Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Maintenance & Servicing Workshop Tips

A retractable clothes line. Great for drying out golf gear.
A mini-fridge.

A decent vise & good lighting

Very simple: a 'dick head' light. Beats holding, hanging, magnatized inspection lamps when crawling about under the car. Get a bright one though, they are not all the same!

Clean up before you finish in the workshop I.e workbenches cleaned down and floors swept. Can't abide working in clutter!

Tools cleaned and put away in the correct drawers so you can find them next time you need them. Look after you tools and they'll look after you. Don't work with defective tools I.e slack jawed spanners, worn/damaged screwdrivers

Never lend your tools out unless it's against a hefty cash deposit.

Dress for the job, cotton boiler suit, safety specs and toe caps. (My Dad is missing his left leg above the knee partly due to a workshop accident, enough said)

If you have welding gear, keep quiet! Else you'll be plagued with friends you never knew you had wanting a 'small patch' put on for the MoT. Small patch usually a hole 12" square above the fuel tank.

If things aren't going right, time for a cuppa and a walk round the block.



Arwyn

all of the above; spot on Arwyn

I think I may frame these and put them up in the garage!

James

Hang on to at least a few assorted bits of cutoff Tie-wrap ends. These are a great modern day equivalent to the old toothpick or matchstick in the hole that just won’t take the bite of a screw thread any more. They’re very sturdy, won’t break down over time, and almost act the same as a fiber locknut does on a bolt.

Seems I always have to use one (or two) in non critical use of cement screws in cement wall or block as I can never drill those holes correctly.

A decent workbench. Mine is made from kitchen base units with a worktop. I added a sheet of hardboard smooth side up as a replaceable sacrificial top. Keep it wiped clean after each job. Brake cleaner to clean things. Disposable gloves, I just got slightly thicker orange textured grip ones than the thin blue fragile ones.
Wall decorations.....I have a lovely blonde in an animal skin bikini riding on a winged horse.
Photo available at a price!

Hats of to Arwyn for his way of doing things, you have been well trained.. (-: I wish I could work like that but was ever on to the next job and the next and the next, worked into the night and through the night if and when required....not the best way to work for sure.

WORKBENCH is No 1 for me, a proper engineers bench mine is made out of circa 70x35mm steel box section 5mm wall thickness a circa 15mm thick plate welded in on one corner to take the vice, circa 100mm x 100mm plate welded on to the feet in order that it does not cut into the concrete floor when pounding down on something, like folding metal in the vice. a thick wooden top on mine, which has worked better for some tasks then others where steel might be considered more suitable and bars welded in between the legs to add even more strength... That`s what I call a bench...Though I have seen better, by way of cast iron Victorian ones..(-:

When I bought my first car a real rot box of an Austin Healy Sprite, my dad bought me the AA book of the car... Yeah some of you will have seen the book not even a dirty fingernail in sight, a fantasy world where everything came apart with the greatest of ease and nothing was ever seized or rusted and the correct tool for the job was ever to hand .... NOTHING like my real world experience ... As I typed, my first car was a rot box nailed back together in a lock up a couple of miles from home with no power.... not that I owned any power tools at the time but a bit of light would have been handy...pop rivets nuts bolts and fibreglass sills, MOT was not as strict back then.... (-:

For some real world spanner wielding on an old car then this guys presentation is quite the best I have stumbled upon, even if his workshop is not festooned with wonderful kitchen style wall and floor units.... For me old tools hanging on the walls of a workshop where generations may have worked before with the occasional spiders web thrown in just captures my imagination.... I demolished the workshop I spent so many years in to build a new home extension and also built a new and far larger soulless place to replace it... Hmm..!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU77OVfWuys&t=166s

Mine looks like Donald Campbell's at Brooklands, except its got more junk, not many tools, and looks untidier.
I have a workbench rescued from the Price's Candles factory in Battersea when it finally closed down after 200 years. The bench has the patina of age with a woodworking vice at one end and a metalworking vice at the other. I'm usually in the middle balancing the workpiece on an old petrol tin.

Did anyone else train at the CEGB apprentice training school in Penarth? I learnt to file a 1" cube, and fetch the fish and chips for the whole group every day.