thumbnails to load the picture into the main window on the right

	We were asked to modify the roof pillars to fill in the trafficators and I welded in sections to the base of the pillars to bring them more into a Traveller shape.
	We built inner arches around the back and boxed the edges of the chassis, sills and rear inner wings.
	The A and B posts needed fettling to mount the doors correctly.
	We also had to straighten the bulkhead and inner wings.
	In the past it had been hit in one front corner so I had to straighten that out.
	Steve Foreman from Woodies, would come in with pieces of wood, we’d fabricate a piece of steel to mount it.
	Finally, we painted it all in MBG Damask Red and refitted all the Panels before it went back to Steve.

This restoration was featured in Classics Monthly January 2009.
To see the full article, visit www.morriswoodwork.co.uk/gallery-cmarticle.html

Telephone Phil on: +44 (0) 1243 773715 Or Email your Requirements to: info@auto-bodies.co.uk