417 replies to this topic

[CLM]

I have gone down to my mothers house again to return her truck, so not much work on the mini for now, I do get to dig through my other stuff though

Found the date code on my old knackered wiper motor is oct 1959, I will have to try saving it now, rats

Hope I can find my 1275 crank... it might cost a bit to replace it if I can't :/

Chris

[buddylove]

Hey Chris,

If you haven't already done so, become a member on the Seattle Area Mini Owners Association site www.seattleminiowners.com and the Oregon Mini Society Site www.oregonminisociety.com . Both of the sites can help you out with what you need and also tips and advice. The SAMOA site seems to be more active.


Ryan

[CLM]

Well I worked on it a bit this weekend, did some removal of the added in metal butchery in the ok shell, then while working went to strip the cooper clip down to see what I had...



and what I have.. is not good





Seems the front half is good on the cooper clip, and the back half is ok on the trailered one, but they just have rot where the two would connect >.<



I've not done any panel fab before, though actually repairing it is not very likely I had nothing better to do as I need a boot floor and seat base to continue much, I tried making a panel to see how it would turn out. I started first by pulling out masking tape and covering the area in masking tape. I then used a sharpie marker to trace out what I Planned to try making. Following that I carefully pulled up the low tack masking tape and applied it to a thick paper backing, trimmed it more and traced it to one of the cut out quarter panels.



which I proceeded to cut out with my cheepie 3 inch air cutter, it went fairly well, I used a vice and some various forms of persuasion to form the innitial bends.



with some gentle hammer work using a trusty ballpeen hammer it wasn't looking that bad. I tried it on the clip,



and even walked over and tried it on the other one, seems to fit them better then some pattern panels I have seen... >.<



I wasn't too happy with the flat top of it though, ended up using a large socket as an anvil to form a bit of a dome into the top, looks much better now. I finally wirewheeled it down a bit and tossed some rustoleum primer on everything to keep the peace.



I am not sure though if I will go through and patch together this boot floor sections, or if I will say screw it and buy a whole panel and mod it to be correct yet, it's good practice though. Not sure if I will follow this through, but as I said, I might do it for welding practice.

Chris

Edited by CLM, 04 December 2010 - 12:04 PM.

[CLM]

Well I could never get the pieces the right shape.. they looked good, but they didnt fit.. so I have been going around trying to find panels, The whole bood floor uncut will end up costing me $400 from a US supplier or $700 imported from the UK, I am doing some checking around seeing if I can just get the sections I need right now, I have been cleaning around some of my donor sections though. One interesting tidbit, I found the battery ground nut and the fuel strap retention nut on the remains of the original car are actually 6 point nuts brazed on as opposed to 4 side nuts spot welded on in a cage. I guess that's just more early car idiosyncracies that I will have to incorporate into the build

I have pretty much mutilated the mini on the trailer at this point heh, I have plans for it though, that doesn't utilize any of the back half that I cut off... Pictures later.

Chris

[CLM]

It's been a while, but more pics of my 'mess'

I took some time waiting for an order to arrive from the UK, purchased a load of panels from m-machine. I had decided to purchase a whole boot floor panel and modify it to fit my application, unfortunatly due to shipping costs it needed to be cut in half to cut shipping in half



It's not fully welded and ground yet, more work to do before then, but man, I understand why later minis rust so bad, this heratage boot floor is made of tin foil... hmm that might be a bit thick yet... tissue paper? I had a professional welder doing some tacking but as he generally deals with thicker stuff it took a bit before we got everything dialed in, It needs some grinding and rewelding. However I am going to wait untill I have the pieces cut out to change to an earlier fuel tank piercing and remove the lump in the middle of the seat pan.

But, well, I have been taking time carefully removing the reminants of the old boot floor from the "good shell" I have left a strip of boot floor over the toeboard temporarily as the moron who owned this one in the past chopped the middle of the toeboard out.. along with the rear shock turrets I have a couple options on rear shock turrets though, I have usable ones from the other "project" and ones from the cooper rear. I am leaning to using the cooper ones as they have seat belt mounts, then adding in the other seat belt points.



Also plan to pull the toe board section from that clip or from the other project, not sure yet.

As I need to remove the seat crossmember eventually in the good shell to repair it and to repair the floor, I started removing the rear companion boxes so I can get at the rear halfs of the inner sills. I dont need to repair them, but the crossmember streatches through them all the way to the outter sills so they need removed so I can loosen the crossmember and slide it back to get it out.



Love how solid the floors are for the most part in this shell. Just look at those rear subframe mounts tasty!




I plan on picking up some early mini rear valance closing panels from m-machine along with the floor brace plates and a battery box, I am going to need to make a patch plate for the rear closing plates, not because they are rusty so much as I had to cut them as they were spot welded, brazed, and all together fused to the rear companion box Going to be pulling the spare hold down bracket and the brazed battery cable nut from the early car, and the seat belt mounts(and inner arches) from the cooper clip.

Now on to the /other/ project. I am surprised that the center tunnel is almost completly solid (you can see where it was cut and shut... ) so will only need floor halfs eventually.



Now, lets see if anyone can guess what the 'project' is going to be...



Chris

[CLM]

Managed to get the second companion box out, it is a little rotten in the corners of the box, but the floor is nice all across




But after brushing it down a bit of rust killer and primer, Looks nice



I also ended up the night with offering up the boot floor and an ooold valance I have had for ever...





It looks like a mini again!



I still need to take out the arches of the cooper clip and this one, and several other pieces.

continuing continuing continuing

Chris

[CLM]

!@*$@(*&!! The cooper inner arches are tractor welded... as opposed to spot welded every inch or so. It's going to take a lot of grinding That and I broke my last spot weld cutter bit...

Well now I need to get more bits, before I can remove more of the items... Time to grind at the inner arches it looks like >.<

Chris

[scoticus]

"lets see who can guess what the project will be"

a pickup?

[Tomf]

Where did you get the pickup pannels from?

[CLM]

Yes! I plan on turning the project mini into a pickup, I got the panels I have now from m-machine, wonderfull repros, though I think the outter b panels need a little work. Considering I need to replace the floors, buy a load floor assembly, bed sides, and rear cab bulkhead. I dont see it much more of a project then someone rebuilding a real rusty pup

Chris

[CLM]

Grinding, wheee!

Well I cut the wheel arches from the cooper clip like I mentioned I was going to.




And worked on cleaning one off to ready it for fitting to the outter arches in my saloon, those tractor welds are evil... very evil. I finally got the hang of it by grinding down each side of the string of spot welds and chiseling off the lips, then manually grinding the centers flush to the lip, lots and lots of grinding, went through one of my 3 inch cut off wheels and decided to use ear plugs. I left a portion of the inner arch on to use to fill in the missing section. The remaining flap is not quite cut to fit yet, I will do that when I fit the arch in. I have the right arch done at this point, will try getting the left one done tomorrow. Once they are cut and fitted I will need to cut and fit the center of the heel board and two closing panel patches.









Nice way of saving the £15 + shipping to the US per side for inner arches, plus they have heavy duty seat belt mounts

Chris

[CLM]

BIG Update, I was lazy posting updates... Oops

Well, where was I.. hmm oh yeah, I was working on the inner rear arches, well the tractor welds were seriously annoying me untill I figured out the way that worked for me. I took and ground both sides around the welded center off, then ground out the cente.




following with fitting them into the shell, getting the section that needed to patch into the outer arch right was a trick, but it lined up in the end.





I used the heritage boot floor I had bought to line everything up



Following that I decided I needed to be able to use the rear subby to line everything up so checked Sommerfords for the bolt sizes I needed to bolt it up then hit up my local Lowe's (hardware store) for the bolts nuts and washers I would need. Coming home I tried to thread the bolts into the heelboard... And found the nuts welded in the heelboard were not even lined up with the holes in the heel board....



I know a subby came on this shell once... those men on the line musta been magical, I had to use a die grinder to slightly open up the holes so I could even get the tap in to clean up the threads... In the end for the first time in probably over 20 years the shell had a rear subby mounted to it!




continued...

[CLM]

The following thing I did was I removed the last of the old boot floor over the heelboard. I had been hesitant to remove it as I thought it added strength, but I needed to remove it to start fitting the replacement of the damage to the heelboard.




I had to fit it tight as I had to flex the floor up a tiny bit to put it in straight. Eagle eyes will see I left a bit of the lip on the top on the right side, the lip was a bit damaged on the replacement heelboard so needed to trim it a bit special. After offering it up I decided to take a big wire cup to the sides of it to knock down the surface rust and primered both rear quarters.... No other reason then to do it I guess



I had been carefully salvaging panels and offering them up, I have even duplicated the boot floor subframe brace plates... but I have no pics of them... Oops

Some shots of some of the parts I have salvaged.



(what a nasty hole! Dang butchers!)

These were actually in pretty good shape... unfortunatly it had been rusting from the boot floor down, so the braces above them were no good... the reason I had to fabricate the brace plates

That heelboard patch sure fits in the hole well... almost like It was ment to go there


this is not welded in yet...

At this stage I has tarped the car and traveled three thousand miles... to pick up my next project the van. I could post up a project thread for it, but I wont really be able to do much there untill the welding on this saloon is done first.

continued...

[CLM]

Well after the trip I spent a few days poking at the van seeing really how bad the shell was, then I moved it onto a pallet and put the saloon back on the trailer to make it easy to work on once again. I was FINALLY ready to do some welding... After making a few modern art sculptures practicing with the welder my first target on the shell was that heelboard.



It cleaned up nice, and once it was done I tackled the Closing panels I had to cut out to remove the companion boxes, and the inner arches.



And while cleaning up the welds on the right wheelarch my dad snuck in with the camera!



With the inner arches, closing panel, and heel board taken care of I set my sights on the heritage boot floor, lots of work needed to make it look right there So I started with the spare tire bracket I removed from my original boot floor in my original January 1960 mini. I took and cut out the section I had cut the spot welds with as well as cut it low enough to position the big hole when I get around to cutting it. I then Welded on the spare bracket.





With that done, my next job were a bit worriesome, I had these...



That I am going to have to weld into the boot floor... I haven't been welding with the mig welder long, just some art/practice pieces, and the welding listed above. I was worried.. so I started small, I filled in the two flared holes on each side of the rear of the boot floor.



Then I took the plunge and hacked out the raised fuel pump hump from the seat pan... here I go, now to make this old grungy thing fit... oh boy...



Took a couple hours meticulously grinding and fitting to get old to fit inside new. And then tacked it in. I had to start on one corner and adjust the fit with a small hammer, tapping the panels untill they were perfectly flush before making a tack. I found the gloves were a detriment at this stage so I had to weld without gloves



Once it was tacked in and I was happy I took a few hours and welded a little and took a break, welded some more, another break, welded and tapped with a hammer and break... untill it was welded in.



Once that was done I figured I was done for the night, and slept. Today I got cracking back at it and cut and trimmed the fuel piercing... trimming and fitting that was hell... note the shard of metal I have wedged in the top to get the bottom left corner to line up so I could make the first tack...




but after probably 3 times as long as it took to do the other one AND the small patches, I had it tacked in and welded... none of the edges wanted to line up, it took a ton of bumping with a hammer and a punch to get the edges to be flush for the run the finger over without catching an edge test...


note the wider slots on the top left and bottom where the innergrips were. I didnt want to make all the gaps that large so just made slots for the innergrips... seemed to work well.

And there I had it, more or less a mk1 boot floor with correct pressings... a p.i.t.a. but worth it, I will clean up the welds later.



Well.. whew.. there is my marathon catchup posts... I will have to figure out where to put the next pics as I think I have filled up my earthlink webspace now... oops!

Chris

[Colliazz]

Take my hat off to you mate you have put a lot of work in to this keep up to outstanding work