297 replies to this topic

[998kid]

Thanks for the reply matey :)

Haha well maybe we will park together then, then mine wont look so bad ;) haha

Yeah I'm camping overnight in CP, doing the full works again this year. Enjoyed it so much last year :)

I see, I'll have a good read up about the shocks then. As I want it low but not so low that I can't handle speedbumps as it's bad enough at the minute haha

Thanks for the welding advice. Will be getting one soon so I can get money saving :)
Just need to keep on practicing I guess. But realistically I don't see me being able to weld a new front end on and get it painted in time for L2B which is a shame. Although I have a quote for all my front end ( both wings and front panel ) to be taken off, new ones welded on for 300 including the new panels

Yeah I will be sure to come say hi if I see you in crystal palace. Would be good to meet up and you can point me in the right direction with some bits haha

Cheers.
Josh

[JollyMole]

haha, I know what it's like not being able to afford two! I'm on the bones of my a%$e with them. haha, I'm only young, like yourself. That's what I keep telling myself too, "one day". One day I'll drive europe in the mini, one day I'll get myself a naughty redtop (or similar!) clubby... hell, one day I'll win the lottery. lol.

Sounds like a good plan with the engines mate, I'd be doing something similar if I had a garage to keep them in. haha, two minis and no garage, absolute nightmare, no wonder I'm doing a full resto eh?

You're not wrong about the road surfaces like, I'm not going to open the whole "the council are rubbish" argument again though haha. Going to the pub tonight in the RSP, fully laiden, unfortunately the pub access is horrendous, good luck to my rear passengers. lol

Good luck with the rest of the work mate, I'll be watching. :)

[The Otter]

Right then, the car has now developed a seriously bad whine from the gearbox area, and from what we can tell the diff is on it's way out. So, me and rob963 have been busy at the local Mini garage today!

Firstly we spoke to the owner (that we both know quite well and are pretty friendly with) and he's letting us work on the car there for a few days whilst we pull the engine and sort the problem. We decided that a complete gearbox swap would be the easiest thing to do, so the first thing was to find a donor 'box. They were all attached to the rest of their respective engines, so we pulled out the first one we could find (a pre A+ 1098).



Luckily it already had all the clutch/flywheel assembly removed, so it didn't take us too long to get the 'box split from the rest of the engine. This resulted in a happy/mental Rob!



Then we got cracking with stripping down the bay to get the engine out.



We got stuck on getting the manifold seperated from the link pipe, and after a couple of hours of trying to seperate it in darkness we decided to pack it in for the day and attack with an angle grinder when we come down next. I'll need a new link pipe, but I can't see any way we can get it separated otherwise! I'm also going to need to weld the manifold back up, as it's cracked along the welds holding the two side pipes to the main pipe, due to me not installing the gearbox exhaust clamp because the thread for said clamp in the gearbox had been cross threaded and was missing... so I just never bothered finding a way round it, and I now I have to weld the manifold back together! Happy days!

I'll update again when we've made some more progress on the swap, but from asking on here it seems that the gearbox isn't quite what we're looking for, so we'll have to see if there are any better donor 'boxes lying around I guess!

Thanks for reading

The Otter

[The Otter]

Friday was a productive day!

We pulled out another engine from the shed and stripped it apart, and the gearbox was in quite a similar state of wear as mine is, except the diff is almost perfect - which is what we want! The wear is worse on the second gear dog teeth, but I'll just have to hope it's not too bad when driving and hope it lasts another 3 months! We also have no idea what final drive is in the replacement 'box, so I'm looking forward to taking it out for a drive and seeing what it's like

Engine out! Watch that middle spotlight!







We got the engine inside just as it started to rain.



Then we got on with stripping it down. First thing we found was that the clutch oil seal had gone, which I'm sure wouldn't have been helping my old clutch. The top hat and pressure plate aren't in the best of conditions either.





My old friction plate is on the right here, we were comparing to another one we found in the back of the unit. Note that some of the sections have begun to wear completely flat in to the grooves. Not too much meat left on it!



About ready to split the 'box from the engine. When we got it apart we found that the diff was the cause of the whirring noise, there's a hell of a lot of play in there and it's obvious that it's not right!



You might remember I said that I'd have to cut the manifold off the link pipe to get it out, and that it was cracked around the welds. Well, I cut it free and later on in the evening I had a go at welding it up.

I appreciate these photos are terrible, but you can sort of see the crack here. It had gone almost all the way round, and half way up the middle weld as well!



Not the best welding ever, even with the awesome commercial spec welder I got the chance to use. I'm getting better and better though, honest





We left it at that on Friday and will be continuing on Monday.

Today I went to the Mini show at the Bath and West Showground in Shepton Mallet, and picked up a pair of lower rear quarter repair panels for £15, a new old stock genuine clutch slave cylinder for £25, and a new clutch kit for £40! I asked the guy that was selling the clutch kit why it was so cheap, and he says that his company relines/refurbishes the plates. Seeing as a new kit is over £100, it's a bloody good saving as long is doesn't fall apart



Thanks for reading, I might update Monday but probably not as I doubt anything interesting will happen, we'll just go and buy a few more parts (oil seal/gaskets/engine mounts, etc.) and then get the gearbox back on the block and start putting it all back together ready to drop back in the car!

Seriously hoping to get the car back together and driving on Wednesday!

The Otter

[minimarco]

Sweet ride man, so real, so much character.

[The Otter]

Not much of an update, just to say that the car is finally back in proper working order (almost). We got it driving on the Friday two weeks ago, so it was off the road for 9 days in total.

I renewed all the seals/gaskets in the gearbox and diff before I fitted it, along with the clutch oil seal, but even so I have leaks from the selector seal (expected...), the clutch oil seal again (which contributed to the slipping old clutch) and the half moon seal! It's leaking less than it used to anyway

We got the engine back in, but only after breaking the fuel pump, finding the fuel delivery pipe to the carbs was worn through and leaking, finding out the pot joints on the gearbox were the wrong type, and having to faff around getting the exhaust back together seeing as I had to cut it to pieces to get it apart!

Once I took it for a test drive my heart sank, as the whirring noise was still there! However it was only half as bad as before, and the diff was definitely problematic in the old gearbox, so we'd solved half the problem. It also doesn't pop out of second any more, which is a bonus! The other half of the grinding was of course a wheel bearing, but I just couldn't be bothered to work on the car any more at the time, so I left it for a couple of weeks and did the bearing today. Finally it doesn't whir and grind any more

Oh yes, and we also broke the speedo cable, so I have no idea how fast I'm going at the moment. I bought a new cable today though, and that'll probably be going on at the weekend, along with the beehive indicators I got at Bingley.

Next thing I really want to do is get my Wellers (which will be changing colour) and arches back on, and then order the final piece of the puzzle for my suspension set up and fit those (KAD rear brackets) and then get the geometry all set up for ultimate cornering ability.

Also on the look out for an Austin Cooper grille at the moment, so hopefully I'll be having a change of grille soon

Thanks for reading!

The Otter

[The Otter]

Small update, with pics this time

I changed over the speedo cable at the weekend, quite a fiddly job but not too bad in the end, so my speedo is working once again!

I also changed over the front indicators for the second hand ones I bought at Bingley, for the princely sum of £3 for the pair of units, lenses, bulbs, and chrome rings. I think they look nicer, and adds to the retro/older look.









That's all for now, but I was thinking of starting another thread about the 1275 I bought, to keep this thread less cluttered. If I do start that thread then I'll link to it here for anyone that's interested - it'll hopefully be all about stripping it down and building it up again, I'll be learning a lot as I go and I hope to share my experiences with you guys!

Thanks for reading

The Otter

[steven]

such a nice car

[Steely]

I love those P700's on your mini. Really suits it well :)

[Hegnirst]

I love those P700's on your mini. Really suits it well :)

i concour! its looking good man! cant wait to get mine on the road in this wonderful sunshine were having at the moment

[myredmini]

Love this mini!!

[rob963]

I have to say, your Mini is looking very good at the moment

hopefully the 1275 doesn't give you too much greif in the way of sorting it to go in

[The Otter]

A tiny update - I now have a different rear seat

I'd managed to not notice that my old battery (that was sitting on the back seat after I'd installed the new one) had tipped over whilst I was driving (no doubt too fast round a corner) and in such time before I'd noticed, most of the contents of the battery (lovely, clean, environmentally friendly, harmless, pleasantly odoured acid) had poured out on to my back seat. I tried to clean it off, but it was terminally inside the structure of the seat, and eventually spread throughout the foam and began absorbing up the back rest, which resulted in them looking like this (without touching them, the stitching literally disintegrated and they were perfect beforehand):



Thankfully they were the hideous original grey patterned City E seats, so I wasn't too worried to lose them.

So, £30 and a bit of foraging around the local Mini specialists spare parts store found me this set which I believe is from a Flame Red? In any case, much nicer looking than my old grey seat, and obviously much less acidic!





So my cheap tatty interior just got a teeny bit nicer and even more mismatched

That is all! Hopefully there'll be another update in the next month, whenever I get my Wellers resprayed and back on, and then it'll be camber time

Cheers for reading!

The Otter

Edited by The Otter, 21 March 2013 - 10:55 PM.

[richw911]

Nice yeah thats a flame / 90s cooper rear seat

[MiniMenzies]

I had those indicators, they rusted quickly They do look good those. Brilliant thread.