13 replies to this topic

[PennyPenguin]

About time I start my own rebuild post rather than spending all my time being utterly amazed by everyone else's hard work!

This is project Miffy, she's a 1983 City E, 998cc.

I've owned her for 8 years and she's been off the road for the last 7, so is now looking very sorry for herself . We started taking bits off her and stripping the bodywork a few years ago but our garage was a drive away with no electricity so we couldn't get much done. We now have a garage at the bottom of the garden so it's all hands on deck to get her rust free before she passes the point of no return.

This is a budget project, with me and my husband attempting to do all the jobs ourselves and reusing anything we can salvage, both being complete novices it will be a steep learning curve!

We did have a strict time limit as our second baby is due in June but once we had fun getting our hands dirty we realised it will be a long-term hobby rather than a quick fix. Although she needs to be rust-free and protected before baby arrives as we won't have the time to do anything major for a long-time once we have two little ones!

I'll be working out a list to post of all the things we need to do to get her road worthy – it will be long! I'll put up some photo's of her when she was on the road if I can find them, as well as some of the work that has already been done.

My dad's popping over with his welder this afternoon so i'll be getting on and teaching myself how to use it this weekend – very exciting but also daunting, we have a while before the mini will be ready for welding so I have time to practice, practice, practice



Here she is - sad to say the garage is no longer so tidy!

[PennyPenguin]

Quick update: We managed to remove the rear subframe a few weeks ago with not too many problems, lots of WD40 and one snapped bolt later it was off – and in surprisingly good condition.

We then spent a good week trying to strip the thing down – those bolts were stubborn!

Here are my freshly painted Radius Arms. When we got them off they looked awful, but after a clean, lots of wirebrushing, kurust, primer and a few layers of paint they came up quite well:


After numerous hours of wire brushing the subframe itself still needed a good clean. So this afternoon in the absence of a pressure washer, or even a hose, my 18 month old thought he should lend a hand with some soapy water and brushes:



Those nooks and crannies were a pain, I ended up using a scraper to get the thick muck off, a pressure washer would have been so worth the money, i'm now dreading having to do the same for the front subframe when we get round to taking it off!

My husband Wez will be finishing off the subframe wire-brushing this evening ready for me to Kurust it tomorrow – in time for a weekend of etch priming, stonechipping and painting. We are child free on Saturday so will hopefully get lots done, here's hoping!

[PennyPenguin]

Just a quick update as my new set of bushes came today and i wanted to show them off. Not too exciting i know but they're the first thing we have bought for the car since deciding to start up the rebuild again


(that's not my foot!)

Have now Kurust and primed the subframe, hopefully finishing that off tomorrow - just hoping the weather stays nice

[PennyPenguin]

Weekend update: with a child-free Saturday we thought we'd get a few jobs done, but of course we got held back by various issues/hiccups – but that's the way of things I suppose! Great weekend though as the sun was shining :)

We did manage to stone chip and then top coat the subframe, one more layer of topcoat which I'll do tomorrow and it's done:




Not impressed with the can of Stone Chip Shield though, it blocked up every couple of seconds and tipping it upside down and spraying for 2 seconds like they suggest just seemed to make it worse! I haven't seen anyone else mention this issue so maybe it was just a bad batch? We decided one thin coat would have to be enough, I was going to spray the underside of the car with it but not now – will have to see if you can buy some paint-on Stone Chip instead or go down another route...

I also painted these :


Other than that we spent most of the time organising the garage so we have room to work and can find the right tools when we need them. Bought a light for the garage which we fitted and sorted out the music:


We need the engine out to paint it and to access the engine bay for some welding to be done. We decided we would try and take the engine apart in situ and lift it out by hand as we don't have a hoist and our garage beams are too frail to hold any extra weight. We would have lifted the car over the subframe/engine unit but our largest socket is just a little too small to undo two of the big sub mounts. Halfords didn't have the right size so we'll hopefully borrow one from my dad, too impatient we wanted to carry on regardless

We have pretty much stripped the engine bay, except we can't get the final two bolts undone to lift the engine unit off the gearbox, so we're now stuck.

Here's a pile of components from the engine bay, slightly concerned that we're never going to be able to put it all back together! The idea was to do it in a methodical way, keeping all the bolts nice and organised – but that went out the window pretty quickly :s


Hopefully we will find a way round this or just wait until we have the right sized socket and take the sub off with the gearbox and engine still attached. Once we get the rest of the engine out I can clean up and wire brush the engine bay, I know there's at least one patch we will need to weld, hoping we don't find anymore!

We also tried to free the drive shaft bolt so we could take off one of the front brake backplate's - unsuccessfully. We have a socket the right size, have used brute force, Shock n Lock, WD40 – it's not budging. Other than an immense amount of heat I don't know how we're gonna get it off! The other front brake is also being stubborn, the brake adjuster was rounded so we can't use our brake adjusting spanner, again tried everything we can think of with no luck.

I did want to clean up the front brake's this week like I have done with the back brakes but I’m just gonna have to wait, hopefully something we do will free them eventually!

On a more positive note the welder arrived courtesy of my dad:


As you can see it's a very basic Oxy-acetylene unit. I'm hoping this will do the job ok – although it's going to be more about what I can do rather than the welder I think. Going to spent any spare time in the week practising – not looking forward to replacing the gas continuously though, I think it's going to get quite expensive! I do have an arc welder but don't think I’m going to ever be good enough to use it, maybe for spot welding, we shall see.

and some random photos :


Another couple of weeks and my overalls are not going to do up


The dash... and the husband

I'll update with some photo's of the rusty areas in the week, and hopefully some photo's of practise welds, it just depends how bad they are!

[rsroadkilla]

Top work!

I taught myself basic mechanics when I was 18 on my first mini, which has now 10 years later resulted in me stripping a kit car and re-building it!

Its the best way to learn! And i'm sure it will all go back together fine! Especially with the help of the people on here! :)

[PennyPenguin]

Thanks!
I think a mini is definitely the best car to work on if you're like me and know nothing to begin with - I don't think car mechanics get any simpler do they?
I'm also lucky as I have two dads who have both owned classic cars at some point - a good pool of knowledge and tools we can make use of!

[PaulColeman]

I've been restoring a 76 Mini for my daughter for the last 4 or 5 months and I still manage to blow holes in the bodywork now and again with a MIG welder, I dread to think of the mess I'd make with an oxy kit. I'm no expert but I believe gas welding is much harder than MIG so if you're not very experienced I'd try and get hold of a MIG if I were you. If you have somebody in the family who can gas weld then fair enough but if not then take the easy route. I only seem to have to look at it wrong and I can blow holes in it at the lowest power setting with thin welding wire.

Good luck with it though.

P.S. My overalls fit like that and I'm not pregnant!!

Edited by PaulColeman, 26 March 2012 - 12:41 PM.

[PennyPenguin]

Thanks for the advice. If I get nowhere with the oxy kit we may have to sort out a MIG, we'll just see how it goes. My dad can weld but is out of practice - he seems to get on ok with the gas welding though. He welded some patches to a tractor with it that turned out ok (please no Wiltshire jokes!). I'll have more of an idea once i get down and do some real practicing, was going to do it tonight but i'm so tired i'm crawling up with the laptop instead

[PaulColeman]

He welded some patches to a tractor with it that turned out ok

Mini bodywork is paper thin compared to agricultural stuff so practice on some scrap before attempting the real thing. I've made any patches I've welded bigger than the hole I'm trying to fill so that I have a double thickness on the areas I'm welding and I still manage to blow holes in it now and again. I'm a lot better than I was 4 months ago but welding 1mm steel is actually a lot harder than it looks, particularly for a novice like me and I know I'm not alone there. I'm a long way off trying to butt weld anything and I'm not even going to attempt it again after my failed attempt at replacing a front floor pan - it ended up looking like Swiss cheese

Edited by PaulColeman, 28 March 2012 - 12:27 PM.

[PennyPenguin]

Ok, so after nearly two weeks of not doing much mini work and still scratching our heads about the rock solid drive shaft/hub nuts, as well as the last few very stubborn and difficult to reach engine bolts, we decided the only option was to remove the front subframe with the engine and transmission unit still attached. We had some child-free time today and I had sourced a 33mm socket for the two huge subframe pins (bit of a bugger as our kit went right up to 32mm!), so off to work we went :)

Should have thought more methodically and sensibly about how we were going to approach this but as usual just went straight in and started undoing things. In hindsight, trying to lift the car off the subframe and roll the engine unit out was not a clever thing to try and do with basically only one man (and a 7month pregnant women)! We couldn't just roll the car back either as it doesn't have back wheels, Wez had to lift the body while I chucked wheels and ramps under the frame, high enough so he could then roll the engine out all by himself! Next time when something requiring muscles needs to be done we're calling in back up

Note to self; this is a budget build but some things are just worth the money – like an engine hoist!

Also, we managed to snap the gear lever where it enters the gear box! Couldn't get to the split pin holding it in place and thought it was enough to just undo the gear lever box from the car – it wasn't

Once out, we realized to have enough space to strip it, we would need to maneuver the whole unit – subframe, wheels and engine, out the small garage door and into the garden! Poor Wez, I did feel kind of bad for him standing on the sidelines eating mini-chedders and telling him it was never going to fit through that door!

It was still a more productive day than we imagined, even with the hiccups, and still enjoyable (for the most part!). Here's the engine bay now:





A good go with the wire-brush tomorrow will hopefully only reveal minor surface rust, we'll also be stripping the subframe and I'm completely prepared to resort to using any means necessary to get those stupid hub nut/ drive shafts off. Same goes with the passenger drum brake with the rounded brake adjuster – they're coming off whether they like it or not, even if the damage done means they will need to be replaced! We'll have to do it all within a 1.5 hour window while baby's napping though.

Looking forward to receiving the Mini Restoration Manual my father-in-law has very kindly bought me – nothing like some good light bedtime reading

[PennyPenguin]

Returned from our holiday to find the forum has had to revert back to a 'back-up' copy dated the 4^th April so my post on the 15^th had disappeared. Luckily I write mine as a Word document then paste it over so I can pretty much just re-post it, minus a few amendments, so here goes:


Post from 15^th April
Not too much time spent on Miffy today, while Zephan napped me and Wez felt lazy so sat in the sun cleaning up some bits and bobs that had been soaking in old petrol – they came up really lovely, such a therapeutic job:



I had to clean our carpets today as we have a house inspection tomorrow and somehow managed to get oil marks all round the house yesterday after working on the car, oops!
While I was busy, Wez, the legend that he is, managed to get one of the wheel units completely stripped. The brakes aren't looking as bad as I first thought so we'll get everything cleaned up nicely and then decide what can stay and what needs to be replaced:



He also had some fun with the wire-brush:


Before and after!


I put all our rusty bits in a bucket of vinegar, we're away next week so they will have a good week for the vinegar to get to work, then we can wire-brush them down. Have decided to buy a Welding Manual so that when we get back from our trip I can sort out some gas and get cracking on with it.

I wanted to get the subframe coated in Kurust before we leave tomorrow but that's looking very unlikely now, we shall see! Itching to get away – Dorset here we come!

[PennyPenguin]

Well apart from spending a few lunchtimes cleaning up and wire-brushing some odd bits and bobs I really haven't done much Mini related stuff since we got back from being away. Nothing significant enough to photograph unfortunately.
We didn't manage to get the subframe cleaned up enough to Kurust before we went so that's the next job on my list, oh and sorting out Gas for our welder!
Unfortunately it feels like pregnancy has suddenly caught up with me and the tiredness and aching has kicked in, still determined to get lots done in the next few weeks but we shall just have to see how everything goes. If the weather gets better I shall be spending my lunch breaks in the garden working on Mini related tasks, even if it's at a snails pace

[Andrew O]

Just read through the thread.
Looks like your doing really well
I will be following

[PennyPenguin]

Thanks!