A brief history of my 1100 ownership

1100 number 1
This was my first car. At the age of 17 I decided I would be needing a car soon. Being the resourceful (and poor) student that I was, I decided to make use of the pile of bits my dad had collected, and this being mainly Morris 1100 bits, it was an 1100 I ended up with. I resurrected the one with the least rust (and sadly the most dents) from a collection of four my father had amassed in our suburban backyard. Over the course of about a year and a half I was able to get it to a presentable state. The engine was rebuilt at school in automotive classes and a power unit that worked was somehow cobbled together. The pick of all the interior bits was fitted and I carefully installed a stereo (car was still positive earth at this stage so fitting that stereo was no easy task). Then followed the usual collection of teething troubles you get with any car built by a relatively unexperienced builder (but rapidly gaining experience at this point). These included shorting the antenna lead and setting fire to the loom just before I took it for the roadworthy inspection, an engine that would not stop smoking (finally traced back to having the valve spring oil sheilds installed upside down, thus pouring oil down the valve guides instead of keeping it away from them), a wheel nearly come off because the roadworthy guys didn't do the nuts up and the exhaust kept falling off. Eventually I got it on the road early in 1995.

I drove it around for a while in patchwork paint (original white with grey primer over all the bits I had repaired) until I raised enough funds to get it resprayed. In actual fact, it was a suspended license that prompted the respray. As I couldn't drive for 3 months I figured it was a good time to get it done. A friend of a friend did the paintjob in bright white acrylic for $650 in his shed. I found out later on that it wasn't the best job, but what do you expect for $650, it was great to have the car all in one colour.

I drove this car for several years with all manner of engines in it, ending up in the form you see here. Mods included a fully rebuilt 1100 motor with 12G295 head with MASSIVE valves (the largest Link had ever seen on a small bore motor) a hot cam and numerous other mods I did after reading David Vizards book. It had a 4-speed syncro box with centre oil pickup, extractors & straight-thru exhaust (I was constanly asked if I had a rotary in it), lowered hydrolastic with a stiffer rear swaybar and the 14 inch wheels you see here. Inside I fitted some Alfa bucket seats and made a custom dash and parcel shelf.

I had great fun in this car but never quite had enough power or reliability from it. I even took it sprinting and ran it in motorkhanas with the Austin Healey Sprite Drivers Club. After sinking loads of cash into the power unit rebuild I wished I had bought a jap engine and dropped it in.

Eventually this car was retired due to too much rust in the sills. This was prompted by getting a canary for bald tyres. Which in turn was prompted by getting pulled over for speeding. This single event caused me to lose my license for the second time, put my car off the road permanently and caused me to lose my job (I was a pizza delivery driver). In career terms it was the best thing to ever happen to me, cause I had to get a real job then, automotively I ended up buying an XF Falcon...

1100 number 2
Partly due to pangs of nostalgia as well as dreams of doing that engine conversion this 1100 was bought for the princely sum of $50. I had heard about it from a friend in the sprite club, it had been sitting in this guys carport for several years after it's motor inexplicably siezed. Apparently it had been running fine in the morning then in the afternoon, it just wouldn't go. I towed it away with grand ideas of fitting some kind of twin-cam powerplant. It had a very straight body and no rust in the floors at all, so it was an excellent candidate for a project. Not much happened til I got the urge to go sprinting again and realised I still had all the bits I needed in the other car. In a flurry of activity I swapped all the bits over to the new car and got it ready for RWC. After doing a quick tidy up this car was fitted with the mechanicals of the first car and taken to the AHSDC national challenge in Goulburn. The trip is another story in itself, but once we (finally) arrived, the car aquitted itself very well. This was only my second time driving on the racetrack and both myself and my younger brother had an absolute ball sharing the car. The car ran well, and we made an uneventful trip home. The car was then relegated to normal duties and driven when the need arose.

Once the next Easter came around the idea of going to the AHSDC challenge again came up. This time my youngest brother had his L plates and all three of us would be able to participate. Again there was a flurry of activity to get the car ready, this involved fitting SAAS racing buckets which I had aquired. My 8 months pregnant partner was never a huge fan of our idea, but after repeated assurances that sprinting was perfectly safe we left early to head up to Winton for the day. All was well except my custom lower engine steady lost its nut and washer during driver training early on.

After lunch it was time to head out for some full laps. In a moment of generosity I gave my youngest brother first go as he had never done it before, sadly this turned out to be a bad idea. I still don't know how, but after a first lap that was great, he managed to flip the thing over and roll it 2-and-a-half times, all without leaving the bitumen. It was a real heart-in-mouth moment as I watched It unfold. I saw from the first half-flip onwards and it was like slow-motion. Nobody around me seemed to notice at first. I eventually heard someone yelling "Look, someones rolled" and someone else saying "Whos car is it?" and then I heard my reply "It's my F**KING car!!". One of the sprite club guys threw me into the nearest vehicle and we drove out there. I remember being infuriated by having to drive around the track when I just wanted to go straight over the infeild to the car. Only once we pulled up near the car and I saw both my brother and his passenger (he was under instruction at the time) standing up and talking did I relax a bit. Somehow both occupants managed to walk away relatively unscathed from a bad roll in a car with no harnesses and no rollcage. Sadly the car was never going to go anywhere again.

1100 number 3 - A new beginning

After messing about with a Datsun Stanza for a while (Aaahh, oversteer), I sold that and began looking for something else. My plans for getting an import skyline were scuttled by an overseas trip so the budget dropped to the money that was made from the sale of the Datsun. Thats when I happened upon this little beasty.

Mostly original except for the interior which has been nicely redone, this car has only 90,000ish miles on it (not bad for a 40 year old car) and body-wise is in very good condition. There is NO rust in any of the floors even the boot floor is in good nick. So this new car will hopefully be the recipient of some kind of transplant in the near future. At this stage I am favouring swaping in a Toyota 4AGE 20 valve motor, although those Starlet swaps that the Ausmini boys are up looks to be a good swap too.

Anyway, I will try to keep some kind of progress reports going on the project 1100 page as things happen. For now look at these lovely concept pics of how it could look when finished.