Cars

Mini Rebuild

Step 23 - Some Simple Fabrication

Wednesday, January 25, 2009:

As you can see, I always like to look my best when working on my Mini. Here I am sanding off some dirt, grease, and rust in preperation for painting the steering column.

Same treatment for the steering column.

The seats still weren't mounted high enough in the car so this is the beginning of fabricating some additional brackets.

And this is what they look like mounted in the car.

The final result. Now the driver and passenger can see over the hood of the car. Quite an improvement.

The roll cage passes low enough along the door sills that the door bins still fit! I think this is another one of those small touches that help give the Mini its charm. So despite the fact that the previous owner sliced the bins clean off the door, I'm going to re-attach them.

Next step - reattaching the lower dashboard. Another item sliced off by the PO.

I trimmed a little from the ends of the dash to allow to fit past the rollcage. Then it was time to weld up several holes in the dash.

First, I ground all the primer away from the edges of the holes.

Then little by little I laid down some new steel. I also discovered just how easy it is to blow through the metal.

After that I went back and ground down all the welds. Several required some rewelding.

Here we were trying to get an idea of how things will fit back together when finished.

I took the entire front suspension back home with me to build up. I'll be using the MINIeXvo front subframe when it arrives but in the meantime I'm test fitting everything using this stock subframe that came with the car.

Continue to Rebuild Step 24

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