Notes on the Refitting of the Wood Frame and Doors
by Alan Alderwick

These notes are gleaned from response to a question received by the Webmaster and passed onto the eMog Morgan discussion group. The question received was as follows;
 

I am in the process of renovating a Morgan. I had to replace the firewall and then found the wooden frame at the firewall crossmember was  completely rotten from hinge posts right up to the firewall.

I copied the frame pieces and thought I did a good solid job but now doors do not fit properly. Is there anything that I could have I done wrong? What do I do to get these doors to fit like they should?"

Some of this advice may appear to be "closing the door after the horse has bolted",  but it may be useful to anyone who is about to embark on dash/scuttle replacement.

1. Before I remove any tired and rotten timber I always diagonally brace the frame from as many points as I can. Obviously brace from places where you know that you are definitely going to leave good timber behind and place the braces carefully so that you do not denying yourself access to the trouble spots. This gives you a far better chance of all new pieces going back in the correct place.

2.     It is very important that you make accurate card or thin ply templates of the existing door aperture. Take heed that you only have to be a millimeter or so out when you start replacing parts for the problems to compound themselves as you continue to add new parts.

These basics dealt with, let's try to deal with the problem your poorly fitting doors. I would suspect that the bottom rail of the door is either jamming against the rocker, or the door is flying high leaving you with a massive gap up the lock pillar ( or elbow rail as the factory call it).  If my suspicion is correct I would suggest the following :-

3.     Leave the hinges firmly bolted to the door.

4.     Remove all bolts and screws from the new hinge pillar.

5.     Cut two 8 mm. thick plywood spacers (about 50mm. x 50mm ).

6.     Peel back the trim to allow access to the wooden rocker.

7.    Place or temporarily pin the plywood spacers in place on top of the rockers.

8.    Now close the hinges, get inside the car and offer the door up to the aperture. As far as you can, slide the hinges into their rebates on the hinge pillar. Look carefully to see whether the top or bottom hinge closes onto the bottom of the rebate first. If there is a gap at the top or bottom between the hinge and the hinge pillar then this is where you have to pack / shim to get the door to sit right.

I usually use brass or stainless shims but you can use pretty well anything that will not compress on tightening of the hinges. If you have a problem with the doors fitting in a vertical plane then this a"whole new ball game!" as you say across the ocean and will require different solutions.

REPLACING OLD DOOR HINGES WITH NEW

1. by Steve Stierman (eMog US)
2. by Bill Beddows (eMog UK)
3. by Paul Helman (eMog US)
4. by Lorne Goldman (eMog- Canada)

Steve Stierman

I will share with you how I do it. Take hinge twixt thumb and forefinger and set it on hard surface, vice, anvil, or whatever. With a suitable hammer "shrink" the brass hinge body against the pin, tapping it around from all sides thus tightening up the fit between the pin and the worn hole in the hinge. The brass material is soft and will easily compress up against the steel pin.  Get it good and snug and it will outlast most of us. This is best done under a large shade tree.

Bill Beddows
At some point in time the factory changed the hinges to a "thicker" version. The causes doors of a car originally fitted with the old hinges to foul on the latch plate when the new hinges are fitted. Sadly, the Factory has confirmed that only the new hinges are available.

The difference is in the bend round the pin which gives a larger gap between the plates in the closed position. With the doors closed if the gap between the plates is about 1 mm you have old hinges, about 3 mm is new hinges. I had 1mm machined off the back of the plates on both sides 35mm back from the outside edge. In hindsight 33mm would have been enough but you have to peer very closely to see the step.This solved the problem in my case but if neccessary the latch plate position can be adjusted by removing the lining behind the door. The latch plate usually has washers behind it which can be removed as required.

Paul Helman
Over several years I had noted increasing sag to both B900's doors. When I had rebuilt my car I drilled and tapped metal plates for both doors and door posts so the hinges themselves had remained firmly in place. Clearly the hinge pins had worn and this was apparent when manipulating the doors up and down.  It takes but a little play through hinge wear to create a good deal of movement at the end of the doors!  Removal was easy and the only access needed was at the outside of the hinges since they were screwed into the metal plate I had mades. (No wood screws at all.)

Driving out the old pins took some effort despite their worn state.  I found the easiest technique was to place the hinge over a bench vice opened enough and a bit more to admit the head of the hinge with the top edge of the hinge blades resting on the top of the vice. Then, carefully using a small drift pin or center punch, hammer the pin out. N.B. Hammering the bottom of the pin directly will distort and spread it, rendering removal problematic.

The pins seemed about .250 or less based on uneven wear along their length.  The hinge pin passages were worn from .256 to .260.  They are made of fairly heavy gauge brass and the pins mild steel.

New hinge pins are widely available at hardware store and are mild steel with brass plating and measure .258 along their length to a section .268  starting about an half inch below the head of the hinge. I cut the hinges to length matching the old pins and turned the  .268 segment down to .260. Then I drilled each hinge section held with a drill press vice with a "G" drill bit then pressed in the new pins using the bench vice which worked nicely and needed only some tapping with (a padded) hammer for the final quarter of a inch. This resulted in a very tight hinge not easily opened in one's hands.  Back on the car and no play in the door anymore.

One little kink encountered in reinsallation was the one of the screws into the door post plate came up a fraction of center and woudn't engage the plate hole threads.  There was insufficient play in the door post hole to wiggle it home.  What I did was lathe the screw's  end to a tapering point.  Then it simply guided itself into place quite easily into the plate hole's thread. Overall just takes a few hours and is well worth the effort.

Lorne Goldman
The method used most often in England uses the same principle as a engine rebuild. John Worrall makes oversize precision ss pins. One runs the indicated bit through the old hinge hole to create a fresh bore and tap in these oversize pins. Good as new.

DOORS (Long Doors versus Traditional Doors)
by Lorne Goldman

It's a common question..and so often elicits the wrong answer. In 1997, the company lengthened the doors on the 2-seaters, making the opening longer and unleashing the DDE (Deadly Domino Effect). Some say that the modification was done to permit the installation of airbags for the USA, but that does not explain why it was adopted for all trads, especially in light of the MMC abandoning  the US Classic market. Others maintain that it was a modification designed to allow for more room, but the longer doors do not create more space, save at the tummy area, and, at the same time, the company reduced hip and footwell room by increasing the width of the gearbox cover.
 
Along with the doors, the wooden tub had to be changed, the dash and steering wheel was recessed forward, thus leaving no room for demister vents which began the Era of the Heated Windscreens. 

The primary effect was to force the replacement of the earlier simple and inexpensive windscreen, that can be sourced anywhere and replaced without a fuss, with a heated windscreen that is obtainable from the Morgan Motor Company and requires the purchase of the whole Morgan windscreen frame with it..for a cost of 1000£ in the UK and much more outside of the UK..along with a wait of many months. More here. The added length of the opening is 51mm. But useable space in the area is not dictated by the opening. It is a function of the seat, the steering wheel and the footwel space. The simply fact is that stomachs incapable of successfully negotiating a Classic Morgan are more frequent found in the last two decades. The Morgan staff joke that this is the reason the Aeros were created!
 
 

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