The road to recovery

Yesterday I started preparing the car for it’s journey to East Sussex Minors, where a fairly comprehensive restoration is planned. All that this prep really consisted of was pushing the car up the driveway, turning it in the road and rolling it back down to where it was, so it would be facing forward on the recovery truck in the morning. I then filled the car with all the spare parts that I had collected, many of which will be used in the restoration process.

I’ve heard nothing but good things about East Sussex Minors and I have used them as my main supplier for Morris Minor parts – their service is like nothing I’ve seen elsewhere, both in terms of delivery speed (often next morning delivery) and quality customer service – not forgetting the high quality parts too!

As I might’ve mentioned before, after the car’s last breakdown in early June I’ve not really done anything to it. I’ve removed the front grill panel and radiator, but when I noticed a crack in the tie plate I knew it’d need the attention of somebody more qualified than myself, and that if it was going to be welded up and have the engine and gearbox out then it was as good a time as any to have the engine bay painted – slowly things were turning into a much larger job.

Over the last few months I’ve saved up and planned for various bits of work I want to have carried out. More on that will follow when I have news from ESM. They plan to start work on the car in December 2019, and as I’m in no rush to have the car back on the road for the winter, we’ve agreed I will likely get it back sometime in early springtime 2020.

A member of the Morris Minor Owner’s page on Facebook recommended that I use a site called Shiply to organise the transportation of my car from my address to the ESM workshop. Shiply can be used to get quotes on delivery for pretty much anything you can think of, be it furniture, motor cars, livestock, pianos, boats, etc. It’s really quite simple; You tell Shiply where your car is, where you want it to go, and within a few hours you will likely receive a fair few bids from individuals with recovery trucks. Your address is not publicised – just your rough area is shown so you can be given quotes, so there is no real safety concern involved. The only person who will ever see your full address is the person who’s bid you choose.

If I had £1 for every time my car had been on the back of a recovery truck then this restoration would pay for itself.

So, that’s it! For the next few months it is not likely that I’ll have much to post about, but I will try and keep things up-to-date in terms of news I hear back from ESM, sharing my experiences. The wait will be worth it!