37 replies to this topic

[beejay]

Bought this before Christmas from miniman-pie. Now all the festivities are over I've been able to crack on with it properly.

Heres what it looked like when it arrived



I've since been stripping it all down and discovering all the rusty bits

Front end looks pretty solid, slight lack of an engine at the moment but have plenty of time to worry about that



Rear looks ok but it'll be needing a new valance and the boot corners have gone too.



They all go here don't they...



Both A-panels, door skins, sills and door steps need replacing but most of the panels came with the car

Pulled the A-panel off to make the door removal that bit easier. Didn't take much persuading.





Need some gas for the welder before I can crack on with the body work. In the meantime I've been chiselling the floor soundproofing off

Edited by beejay, 06 January 2008 - 08:05 PM.

[patlink]

it just looks like my mini did on the drivers side.
enjoy the project sure you find more
nice bit of space to work in

[Bungle]

should give you something to do for a few hours

[mk1leg]

That will keep you busy for a while keep up good work.................

[beejay]

Work has been annoyably delayed somewhat due to work, illness and a need to get the daily driver through its MOT. With that done I was able to make some progress this weekend.

First off, soundproofing has been chiseled off (well half of it at least)



Its heavy stuff that. A cheap bolster chisel has been my weapon of choice and a small cold chisel for the more tricky bits around the ribs on the floor.
The front section of the floor has been bent in, probably by the usual mistake of putting the trolley jack in the wrong place. A few minutes with the hammer has improved things though.

Anyhow, with the soundproofing off the inner sill was accessible, first job was to clean off the remains of carpet and glue with a wire brush in the grinder.



The inner sill to the rear of the crossmember is sound so I think I'll be cutting the new panel in half, no point in replacing sound metal! After a bit more cleaning up around the front end...



Need some patches on the floor and front bulkhead methinks. Next I wanted to clean up the inner A-panel/front bulkhead area to see how bad the rust was in there. Thats a lot easier with the wing off so off it came!



Didn't take too much persuading, looks like it was brazed on at the front and stuck on with seam-sealer to the scuttle. The only solid join was onto the inner wing. Still need to grind those welds off as you can see before the new wing goes back on. The front panel looks good too.

With access much improved I gave the area a quick cleanup.



The main find was that big white area at the bottom, you guessed it, filler. That soon fell out, along with quite a bit of mud and other C**p behind it. Theres some corrosion around the air vent but not as bad as I've seen before. Hopefully be able to patch it and not have to replace the whole panel. The scuttle closing panel needs replacing as well. The list of panels on the shopping list is increasing! The car came with inner sills and step-plates for both sides which does help however.

I think next week will herald the beginning of fresh metal being attached to the car, hopefully in a semi permanent sort of way...

[beejay]

Following on from last week, I thought I'd dig out the rusty scuttle closing panel and remove the air vent. The air vent needed drilling out as the screws had seized. This had the unfortunate side effect of melting the plastic away around the screws... Something else for the shopping list.



Most of the general area isn't there anymore. A flitch/door post panel will do the job and sort out the missing A-panel mounting lip in one go.

Next job on the list was to pull the sill off and see what was underneath. As I was replacing the door step I could cheat here and cut most of the lip right off. The step had rusted to the point that there wasn't much left of that anyway. Here we are halfway through...



Then the bottom was chopped off.



The weapon of choice here was a cold chisel, pretty quick through rusty metal, then cleaning up the remains with the angle grinder. The panels were then cleaned with a wire cup brush in the grinder (best tool evar!). Here's what that showed up:



Not too bad at the back, subframe mounts seem solid. Also dug out more filler from the hole in the quarter panel.



The jacking point fell off with the sill, not much left of the end of the crossmember either. Also going to need some patches on the floor under the crossmember.

In the end I didn't get around to getting the welder out, main reason being I want to brace up the door frame before cutting any more metal out of the sill area, and lack the metal to do so. For the moment at least...

[clubby]

looks like you need some "vitamin M" to rebuild it

by the way, good luck mate

[beejay]

A couple of lengths of inch box section steel were acquired and welded across the door frame as so:



The lower one required part of the rear bin to the cut away for clearance. This isn't an issue as the bins and rear seat will be completly cut away in the future; gives me a bit more room to position the front seats for some decent legroom.

The door step was the first panel to be replaced. It came off easily enough...



... then the new panel was welded in...



So far so good. I cut the rear of the new step off before the curved rear section, seemed easier than cutting more of the shell away. Unfortunately it ended up about 5mm too short, requiring another short section of the step panel to be welded in underneath to bridge the gap. Hopefully I won't do that on the other side!

After checking the door still fitted the inner sill was removed, The new step then gave a decent reference for lining up the new panel.



The inner sill panel was then cut and fettled to fit. I've cut the rear section short as the metal beyond that is sound and I didn't want to be messing about with the seat belt mounts. Here it is clamped in place before being tacked in place.



Next was the flitch/A-post area of the front bulkhead; as this ties in to the sill I wanted to get that sorted before fully welding the inner sill panel.
The flitch repair panel covers quite a large area, most of which was sound on the shell, so yet again I cut down the repair panel to avoid having to chop away too much of the original metal. The repair panel itself required a lot of tweaking to get it to sit right, the main issue was the door hinge holes seemed to be in the wrong place, so much time was spent re-drilling and filing to get it and the A-panel sitting right.

The interior of the A-post was cleaned up and give a coat of Hammerite, then the appropriate areas given a coat of weld through primer.



The panel was then plug welded to the door mount panel and tack welded to the bulkhead. The air-vent area didn't line up correctly on the repair panel so that was cut off and will be welded in next. Most of the area above the vent is rusty and the flitch repair doesn't extend that far, so I'll have to fab up something to suit.



Then finally it was tack welded to the inner sill. All seems to line up (fingers crossed). Ran out of time to fully seam weld it all though, first job for next weekend.

[taz1976]

looks like a good project, whats your time scale, when you planning on getting her finished?

[Bungle]

that pie doesn't look after his cars does he

[beejay]

looks like a good project, whats your time scale, when you planning on getting her finished?

I'm in no rush to finish, luckily. Going on how much I think needs doing and how much I've got done so far I hope to be on the road by the end of the year.

[beejay]

Haven't updated this in ages! Had a couple of other project cars eating into my weekends but have spent a few hours here and there and all this weekend cracking on with it.

Following on from last time, the inner sill was fully welded up and a couple of other patches on the floor sorted out. The new jacking point was also welded on, I used the outer sill to make sure its in the right place as there's not much room for error.



Then started on the nearside.



Its a lot more solid this side and has progressed a little quicker. The step is mostly solid so was patched instead of being replaced. The rusty front section was cut out first and cleaned up.



Then the new section cut to fit.



Then welded in



Quick dust of paint to stop it rusting. Didn't do that so much on the other side so now have some surface rust to deal with.
These patches were the only other rusty bits of the step.



So the repair was chopped up and welded in.



Typically the profile of the repair panel didn't match to well. Nothing a dab of filler won't fix.
A couple of patches on the inner sill



The rest of the inner sill was solid, no need to chop out as much as the other side.
The rest of the outer sill was removed (slowly, it had a spot weld every 10mm on the seam, don't think that was done at the factory) and the inside given a quick clean up so the new jacking point could go on.



Then finally the jacking point was welded on, bringing both sills up to the same point.
A quick taste of the future too...



10x6 Wellers, picked up a couple of months ago. Need stripping, paint and tyres but thats a way down the road yet

Looking a bit hectic at the moment....

[Down&Out]

good work there mister! inspirational

[miniallsort]

nice work

[Mini-Mad-Craig]

Looks good! nice worky.