I’ll mention this right now, this is a long term project.
Well, I didn't expect it to be this long. But... life, eh?
Where have I been? Well I got into a pretty good art school, got a few degrees, job, moved from Scotland to Cambridge, moved back, Married, qualified as an Architect, child, etc etc.
Now that you know my life story, the mini? Well at one point I transported it to Cambridgeshire as made a very good mate there who offered a free barn to restore it in, I shipped it down with my compressor and lots of tools. Two weeks later my wife was headhunted for a dream job so it got put back into storage, I didn't so much as fire up the grinder.
That brings us to last year. The mini is as I left it, 13 years ago. Fortunately I've had free dry storage all this time. I lost my storage about a year ago and I transported everything I have to my garage. The garage (6m x 4.75m) was completely rammed, I couldn't even step inside.
A day later I collapsed and had a full on seizure. I'm talking full on flopping o the floor, foaming at the mouth. Apparently, all I remember is waking up in the ambulance. So that was pretty crap, had to relearn to walk and all that. Anyway, it was feeling a bit like someone somewhere didn't want me to restore this mini. But I'm going to anyway.
So here we are.
I've been looking at this gaping rear end for years, as it's where I got to the summer before I started uni when I had the best of intentions of carrying on. But here we go, I've been collecting tools and parts for years now.
The rear panel and boot floor I've had for years now had developed a decent amount of surface rust under the ecoat, so it all had to be removed with strip and clean discs.
I then primed with Bilt Hamber Electrox, which is my go to zinc primer. You can see the next lot of panels I'll be doing after these. I've never seen my neighbours paint panels on their front grass, they must do it in their garages, I'm not that professional or organised.
I started by digging out my rear subframe and remembered that it was solid but a bit tweaked as it had clearly had a rope around the rear and had been pulled at some point. A wee visit to my mates who conveniently run a custom shop (Stark Custom Works Dundee) and I received a merciless slagging and help making the subframe straight. I then fitted it up after recutting the threads on the rear mounts, I'm well out of practice of imperial threads.
So I started to slip in the boot floor. Also, if you don't have one of these stepping stools you should get one. It's one of those things I didn't know I needed.
I then got it in and bolted the subframe in. With the rear panel sat on, it almost looked like a mini for the first time in 13 years. From the back anyway.
I then just had to add on my carbon bootlid and rear valance. I'll need to dig my rear hinges out of deep storage and get it fully lined up.
Anyway, I spent a decent amount of time lining everything up and getting it square with both panels, the existing car and the rear subframe. Finally, I put my first spot weld in. It definitely felt like a 'one small step for man' type moment. A really huge moment and fortunately I have some great mates I could share it with there and then. I can't overstate how big this felt. I think I sat and looked at it for 10 straight minutes.
I spent a long time lining up the rear panel and think I got there. But I still haven't plucked up the courage to fully weld it.
I tried to make some extended arms for my spot welder arms. I had some success, the arms have to be 16mm to fit into the socket on the spot welder, but at 500mm the copper is likely to suffer plastic deformation. So my solution was to sleeve the 16mm copper in 20mm, 2mm wall box section. I successfully testing the setup as shown. But when I tested with two steel sleeves there seems to be some kind of magnetic interference as there was not enough current to form a proper weld.
I trimmed gaps into the rotten heel board to allow the bottom arm of the spot welder through, but haven't been able to successfully weld this seam yet. I'll need to do some more experimentation, but I can do some welds without the sleeves to get the panel properly in place the next time I'm out in the garage.
I’ll mention this right now, this is a long term project.
Edited by evansisgreat, Yesterday, 11:05 PM.
