13 replies to this topic

[Bristol Mini]

I've been thinking about getting my mini de-seamed but i'm not sure how much it would cost and how much work there is involved. Anyone got any ideas?

[benjy_18]

a lot of money and a lot of work!

took me about 2 hours to do 1 seam, and thats without filling and painting afterwards. so it you only want the corners seams doing. your gunna be looking at at least 6 hours labour, plus cost of a respray.

[Mini 360]

Lots of time, lots of money, lots of areas it can go wrong.

Deseaming is far from easy. You can't just cut the seam out, weld in a big sheet and filler over and paint. This will leave the car open to warping/moving as you work and you get a squint car. Which is totally ruined!

You need to do it in stages, typically in my years of Mini'ing you need to cut out about 3-4" at a time from the seams and this seems (no pun intended!) to be the most popular way to do it. As you deseam one bit work your way up/down each seam doing the same. This is not even touching on the reinforcing you will need to do to regain the strength the seams give the car! There are many ways to do that too....

Once the metal works done its onto filler etc and then finally paint. Painting will need to be blended in, which typically means painting the surrounding panels too (partially anyway...) , and on a Mini, being small, thats a big space. So its near on a full respray in the end.


So think about it carefully and get some quotes on the go!

[Shifty]

I think the going rate for a decent job is about the £2k mark.

To do it properly is a very very very big job and is really job that only the experienced should tackle.

[Miniryan09]

Why can't you just grind off the seams and re-paint? what can you do to it to keep it strong, Im getting mine re-sprayed anyway and I might look into de-seaming it myself. what do I have to do?

[Bristol Mini]

well, thanks for the comments guys. I think i'll do a welding course at S&B, buy a shell, have a crack at it and if it goes horribly wrong fork out the money to have it done by the pro's

[Shifty]

Be warned, once you've made a ******* up of it there's usually no way back from it.

Its not easy and is very easy to make a huge mess of, once the mess is made then the shell is either scrap or dangerous to use.

Personally I don't like deseamed cars and I wouldn't entertain buying one.

Like I said unless its done properly you're gonna end up with a car that's a potential death trap.

[Bristol Mini]

Be warned, once you've made a ******* up of it there's usually no way back from it.

Its not easy and is very easy to make a huge mess of, once the mess is made then the shell is either scrap or dangerous to use.

Personally I don't like deseamed cars and I wouldn't entertain buying one.

Like I said unless its done properly you're gonna end up with a car that's a potential death trap.

Yeah, Thats why i was gunna buy a crummy shell then scrap it. Thanks for the warning though. i'll probably end up making a mess of it. xD

[Bungle]

where are my BIVA followers ?

[mike.]

where are my BIVA followers ?

You don't have any

[skoughi]

Just redone the deseaming on my clubman, glad i did as it was a bit of a mess, not very well welded and there was lots of rust waiting to burst through! Ended up cutting out a 30mm strip and seam welding new metal in then spent an age shrinking and bashing the corrugated mess back into shape! I did think it would be better to weld up the seam from the inside then cut off the out side bit once it was all done. I've seen someone spot weld on a strip on the inside bridging both sides then cut off the outside strip, but thought this would be prone to rusting between the two layers.

[Tupers]

When we did the front of my estate we seam welded the inside of the A panel to wing seam and then ground the seam down until there was about 3MM left standing and welded over that to make sure there was as much material on there as possible. I've seen people grind the seam off flat with the body and then weld it up but personally I would never use that method as I don't feel you can get enough heat and material into the joint for it to be strong.

Edited by Tupers, 16 September 2011 - 10:04 PM.

[kcchan]

Why can't you just grind off the seams and re-paint? what can you do to it to keep it strong, Im getting mine re-sprayed anyway and I might look into de-seaming it myself. what do I have to do?

I would suggest doing more research.

[Mini 360]

Why can't you just grind off the seams and re-paint? what can you do to it to keep it strong, Im getting mine re-sprayed anyway and I might look into de-seaming it myself. what do I have to do?

I would suggest doing more research.

And read my post too.........