We have got a fair bit more done in the last few weeks that is all now coming together to look like a car again. Guards have been repaired and fitted as have grill and radiator.

Door internals have been rebuilt including new glass and cables. The glass raises and lowers through a set of pulleys driven by a chain through the window winder gearbox.

The winder gearbox’s are all dry inside and very stiff. They are only held together with three spot welds so separating them was easy by drilling out the welds.

Cleaned and lubricated and then reassembled. They don’t need to be rewelded as there are three bolts that will hold the two halves together when bolted back to the door.

The bonnet needed a new hinge pin but the correct size rod is not available so I bought a length of brass rod and turned it down in my lathe to suit.

The later Morris has a trafficator switch that mounts on the centre of the steering column with the horn button. This is fixed to a steel tube, containing the horn and trafficator wiring loom that runs through the hollow steering column. The steel tube is fixed in place by a brass olive and nut at the bottom of the steering box. This allows the steering wheel and steering column to rotate around the tube. Disassembly results in mostly damaged tubes and stuffed wiring and the switches have been found to be dry of lubricant. The brass olive tends to damage the lower end of the steel tube. We had enough steering boxes to rebuild two good units but until now I had not taken much notice of the internal arrangement with the wiring. One steel tube was of sufficient length to use but had a score around the outside where the brass olive had become loose. This had worn through half the wall of the steel tube so I built this up with bronze. The second tube was damaged and after removing the damaged end was short by 10cm. We had some other damaged tubes so after cutting the required repair section I turned up a steel spigot to use to align the two pieces and also prevent bronze blocking up the tube. I chose to add the repair to the upper end of the tube.

Next was to disassemble the switch itself. Apart from being dried out they were both in relatively good condition and after cleaning and attaching new wires, the loom was rethreaded through the steel tube and installed. A very fiddly process to rebuild the whole set up but it all appears to operate very smoothly.
With the rebuilt steering wheels Chris had done it all looks pretty good.

The next major task is the wiring loom but as electrics is not my strong point I will enlist Mr Smith to take care of that and i will assist. We are now down to a lot of those fiddly bits that take as much time as everything else combined it seems. Door check straps, tool box latches, masonite kick panels, rear axle dipstick access door (YES!!!!)

awesome, just awesome Jack. :thup2: :thup2:

Canvas tilt and seat cushions are being made by Frank Brown in the UK and we anxiously await their arrival. In the meantime we carry on with the fiddly last minute bits. Wiring is largely complete with a couple of modifications. The side lights have been converted to indicators using amber LED globes so they still look like white glass lenses. The side lights have been incorporated into the headlights by drilling a small hole in the headlight reflector and mounting a small daisy cup holder. Headlights have been upgraded to halogen bulbs.
Chris wanted seatbelts fitted but the construction of the Tilly does not lend itself to too many strong points for the fitting of belts so some reinforcing of mounting points was required. The B pillar itself when belonging to the original Morris four door car body, the Tillys were fashioned from, would have been one thing but once you take the back half of the roof off it substantially weakens the ability of that B pillar especially since its only other support is the piece of timber bolted behind it. I fashioned up some steelwork in 3mm plate to reinforce the upper section of the B pillar which encapsulated the timber support utilising all available existing upper hinge bolts. Similarly the lower anchorage point wrapped around the bottom of the B pillar as well as anchoring through the floor and also picking up the bolt that secures the rear spring mount. This is probably now the strongest part of the car. The drive shaft tunnel was utilised for the inside mount with an anchor plate underneath.

Greg Nichols selected some colour co-ordinated belts to be as inconspicuous as possible.

Another area of attention was the air filter mount.
The Tilly should have a Solex carburetor but we only have one which will go in the second Tilly. We have several SU carbys of which one has been rebuilt for this engine. The carby is mounted at 90 degrees to the inlet manifold and has an air tube that bolts to a solid steel mount and has the air filter mounted on top. The solex carby being smaller means to have a similar appearance using an SU carby required a facsimile air tube to be made slightly larger. Easiest way to explain is to show the end product compared with the original set up.

The air tube was conveniently similar in size to a 65 x 35mm tube so it was a simple matter of forming up the bend and added mounting tubes and shaping the mounting bolt anchors. The mounting plate being a cast piece I made by laminating a couple of 8mm pieces together and cutting and grinding it to shape.

The other thing we decided to do was ditch the oil bath filter in favour of a paper element. Once the oil bath setup was gutted it was a simple matter of measuring up to find s suitable paper element.

To compare the SU set up with the Solex original.

How do I know what the Solex set up should look like?
Well last week I did a lighting trip (four days, 3500km) to pick up this little dude. He will be a thread of his own but being so original and complete, should be a simpler story than this Tilly but is already providing a wealth of genuine original and more importantly very accurate data.

The new addition would appear so far to be one of the most intact and original Morris Tilly's discovered. I will start a separate thread but we were very pleased to find it had an intact and original fuel cap cover. We did have the remains of two covers but no idea of what the latch entailed as both had broken pieces remaining and photos of fuel caps are as expected non existent or very blurry.

awesome work Jack. That new one does look original. :note:

Advert
 

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/a...n%20%20utility



Recently 1,200 fully-assembled
British utility vehicles were produc-
ed lo Army specifications. The re-
tail selling prices had been fixed
in relation to the value of the
vehicles on the Australian market,
allowing for the Army specifications.
The Commonwealth would not fully
recover the costs of these vehicles.
Senator Ashley said the Govern-
ment negotiated' last year for the
purchase of 8,000 utility vehicles and
. 10,11(10 passenger car chassis from the
United Kingdom. Subsequently the
british authorities advised that the
power and materials position hin-
dered production at that stage and
that only 2,500 utility type chassis
were available for Australia.
. The Commonwealth Government '
agreed to take 'these vehicles, of
which 1,200 were fully assembled
and Included 200 Austin, 350 Morris,
250 Hillman, all of 10 hp, and 400 12
hp Standards.

Where does time go?
Looking at the last updates on this thread and we never put up any finished photos of Scrappy who has now been on the road for over two years.
Will rectify that.
Very soon we will begin restoring Milly. The chassis is almost stripped.
It is not a pretty sight.

Photos...photos...photos.....
 

.....will rectify that!!!!!!

The Prodigal has returned!
 

Scrappy the Tilly has hit the road coming up to two years now, Shes not what you'd call fleet of foot, gets a bit hairy over 45 MPH, and sits pretty comfortable at 40, much to the frustration of the average Aussie road user. We've taken her to Corowa twice first time via trailer, the second time an Epic two day one way journey from her.

the first set are getting The Scc14 on, and the Tillys first outing a road trip from Geelong to Winchelsea via Inverleigh, Cressy, Lake Bolac and home again, some slight issues with the Dynamo, and a leaky oil pump but we got her home.

New Livery
 

We painted Milly up just like early well known late war photo of a Morris Tilly in a RASC unit in 79th armoured Division.

Corowa 2022
 

We trailered it the first time, and Greg had a grand time tootling around northern Vic, My wife and i joined them and we took Scrappy out to Olive Hills estate Rutherglen, and took some great photos outside the homestead.

we even took out Peoples Choice, amongst a sea of Jeeps!

Epic Journey: Corowa 2023
 

The second outing to corowa Greg and I Drove Scrappy up from her current Home at Bacchus Marsh, to Corowa, the back way via Gisborne and heathcote staying overnight at a pretty sketchy caravan park outside of shepparton sleeping in swags, We stopped at the Cemetary where 250 Kriegsmarine POWs are buried, and viewed what can be made out of the POW camps near Tatura.

It was a great week!

Greggy has even been brave enough driving scrappy to his hometown of somerville, though the sprawling metropolis of Melbourne and back again a few times to attend his local ANZAC day services.

Hello Jack and Chris,

So if the tilly has been on the road for two years it could mean that you have had that long to work on other projects. If so, could you please detail them?

Does anyone know what happened to Colin and his thorough work on the Vickers tanks? It has been far too long on those posts too!

Kind regards
Lionel

Haven’t been idle Lionel. Been working on a few No.27 limbers and trying to get a hot rod for a mate out of the way plus a few other distractions.
Keen to get Tilly 2 started as a lot of parts were done during the first resto so once the chassis is sorted there is plenty to bolt straight on.