Project Mini

[toast boy]

Thought I'd start a build thread for my Mini in case anyone's interested, any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated! We bought a roundnose last summer with the intention of doing it up to sell but found out that it needed more welding than we could justify the time and expense in parts to put right. It did have a decent 1275 engine though which was whipped out to be donated to a decent shell when we found one. Conveniently my Dad found a decent shell for my Christmas present which was nice! It had been prepared to be a rally car but the owner had got bored with the project and decided to get rid. This is how it was when we picked it up:




First job was to whip out the cage and interior:




And the strip down of the body:

[toast boy]

The bodywork was in generally good condition with what looked like new front wings, A panels and scuttle repair panels. The fit wasn't brilliant so the car is never going to be perfect but I'm not aiming for concors condition so not going to get too hung up about it. A bit of filler to bring things back into shape a little and then primer:




I decided to strip the fuel tank down as it was looking rather scabby and paint it with POR15:




Opened up the engine to check it over:

[toast boy]

chrisj_abz said:

looks a nice solid clubby, what sort of look you going for??

I'm going for a stripped out road racer look but we'll see how things progress as I get closer to finishing it! I've got a suspicion that it may be rather loud in there with no sound deadening or interior...

[toast boy]

Painted the cage so it's ready to go back in once the body has been painted:



First few coats of paint:




Wire brushed the wheels and masked up for painting:




Started to rub down all of the chrome bits and prime them as they are going to be all black:


First few black bits:


Almost finished with the yellow and first few coats of black on the roof:

Edited by toast boy on Thursday 27th May 22:27

[toast boy]

Thanks for the kind words guys. Yellow and black does seem to be a popular colour combo at the minute, when I was looking for inspiration the two options that stood out for me were bright orange and black and bright yellow and black. There's an orange one already near me so went for the banana look.

Performance wise I'm going to be keeping the engine as it is to start with, to be honest I'm desperate to get it on the road, impatience is getting the better of me at the minute! I was told that the previous owner had a slightly hotter cam put in the engine and the last time I drove it it felt quite strong so I'm probably just going to leave it for a while before I start with the tuning bug.

[toast boy]

Minor update - cage is in, I'd compare that to trying to get an elephant into a phone box. Hope to make a bit more progress this afternoon, with any luck there might be another update tonight with a feeling of progress being made!

[toast boy]

Bit of an update - engine is in, just need to sort out the last few bits of wiring and see if it starts.

[toast boy]

A couple of minor diversions today, finally got the driver's seat mounted on modified MGB runners to enable adjustment and made up a subframe for the passenger seat which will be static.

Passenger subframe:




I also took off the air filter and decided to do something about the sharp edge leading into the carb so I made a DIY stub stack loosely based on an MGB stub stack.

[toast boy]

Now you've pointed that out I suppose I should have taken the opportunity to paint the engine! I didn't paint it mainly as I'm not fussed how it looks, as long as it does it's job well it can be as dirty as it likes. Having said that though yours does look very nice clean!

[toast boy]

Been quite a while since I updated this as a lot of the jobs haven't made much difference to how the car looks but this is how it's standing now - car is getting close to going for an MOT for the first time in about 10 years - lights are working but other electrics are a bit iffy, roof needs to be repainted (somehow got brake fluid spilled on after it was sprayed the first time) and front bumpers need to be painted and mounted. Everything after that should just be little cosmetic tasks, touch wood.

Apologies for the crappy photos, camera phone was all that there was to hand, will have to get a proper camera down at the workshop.





And in other news, the TVR has stopped pissing water all over the floor after I took off the radiator bottom hoses/pipes and gave them a damn good scrub and paint. Unfortunately though it looks like the water pump is knackered so that will need to be done first thing next week. Got excited thinking the bonnet would be able to go back on but that will have to wait...

[toast boy]

...nice rust free (for now) chassis though!





And a couple of shots of another work in progress, was originally purple with a delightful mustard interior, will probably be resprayed bright red with a black interior.

New front wings, old ones had some quite unusual damage along the wing tops, far too bad to consider repairing ourselves.

[toast boy]

Sorry, I've been lazy and not updated this! There's been a few goings on with the Mini and the rest of the fleet, I'm thinking of starting a separate thread to document what I've been getting up to in the workshop as a lot of it has got nothing to do with the Mini.

Big news is that it finally passed it's MOT earlier this year

To be honest, I'd lost interest in it for a while, the car was probably 90% complete but that last 10% is always the most time consuming and difficult. There were a few other jobs that needed doing in the workshop and I was getting involved in other projects and for a while it was pushed into a corner and left to gather dust.

In the end I got sick of the sight of it looking forlorn and decided to get my finger out and finish it.

Bought some adjustable tie rods and negative camber bottom arms to replace the bent tie rods that were on the car, welded a few patches under the car, stone chip painted the floor and the arches. Thought everything was good to go, did a test run round the block and heard a horrific noise and the car started shuddering awfully, dragged it back to the workshop to scratch my head...

Long story short the car was originally an auto and so we had the engine sitting way too low and off to one side causing the pot joint on one side to come adrift. We fabricated some different engine mounts to raise it up and move it across and all was well. Down to the MOT centre, passed first time, the only problem after that was that it developed a fuel leak when the tank had more than a dribble in it, solved by putting a new seal on the sender unit.

Latest job has been to cover the inside of the roof for rudimentary headlining and fit some incredibly simple door pulls!





Jobs still to do: sort out the dash instruments, find out where it's leaking from (it's like a swimming pool in there when it rains) and tidy up a few cosmetic bits outside. I'm quite liking the fact that it looks a bit rough and ready though. Not sure whether I'm going to keep it, although I love loud obnoxious cars, it is a little bit too devoid of creature comforts and it's certainly not relaxing to drive. I'll probably keep it over winter as I'd imagine it'll be slightly easier to handle in inclement conditions than the TVR...

Going to try and find a recent picture of it and then I'll start a thread about the other cars/things I've been doing in the workshop, this may take some time!

[toast boy]