Cars

Mini Rebuild

Step 21 - New Home

Friday, January 9, 2009:

The Mini project has a new home. Over the holidays my good friends graciously offered their barn to house the car and all the many parts I've accumulated. It will serve as an excellent workshop and eventually a paintbooth as well. The other big benefit is having my friend assist me. He has bodyshop experience as well as an engineering degree and a significant amount of hands-on experience restoring cars. He also happens to be a royal PITA but he is already proving somewhat useful.

My friend was even kind enough to push his own airplane project aside to make way for the Mini.

On the subject of parts, a very large shipment of them finally arrived from MiniSpares in England. This means that I have the vast majority of the parts I need to get the Mini running. Now its just a matter of test-fitting everything, working out the kinks, prepping and painting the body, and then final adjustments.

These are the LED taillights that MiniMania sells. They needed a bit of adjustment before fitting properly in the MkI housings.

Notice anything wrong here? This aftermarket subframe ended up putting the wheels at least 1/2" further rearward than stock. It will be replaced with an FRA beam shortly.

Regardless of the subframe's effect on the wheelbase, it did allow me to finally see how far out the wheels and tires wound up.

Looking straight down you can see that those metal flares that a previous owner grafted onto the car, the same ones I was so intent on ripping off with an angle grinder because I didn't like how they looked....are exactly the correct width for my setup. Looks like they'll get a reprieve. *sigh*

On to another small project - raising the seat height. Here Neil shows off his trig skills.

And here I show off my lack of welding skills. These spacers will be used to raise up the front of the seat rails. Neil took one look at my work and said: "And that's why you have a grinder."

Continue to Rebuild Step 22

Return to Mini