37 replies to this topic

[sweetser]

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

there the same as my wheels

[sweetser]

any updates on this mate?

[beejay]

any updates on this mate?

Not so much yet, have started sorting out the nearside flitch/bulkhead which needs a patch or two. Also took off the rear subframe today. Haven't got anything picture worthy yet! Maybe next weekend.

[sweetser]

ok, look foward to seeing your progress

[beejay]

Took the rear subby off, stripped the radius arms and suspension off and gave it a quick pressure wash.



Mainly because it was all covered in up to an inch of mud and grease Surprisingly the subframe itself seems solid.

Then rolled it over a couple of weeks ago to sort the underside off. Cleaned up the inside of the sill and stripped half the floor back to bare metal. Some Metal Ready then POR15 later...



Shiny. Shame the back end doesn't look so good.



Basically need to patch the boot floor and replace the valance closing panels, basically most of the rear corners! Have started removing them today as well as putting the offside sill on. Hopefully get the valance stripped tomorrow and start patching it back up next weekend.

Edited by beejay, 11 October 2008 - 09:18 PM.

[sweetser]

Pictures are not working mate

[beejay]

Its been over a year since I started and its not quite back on the road yet

Been progressing with it sporadically since the last time and think I've done enough to warrant an update!

Anway, crunchy boot corner was cut out.



Luckily the area around the subframe mount is solid so I don't have to worry about subframe alignment.

In the spirit of recycling and saving the planet I utilised what was left of the door skin to patch the boot floor. They came off easily as the skin and frame has rusted through all along the bottom. Again filler was found in abundance covering the worst of it. I've stripped one door which has provided enough metal so far.

With the boot corner patched the subframe reinforcement was welded into place. This needed some slight fettling to sit right (Heritage panel too!).



Then started on the other side and noticed something amiss with the spare wheel well, after poking around I managed to remove large quantities of aluminium repair mesh and body filler to reveal a few holes. This is one of the larger ones.



And as if that wasn't enough, this is the area underneath the bump stop (small rectangular plate welded to the the floor above the radius arms). This is the worse side.



Welded some plates over the holes and put a new bottom panel on the battery box, which finishes off what can be done at the back for now.

A quick dash of paint to keep the rust at bay and we have a solid boot.



Probably need some drain holes on the battery box but that can be done later. Last job whilst on its side was the sill. First off etch prime and slop some POR15 about the place.



Then clean it back where you're welding, a dash of weld-through primer where appropriate and the sill goes on.



Over the last week or so I dropped it back down on its feet and tidied up the boot, a couple of surface rust patches inside the boot were cleaned up and treated with rust convertor. Looks like a new nearside rear quarter has been welded in a some point too. I discovered that while doing this:



An alternative fuel tank location is in progress...

Next I wanted to get the valance on which would nicely finish off the rear end work. As I'm removing the rear bumper seam this has been done a little differently.

First off the seam between rear panel and boot floor was welded up from inside the boot, then the bumper seam could be cut off without it all falling apart.



Then chop most of the seam off the new valance, leaving about 5mm or so which can be hammered over and welded to the rear panel. Thats the thinking anyway, I may end up cutting it all off and butt welding it. As I'm keeping the other seams there's still about an inch of seam behind the wheelarch to clamp it on with.



This isn't a heritage panel so it's not sitting quite right at the moment. Nothing a hammer can't fix.

[beejay]

Its been one of those years and looking back not much has happened since March. However the Mini is looking a little better.

The valance was persuaded into position and welded on.



Still needs a spot of filler to smooth it out. Moving forward a little the quarter panels were next, they were a bit rusty so, starting with the offisde I chopped away until I reached solid metal.



Luckily I made a card template of the curve of the panel so a repair section could be made up and tacked in. I didn't fancy my panel beating skills too much so made it in two parts with the lip made from a thin strip.



Then it was all welded up fully and primed. To avoid distorting the rest of the quarter panel I welded in many short bursts letting it cool down in between, seems to have worked! This is the nearside which was in a similar state.



Also had to put a couple of patches in behind these on the arch and heelboard. All good fun!

After that a few surface rust patches were cleaned and treated in the boot. The door step and A-post repairs were stripped and etch primed like the rest of the weld repairs; I hadn't thought much of protecting them at the time as I thought I'd have all the welding done within a few weeks...



Then splashed some cash on new wings. Picked the fibreglass bonnet up ages ago second hand.

[beejay]

Next I moved on to the doors. Took the nearside skin off ages ago, the remains of which was turned into repair panels. The frame wasn't that bad but needed some repair.



Luckily a repair section for the lower end of the door frame is available which saved me some folding.



The repair panel was trimmed down to suit the hole created by chopping the rust out and welded in place. The door skins are from Hadrian and fitted very nicely. The inside face was painted a fetching shade of grey primer over red oxide; I'm intending to leave the trim panels off and this should match the final interior colour.

After lining the skin up and popping some sealant between it and the frame the lip was folded over and the skin welded at the top corners as the original. Managed to get away without removing the door hinges by using a punch to fold the skin lip over.



And the moment of truth...



It even fits. The edge where the lip was folded over has since been coated in seam sealer and the inside cleaned and primed. The offside door has been stripped and is in a similar condition.

In other news, I've had to move the car to a new home (which hasn't helped progress!) and in order to move the car it had to be mobile. The subframes needed to be re-fitted and since I had some time I did things properly and cleaned up the front subframe.



This is after soda blasting, priming with Metal Ready and a few coats of POR15. At the back a new subframe was needed, along with mounting bushes and recon radius arms. It was all thrown on the car quickly just to roll it on/off a trailer but it was good to see it mobile once again. Shame I didn't take any pictures.

[beejay]

Its been a while since I've been here The Mini survived the move to its new home and I've been cracking on with getting it rust free and looking Mini shaped!

The inner wing behind the damper mount had a bit of a hole. I kept cutting back til I found sound metal and the hole grew a little...


Then it was a case of cutting a piece to suit the inner skin...


...and then one for the outer skin. This was in two pieces as the rust extended further forward on the right of the picture. The metal was left long at the bottom edge as can be seen; this was then trimmed back to form the lip that was present originally. A small triangular slice was used to bridge the gap between the two patches.



After trimming back and a quick coat of paint it looks like this:


Quite pleased with how that turned out. The opposite side was attacked in the same way but wasn't as bad, only requiring the outer skin to be repaired. The inner had some surface rust which was treated with Metal Ready.

The air vent areas of the front bulkhead were repaired a while back. On the nearside I got a bit carried away and cut away a chunk of the front scuttle to give some access for repairs.


On the offside I was a bit more sensible and only cut away the bare minimum which should make reinstating the scuttle a bit easier.



These areas have been treated to some Metal Ready and POR15 which is why they look a bit shinier than the rest of the car. The rest of the inner wings have since been painted too.

More in a sec...

[beejay]

Getting the wings on was the next job. First off the front subframe was fitted to make sure everything was lined up properly. The doors also went on to check alignment there and I started trial fitting everything together. After a bit of fiddling I was happy it was going to go together something like so I started patching up the scuttle.




The nearside fell into place easier than I thought it would but still took a few iterations of trimming and trial fitting to make sure the wing still lined up. The underside of each panel was hit with Metal Ready before welding and some more POR15 once they were on. Next was the closing panels underneath the scuttle ends.


These took a bit of trimming to get them sitting right. Since I don't see them to be a structural part I didn't seam weld them in, I'll slap some sealant over the join at some point.

After that there wasn't anything holding me back from getting the the wings on. First off, the A-panel was welded to the wing.



This was a straight seam weld up the back of the join, with a couple of plug welds to keep the two halves of the joint together. Then a bit more tweaking and lining up and I started tacking it in place.


The offside near enough fell into place while the nearside didn't want to meet the inner wing at the back edge. Managed to get it close enough however which will do. They are heritage panels but nothing ever really lines up on a Mini does it...

Anyway, with both wings tacked on the A-panel edge was folded over the A-post and the doors checked for clearance.



Just need a cooler day to finish off the welding, it was hot enough in the workshop just tacking them on. On further investigation the offside door had some serious rust on the frame, so the purple one is a second hand replacement. Still needs some surface rust sorting out, and paint, but its a much better starting point. Also turned out to be a later side impact equipped one which is a small bonus I guess.

[beejay]

Thought I'd pop an update up

Got the wings welded on fully. In a break from originality I seam welded the front in place as it seemed an easier job than plug welding underneath the wing. The join to the inner wing was plug welded.
The front panel has been replaced at some point, it has metric threads for the teardrop mounts which confused me slightly. Although the panel is fairly solid it had some rust where it met the wings, some areas proved too thin to weld and so had to be cut out.



Fairly easy to knock up some repair patches and let them in. All the welds has a dash of red oxide added after being flap-wheeled smooth.



I then had a look in the boot and decided to tidy things up a tad. Some red oxide was laid down on the weld repairs, they were then seam sealered, cleaned up and some white gloss applied. This is just radiator paint from Halfords.



Also wanted to get the front subframe looking a little more complete so cracked on with sorting out the top arms. Since it was all off it made sense to replace the top arm bearings using the kit from MiniSpares, so I did. The only tricky bit was removing the old bearings from the arm, as they were stuck tight. Ended up breaking my slide hammer in my attempts to free them. In the end I knocked out the needles and used the dremel to grind a slot right through the race, after which they fell out. Refitting was easy enough using the old shaft to pull the bearings into the arm. A coat of POR15 finished them off nicely.

The arms were then fitted back on the car with a few other bits.



The old bump stops had fallen off so these are new poly type ones from MiniSpares (cheaper than the rubber ones), the rebound stops are new as they were in a bad way too. Based on that I thought the cones wouldn't be much better so new ones have gone on. Sitting under that are HiLo's and new knuckles.

The next obvious step was the front hubs. The main thing here is the brakes. As I plan to fit 10 inch wheels and I don't fancy shelling out for Cooper discs I have gone down the Fiesta conversion route. First step, a set of mk1 calipers, supplied stripped and sand blasted. Next, they were given a coat of high temp paint.



As they have been stripped down unfortunately some of the pad fixing clips and widgets are missing and they are proving a pain to track down.

[beejay]

The next big job is that I decided to fit a roll cage. I eventually decided on a Rollcentre 6-point bolt in, they came highly recommended and were good on price. I also added a harness bar and dash bar to the standard kit; the harness bar came welded in at a suitable height (that I had to specify) and the dash bar needs to be welded in.

After throwing the cage in to see if it fitted (and spending 10 minutes trying to fit the door bars upside down) I broke out the drill and welder. This is to weld the supporting plates in position. These are 120x120mm plates of 3mm thick steel that spread the load from the cage over a larger area of the floorpan if the worst were to happen. At the front the forward corners of each needed a slight trim to enable them to sit in the correct position and clear the front bulkhead.

The bolt holes were drilled before welding so I could bolt the plate in place and clamp it nice and tight against the floor. At the rear the small bent up portion needed to be removed as I have kept the rear seat.



This still leaves me within the 120 square mm minimum area rule in the blue book so I'm happy. The front ends was also fully welded in.



The last part was the dash bar. This is supplied as a bar plus the end fittings ready to be welded together at a position to suit the car. In my case I was aiming to hang the steering column from the bar which would ultimately drive its height, so I ended up running off to sort out the seat position, make up some seat brackets and getting the column position sorted before getting the bar positioned. I'll cover the seats later on I think...

With the seat in and the column positioned I was ready to mock everything up.



I also had to buy some new dash clocks (car didn't have any when I bought it) to check I could see them through the wheel. The end fittings were clamped to the end of the bar and this then balanced on a pair of jubilee clips and everything positioned before being tacked in place. The bar also has a slight bend at each end to match the angle of the uprights which added a further element to the positioning of everything.

To mount the column two small tabs were cut from 3mm steel, an 8mm hole drilled in each and then tacked in place on the bar. An 8mm bolt was then used to attach the column, although it could do with being a bit shorter.



The front part of the cage was then removed and everything fully welded. A quick coat of etch primer was then applied before re-assembling everything and checking it all worked together.

[beejay]

The seats are a pair of Cobra Monacos bought second hand many months ago and squirelled away until now. The brackets were fashioned from 25mm box section and 3mm plate. The seats are of the bottom mount variety, so the brackets started with a couple of lengths bolted to said mounts. Then two long legs were attached to the front and two slightly shorter ones to the rear, lengths determined after much trial and error with various lumps of wood.



This ensemble was then welded to some 3mm plates. Two 8mm bolts were used on each plate to bolt through into the floor. Some further bracing will be added to stop the whole lot toppling over, but for now with both seats it looks a bit like this:



Next, the battery bracket was started. The battery is a Varley Red Top 15, positioned under the rear seat, which seemed a good position for weight distribution and keeps it out of the way. The bracket is a simple affair of riveted aluminium.



Just needs some rubber padding and screws.

[beejay]

Thought it was time for an update!
Rolled it on its side a few weeks ago to paint the underside. All the loose paint was wire brushed off; bare metal and rusty bits got a soaking with Metal Ready, then everything got a few coats of POR15 and seal sealant applied where needed.



Whilst it was on its side it seemed a good time to fit the rooflining. The original was binned a long time ago due to its condition, it was replaced with some foam backed vinyl sheet, glued in place with copious amounts of spray glue.



Once the paint and sealant had dried off a few coats of stonechip were applied to the whole area. This is the Halfords supplied spray on type which has performed reasonably well on the BMW. I may apply some extra protection to some of the more critical areas although I'm not sure what yet.

The last job whilst on its side was to install the fuel line. This is 8mm copper line, attached using rubber lined P-clips which are rivetted in place. Not sure where to run it in the engine bay so have just left the rest of the roll in place for now.



The next step was to get the subframes back on. The original rear subframe was in worse condition than first thought and a genuine replacement was sourced some time ago. It had been fitted in order to move the car to its new home but removed since and stashed away. It was dug out of the corner and treated to a few coats of the usual POR15. Given the reputation for these things to rust I also seam sealed all the joints I could see.



Next the brake lines were re-fitted. Annoyingly the T-piece was still attached to the old subframe when it was binned so a new one had to be sourced. The flexi lines are a set of Goodrich braided ones from MiniSpares.



New bushes were fitted to the brackets and the subframe fitted to the car, which went a lot smoother than expected, requiring only slight persuasion to get the bolts in line.

The front was nearly ready to fit, the last thing was to sort out was mountings for the sump guard.



This is an aluminium one picked up second hand a long time ago, just needed some holes drilling and a few bolts. The subframe could then be fitted into the engine bay but not before it was given a few coats of gloss white.



Taking a break from painting, these brackets were knocked up out of 3mm steel to brace the seats.