Community Status Updates

Groundhog saw shadow this am. Six more weeks of winter. It is -40c with the wind at the moment. THIS SUCKS.

Good news on the resto tonight. Boot floor is now rebuilt. Slowly getting there.

Winter in Canada = replacing severed block heater cord outside in dark with -40c windchill. Not loving wiring with frozen fingers.

Is it supposed to take 5 hours to fit a front floorpan? Prev owner must've had a thing about banging the cr*p out of the firewall with a hammer, then badly welding various patches on it. Anyway...panel's welded in nicely now. Hopefully it's the most difficult one?

Winter in Canada, 2013-14 style: -45c with the wind, then warm up to -10c and 20cm of snow, then -38c with the wind tonight. Ought to warm up by April...

Why the heck would previous owner just tack in new floor pans and repair panels on top of the old ones? Making for a heck of a lot more work to remove it all.

Hoping to get to see some welding done on the car if the temperatures stay warm enough. Two solid weeks of -25c meant the garage was too cold!

That sinking feeling after hours of sanding down to bare metal. One last small section against the wheel opening rim...and find another complete bodge of a fix. Ugh.

More money to be shelled out as part of the resto. Money pit, indeed. Think I'm going to set up a Paypal donation site.

Stripping off layers of primer, paint, filler, paint, more paint, more filler, etc. on the Mini all day. What a mess. Man, I got soaked by the previous who "prettied it up". :(

Does the rain gutter normally rust out? I've discovered chunks of the lip missing and hidden by bondo during the resto job.

Grinding out the boot floor and discovering previous owner played a lengthy game of "How many little patches can I sort-of weld in?"

Car interior gutted out in preparation for the full overhaul. Really happy I installed that adhesive-backed sound deadener that I just spent 2 days peeling out...

So I guess the right front shock absorber isn't supposed to be able to fully compress by hand and then stay that way, right? :) I figure they may be factory originals judging by the state of the hardware.

Got back working on the Mini last night. Engine pulled from the subby and starting big cleanup for repaint. It's been a big, fat mess over the winter in getting work done, but hopefully all good from here on in. Discovered the prev owner had some really interesting ideas of bolt choice and safety...grrr.