An Introduction: Chris Collins and Morris Tilly Project

[jack neville]

The sides are now painted and the timber frames nailed on and most of the hood bow fittings added. I have salvaged screws and bolts where possible as like Colin Jones has found with his counter sunk bolts, trying to get slotted screws and bolts in Australia these days is very difficult unless you have old stock. Very annoying when you only need a few of each different size. In fitting the sides I found they didn't marry up to the chassis as good as I would like them to. Some further study at the remains and scraps of wood I have been working off found that I had made the body 20mm too wide. So it all had to come apart again and the holes to the B pillar widened and the cross beams shortened and then on reassembly everything went together perfectly. I had to redo the front B pillar lower timber supports as I had made the gap between them too narrow to allow the rear seat to fit when folded down and they were also a few millimetres too low and the floor boards would have dipped at the front. That is the problem with not having an accurate body to copy from. In places it has been repaired over the years inaccurately so what I thought were accurate facsimiles looked good until it went together. There is an awful lot of trial and fit and refit with this sort of coachwork restoration but I am happy that it is now ready to lay in the floor boards. Incidentally, I had to get my timber man, Nigel Effemey at Streamline Timber in Geelong to machine up the tongue and groove floor boards as the modern boards have a 'double frog' (grooves) in the bottoms that wouldn't look right.