Underneath the Morgan, the bolts protrude beyond the nuts. Would it be a sacrilege to cut these bolts off flush with the nuts?
Depends on the Concours judge.....
The extra length is designed to extend beyond the nuts to ensure full thread engagement and produce maximum rated strength. But that can be satisfied with one or two threads showing which is all engineering calls for.
In the happiest of worlds, you would replace yours, with graded bolts to the precise size needed, or with ss as RichardV6 suggests, but that will likely be considerably more effort.
Be aware of the risk of creating future sadness. Cutting those bolts may be easy enough, but will often make them difficult to thread and de-thread. In that position, unless you secure the other end, they will just twirl. Yet, the classic trick to repair threads damaged by shortening a bolt is to leave the nut on and de-thread it after cutting using a little bit of penetrating oil if available. So you can cut as advised and paint what remains with a
modern rust paint of your choice if you want the result to look pretty.
For what its worth, I have accepted that a bit of surface rust is nature's thread-locker.
L.
