Hi all,
New to restoration, and so far have found TMF invaluable as son has just bought a mini that has been sitting unused in a garage for the last 10 years.
He was lucky enough to be able to keep the car in its existing garage enabling us to get it at least up and running.
Over the last four weeks we have so far:
Pumped up tyres.
Drained old petrol, oil and water, flushed out, replaced thermostat and housing gasket.
Removed old plugs & put oil down barrels, left for a week then turned engine over by hand.
Had to rebuild/replace seized clutch plunger, pivot arm and slave cylinder, replace seals in master cylinder and replaced hose to slave cylinder. This involved removing half of the items in the engine bay, and turning the Mini into a VW Beetle, as most of the engine was now in the boot, Ha Ha. Also removal of front seat, and getting into positions I’m far too old for, to remove clutch pedal clevis pin – job for a very small child or E.T., actually used my other son, he’s not small, but has long fingers.
Free brakes all round, replacing both rear back plates and associated fittings, cylinders, adjusters etc. replaced master cylinder seals, nightmare, until I found out about removing small pin holding in second plunger, flushed out old brake fluid, replaced with new fluid and bled brakes.
New battery fitted, tested coil, cleaned & re gapped points, dizzy cap & rotor arm, cranked engine over, got oil pressure, so fitted new plugs and finally today, got the engine fired up after a weekend of replacing bits of bodged wiring and cleaning up old fuse board contacts. Also fitted new indicator stalk and sorted out head light /full beam/ indicator wiring.
Drove to end of drive & reversed back into garage….. whoopee, mini seen sunlight first time in 10 years.
Seems to be running a bit rough and rich, so think new points, Dizzy cap, HT leads might be next along with removal and rebuild of carburettor, a job I’m not looking forward to, so any advice really appreciated.
Will keep everyone updated as we progress. 
