Gaining a usable boot and tackling the spare wheel.
December 5th 2019
Several times in recent weeks I've been out for a drive in the Morris and needed a bit of extra storage space. This situation would improve if I finally pushed myself to refit the boot floor that I'd removed a while back. Well today is that day. Having just bought myself some brand new stainless steel nuts, bolts, washers and screws for this purpose it's time I dug out my old floor panels from the corner of my garage and made a start.
Now that I know the fuel sender is working perfectly and I have treated all the surface rust around the fuel tank, I think the floor panels can be put back into place without me needing any further access to the area below them. Famous last words I'm sure!
Dropping the back seat down is handy as it gives more light and better access for this job. Once I'd done that I wrestled the first panel into place and lined up all the fixing holes before tightening everything down.
The right hand panel first needed a metal plate bolting to it before I fitted it into the car. This plate is there to stop the spare tyre from rubbing against the wiring that goes to the tail lights.
At some point in the future I intend to buy a tailor made boot carpet which should make things a whole lot nicer in there.
Now the boot is usable once more, I turned my attention to the spare wheel which had previously been tossed onto my "I'll get to that later" pile. If possible I'd like to avoid having to buy another one if there's any way this one can be salvaged. Reuse, recycle etc.! The tyre is a complete mess however and needs to be removed from the rim and disposed of. That's my first task and not one I've been looking forwards to as I have no suitable tools for this type of job. After much prying, pounding and general jumping up and down on it, I managed to pop the bead off the outside rim. One more to go...
Flipping the wheel over I made a start on the rear bead. I sweated and cursed over this one for about two hours, trying all kinds of techniques to break the bead. This was getting ridiculous!
Eventually I had to resort to drastic measures... I slid the wheel under my car, rested my pry bar onto the side of the wheel with the tip just on the bead. Then I placed a plank of wood on top of the bar as a ramp before driving my car onto it. Would you believe the bead still didn't break until I stood on the door sill of the car and bounced up and down for five minutes!
Once the bead was broken, I retrieved the wheel and the rest of the bead came away just by pressing my heel all the way around it. Levering the tyre off the rim was a whole other saga which I won't go into here but suffice to say it was a struggle. Unfortunately, as soon as the bead was broken I was hit by a really bad musty smell and quite a lot of water escaped from inside the tyre (which incidentally also contained an inner tube). With the tyre removed there was quite a lot of corrosion inside the rim which doesn't bode well for seating a new tyre bead without any leaks. I might have to consider a new inner tube if that's the case. In all honesty this wheel looks like it could have been dredged out of the local canal!
Having only a wire brush with which to tackle this job, I set about trying to clean the rim. After a couple of hours hard work I wasn't making a great deal of headway but thankfully my brother-in-law took pity on me and lent me his angle grinder. A quick trip to the local DIY store and I returned with an abrasive disk which I fitted to the grinder and set about the wheel with renewed determination.
As you can see from the photo above, the grinder is making light work of the paint and corrosion. The bead area is still quite pitted which makes me think a new tubeless tyre might not seal very well but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. For now I'll continue working on the wheel and report my progress in the next instalment.