Discussion
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:
First job was to whip out the cage and interior:
And the strip down of the body:
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:
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:
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...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:
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
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.
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.
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.
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 said:
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!
Thanks. Like yours, I did a full strip down and respray. It was fire damaged when I bought it. That was many years ago when I lived with my parents, must have been about 7 years ago now!! Still miss it!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...
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...
...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.
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.
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