18) On the road again

With the brakes fully working I have a roadworthy car.

October 26th 2019

The Morris is finally back from the specialist and I'm happy to report that they've done a great job on the brakes. The master cylinder has been adjusted correctly as have all the brake shoes so everything performs as it should. The tie bars have also been removed, cleaned up and refitted with a new set of rubber bushes, although they did report that the nearside tie bar is very slightly bent and will need replacing at some point.

Cleaned up tie bars with new bushes.

I decided to leave the leaf spring replacement until a later date as it isn't an urgent job. Maybe I'll do it sometime in the new year.

One thing I did notice on the drive home was that the speedo needle has stuck itself to the peg once again! Maybe because the car was sitting out in the sunshine for a few days and the warmth within the gauge caused it to stick? Whatever the cause, I removed the driver's side dashboard panel and speedo glass before swabbing the needle and peg with isopropyl alcohol in the hope that this will remove whatever contaminant is causing the issue.

I also removed the front seats in order to clean them. A little 'Flash' detergent and warm water got most of the grime out followed by some shoe wax to help preserve the seat covers. I can't seem to get rid of the black mark on the passenger seat base though so I'll have to live with that.

Swabbing the speedo with isopropanol.

Passenger seat ready for cleaning.

I then removed the rear carpet so that I can give it a good clean with carpet shampoo, along with the front carpet which I'd removed previous to doing the brake job.

Front carpet, cleaned and drying.

Rear carpet ready to be cleaned.

With the carpets removed I could concentrate on some improvements to the condition of the floor pan. There was nothing of concern but there was plenty of surface rust to tackle with my wire brush. After half an hour of brushing and vacuuming I gave every bit of exposed corrosion a nice coating of rust converter, watching with satisfaction as it turned a nice shade of purple as the rust was converted into iron tannate.

Floor pan before treating.

Surface rust being converted.

The next job will probably be to treat the floor underneath the rear seat in the same way.