An adventure building a Morgan automobile body frame

[Eduard Nemirovsky]

Very good job and sense of humor.
Ed

[Roger Los]

In case anyone is curious, some "fun" facts:

• The wood frame with doors weighs less than 100 pounds. With the steel skin, it weighs just over 150 lbs, I think.
• The steel chassis itself weighs about 130 pounds, around 250 with the front suspension frame and firewall, but without mechanical components.
• I'm not a super-strong guy but can lift the body tub or the bare chassis by myself (though obviously it's super-awkward to do anything with them once you've lifted them).
• When completed, with top, trim, and some fuel, the entire car weighs about 1800 lbs.
• The engine was sourced from the factory from Triumph; it's the same as found in the period Triumph TR2 (and later TR3 and TR4) sports cars, but the Morgan weighed almost 25% less.
• The gearbox is connected to the engine by a magnesium casting that's about 2 feet long
• The tires are 4 x 16...that's 4" wide by 16" diameter. Costco does not sell these.

[Jim Becker]

Roger, I showed this thread to a friend who restored a TR6 and has another TR set aside to work on, too. He "shivered" when he saw those "before" photos! LOL

[Mike Henderson]

Wow, what a project! Not for the faint of heart. You've done a great job.

I've done a couple of old Porsche but those were all metal (some pretty rotten).

Mike

[Roger Los]

As a postscript, the door frames were actually quite difficult to get "right". I think I have as much time in the two doors as I did in making the laminated arches.



A few minutes with a screwdriver led to this:



Now for some glue!

[Larry Frank]

Wow...some pretty amazing work. I will keep looking for updates.

[Patrick McCarthy]

Amazing, quite the adventure and quite nice work. Thank you for sharing and please keep us updated. Patrick

[Bruce Page]

An incredible amount of work & skill sitting on those two tables.
Well done!

[Ken Fitzgerald]

You are doing wonderful work!

It's obvious you are obsessed with this car and willing to pay the price to restore it!

Well done Sir!

[Malcolm Schweizer]

This is very well done. I am glad so stumbled upon this thread. I have always wanted to build a wood car and skin it with wood strips.

[Don Orr]

Outstanding work on all aspects. You remember how to put all that back together??? Great photo essay, thanks. Looking forward to the final product.

[Allen Jordan]

I didn't even know there were cars with wooden bodies, impressive. All that steam bending and careful fitting on a large scale seems quite difficult.

[David Ragan]

That is totally awesome.

Not a good woodworker? Seems to me you're an excellent one.

To my limited abilities, that looks like work, not a hobby.

How long do these wooden cars last if taken care of? In a museum, probably forever, but what is average life span of one that was used daily?

[Roger Los]

Some further progress, though it's pretty slow going. A combination of goofs and preexisting conditions has made fitting the scuttle quite difficult.

I had no accurate parts to work with, and my scuttle panel was quite banged around, those were the preexisting conditions. As a consequence, I made the rear "dash support" too narrow...by quite a bit, probably half an inch. I was able to widen it by 3/8" on the car via small sections of ash let in on either side, the glued frame flexed enough at the door post to accommodate 3/16" "shims" on either side. I glued them, but it's all end grain, so that bond isn't amazing. But the frame itself "clamps" them as it would rather be back where it was, and there's a pocket screw in either side for security.





There will still be shims under the steel along the top of this piece as the "extra" steel has to go somewhere. Not my proudest moment, but it should look fine once it's done.

The other issue is that my original rake angle was correct and my fix made that incorrect, but that has been worked around as best I can. Let's just say the scuttle is now a stressed-skin panel. One consequence of the scuttle-widening is that the door frames may need to be rebuilt to match the profile at the top. We'll see if they're salvageable.

Answering a Q from up thread: The wood frame didn't do too well from new if the car was used like a "regular" car and you lived in a wet climate. The factory didn't start using preservative until the 1980s or 1990s, I don't think. Now they use a dunk in a copper-based preservative, but as the frame is hidden away and cannot be "maintained" as such, it's a tough life for them. This one had not a lot of rot, but the factory also used hardly any glue and most of the joints were loose, not helped by the big accident this car had.

[Roger Los]

(I should note I have temporary lights and a license plate on so I can drive the chassis around, as it runs now. Haven't been able to hit the road yet as I'm filling and priming the scuttle first. I am considering asking BNSF if they will lay a spur to my house so I can just order a tank car of "Rage" brand filler. Which is good stuff, BTW, highly recommended.)