The day finally arrived. After 2 years, 8 months and 20 days after the gearbox obliterated itself and seized the engine, it was all sorted and finally time to collect the car from the Morris Minor Workshop in Stonegate, Sussex. It’s worth noting that the work didn’t take all that long, as it was in storage for a lot of that time, and by the time work started, it was worked on alongside several other Morris Minors.
The journey began after I finished work, around midday, and I expected it would take around 2½ hours.
The first leg covered the Midland Mainline from Luton to London, where I would need to pick up another train – or that was the plan. Instead, I made the mistake of boarding the slow train, stopping at all of the suburban stations.
This also necessitated an extra change at Blackfriars, as it was heading to Brighton, and therefore wasn’t passing London Bridge. At least the platforms at Blackfriars have a good view!
Once at London Bridge I had an approximately 50 minute wait for the Hastings bound train that would take me to Stonegate. The new London Bridge station opened fully in 2018, and is very modern compared to its 1850s predecessor.
I arrived at Stonegate at 2:55pm and soon after I was picked up in my car and driven back to the workshop where I had a look around the car in more detail and settled up the final sum.
Unfortunately by this point my phone was exceptionally low on charge, so I was unable to take many photos in the scenic East Sussex countryside, however the journey home was as good as any to try out my new Garmin Mini 2 dash cam.
The car ran flawlessly for almost the whole 100 mile return trip, until the last 5 miles or so when it developed a squeal whilst sitting in standstill traffic on M1. The squeal turned out just to be the result of slack in the fan belt, and was fixed in a matter of minutes.
I arrived home at just after 7pm, and am very happy with the work that’s been done. More will follow in the next update.
morrisminor.uk 