15 replies to this topic

[bubabule]

Well, I woke up this morning, looked out the window and thought....its about time you fixed up the wee bugger and got it road worthy again...So, searching through the internet for advice, i came upon this site.....joined, looked at some projects and thought.....why not!

So I went out to the wee lad today, as he has been off the road now for 5 years.....hangover kicking in and thinking that this is a great idea.....Now, as he has been sitting in an garage/barn out of the way for all this time, I havent really paid him much attention....so i cleared away to cobwebs and opened the drivers door.....AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
HHH!!!!!

Damn Rats had made it their home and had died in it.....maggot eggs all over the place, the seats all ripped up for nesting material...the smell......oh god.....hangover is bad now!

Anyways....As im a Scot living in Sunny Malta, I pushed the wee lad out side for some fresh air.....thankfully I remembered not to leave the handbrake on for all this time and he rolled out lovely......unlike me, who was fighting with trying not to be sick with the rank smell of dead rats and creepy crawlies all over the place.

Well, I am going to start to get the wee lad looking all lovely again, had to through out the full interior and am now going to be starting the project (which should take roughly 1 year) its going to be a long project as i am only at home for 3 weeks at a time with working offshore.

I plan on giving him a new front end, wings, doors, boot, floor pans. I need to remove the engine (never done this before) check all of that, replace all the crap under the bonnet, give the wee lad a full spray (inside and out) replace all lights, new interior including dash, carpets, door boards, center console, seats (front and rear) then fit a Zeemax Cs Conversion

I am budgeting around 5-6k so it might take a while, but hopefully you can all help with any problems i have as the project goes along. I just nipped out and took some photo's...luckily for you all, this is after i have removed the interior.

He is a 1976 1000

[James182]

Looks great! Good luck with the resto! What styling are you going for? 70's retro or standard?

[josh.evans]

looks pretty good little project you got there. good luck matey


Josh

[bubabule]

Looks great! Good luck with the resto! What styling are you going for? 70's retro or standard?

I am looking more to make the inside a little luxurious but i plan on keeping the engine , suspension and transmission standard but may look at doing a disk conversion for front and rear brakes.

[davej]

Looks good, what is the state of the bodywork?

Good luck with it

[bubabule]

I will have a better idea tomorrow.....the front end needs replacing for sure but as for inner panels?????????

the sills all seem good and the floor is good...the driver floor pan is shot through.

Will be taking a better look tomorrow, first job was to clean out and throw away that interior today and roughly asses the situation....The wee lad is going back into the my neighbors garage tomorrow (has a pit, hoists, air system and tools etc) and I will be stripping it bare and removing the front end tomorrow.

I will be able to get a good look at the boot section also.

I also want to remove all components so that i can be left with the shell only but I think that is going to take me a good few days.

I have the benefit of being at work for 3 weeks then at home for 3 weeks, so at least i can spend quite a few hours on it.

The bonus that i am hoping for, is that in Malta, although its surrounded by sea....cars just dont seem to rust over here...so fingers crossed.

Will update with more photo's and what work is done tomorrow...will us a better camera this time.

[bubabule]

Mind you, it's that old chestnut of when you remove one panel, then you notice more work to be done and so on and so on.

[davej]

Yeah I know what you mean, best to get it all done now though otherwise it may come back to haunt you.

[bubabule]

?

Edited by bubabule, 04 April 2010 - 04:37 PM.

[bubabule]

Well, today of all days...wifey decided that we were going to the brother in laws for lunch......AAAARRRRGGGHHHH not on a Sunday. so there is a full days works down the drain.....not to worry though, early start tomorrow and hopefully get front end off.

Photos to follow...all going well!!!

[bubabule]

Well, after spending the morning at the kids school for sports day, I finally managed to get some more stripping the car....turns out that there is a lot more work that i initially anticipated.

Unfortunately the guttering on the roof has many heavy rust areas which have also caused heavy corrosion to the upper door frame....the door frame is easily fixed with cutting out the area and replacing with new steel; however, with the guttering on the roof being so badly corroded, does this mean that a new roof is required as the actual roof structure is solid?

Also, unfortunately, the previous owner had modified seat brackets and drilled quite a few holes in the rear floor pans to accommodate this, so whole new floor required.

Am going to try the daunting task of removing the engine and sub frame tomorrow.  Photo0106.jpg   55.26K   12 downloads

[bubabule]

As i live in warm climates....I was thinking about making the big step of making him a convertible....I have priced up the strengthening kit; however, I have o idea about the hoods themselves.

IF (and thats a very big IF) I was to go down this route, I would be cutting the whole roof and top door frames also.....has anyone done this? How difficult is it to do?

Im just keeping options open.

[bubabule]

*Bump* regarding convertible conversion

[flamenco]

Hi mate, just reading your interesting thread (I'm the one who sent you to the panels shop from the Malta Mini Forum, just using a different username ).

The convertible idea is great, a friend of mine has a convertible mini and I had the chance to drive it last summer. It's just great, however before you make further steps, please check all things with the Transport Malta, which is the authority responsible for the licensing of vehicles, as the process can get quite annoying. I'm sure they expect an engineer's report and you will certainly have to pay a fee in order to have the logbook edited accordingly.

It's my dream to build a convertible too one day, however this is the only thing that worries me. Best to check it out tho just to be sure!

Good luck!

Jeremy

[flamenco]

And by the way regarding the conversion, you'll just have to make sure that the bodyshell is properly braced and strengthened before you cut the roof out as the roof is a major part of the bodyshell's strength.

I don't know exactly were the sections must be welded in order to strengthen the shell, however if you ask on this forum maybe you'll find someone owning an original rover mini cabrio who can perhaps measure and take some pictures for you to get the idea on how the shell is strengthened.