1990 Mini Cooper Resto & Lows!

[caddydaddyoad]

love it!! Best of luck mate. Great lil car when done......if they are ever done......mine in mid-strip-down.......:-)

[Minuki]

Well I thought i'd update this with whats going on...or not going on, the weather has been pretty terrible, so I've not been able to work on her as much. She survived two hurricanes though!

I've just been doing little bits in the garage, just stripping and painting some suspension parts and I still need to strip my subframe and get it welded/strengthened. I might start making my dash, It's a wooden one just now, I'd really like to have a carbon one, so i might make a template tomorrow, it's my day off

Pics to come.

Still to do -

-Welding
-Stripping, prime then paint
-Rebuild rear subframe
-Rebuild brakes
-Check over engine. Pervious owner said it was perfect
-Swap front subframes
-New bushes all round
-Front suspension

And probably a lot more!

[Minuki]

I know the car is way off needing wheels, but I can't help looking at new ones!

But depending on what the insurance companies say, I'll probably have to stick with the standard ones. They might not look it, but they are pretty rare. Just need a really good refurbishment and painting.

For those interested, I was thinking about getting a set of these -



Replica Mamba's unfortunately, as real copies are damn near impossible to find. 12x6 and the offset is -7 (i think)

[Minuki]

good luck

Thanks

Awesome! Keep us updated.

Will do!

Wow I am loving all the work you are putting in and the methods to rid this beauty of rust!

Thanks. It's getting there!

Did they not treat these for rust in 1990? Love these cars and looking forward to more progress!

I think so. Hard to tell, huh?

ugggh I want a mini

Do it!

[penpen]

ugggh I want a mini

[exexpat]

Did they not treat these for rust in 1990? Love these cars and looking forward to more progress!

[electricalbox]

Wow I am loving all the work you are putting in and the methods to rid this beauty of rust!

[FunfGang]

Awesome! Keep us updated.

[whooty]

good luck

[Minuki]

Subscribed. Looks like a lot of work but you have to keep the OG's alive!

Thanks. Yep!

Looks like a lot of work you've got ahead of you. Reminds me of my Anglia, the more repairs I did, the more I found that needed to be done!

Yeah, there's a fair amount of work still to do. I want to get it done by Spring next year.

I **** to be "that guy", but you should have passed on a car with this much rot- you'll be chasing it forever, and it's never really gone.

Either way, hat tip to you for going the (very) hard road of repairing a rotbox. Hope this turns out well, I'll be following along!

Perhaps. But it's not often this kind of Mini turns up for cheap! So I'm going to keep going and finish it

[MommysLittleMonster]

I **** to be "that guy", but you should have passed on a car with this much rot- you'll be chasing it forever, and it's never really gone.

Either way, hat tip to you for going the (very) hard road of repairing a rotbox. Hope this turns out well, I'll be following along!

[nellydragracer]

Looks like a lot of work you've got ahead of you. Reminds me of my Anglia, the more repairs I did, the more I found that needed to be done!

[Spencer]

Subscribed. Looks like a lot of work but you have to keep the OG's alive!

[Minuki]

...To carry on.

And it comes as no surprise with this Mini that the scuttle corners needed replaced.

And again, it had been previously "Repaired". More like beaten with a hammer and huge amounts of filler!


And a nice new repair panel


That's pretty much how the front of the car sits just now. I concentrated a little more on the back and consequently the rear of the car is pretty much finished. I just need to sand it down and prime it....oh, and repair a few little holes around the heelboard.

Got some paint out and gave the boot floor a lick of paint to stop it rusting.


Again, more rust was found. It's amazing what filler can cover up, isn't it?

So I chopped it out and made up a panel.


This is the heelboard I was talking about




And welded!


Fitted a new Valance


I noticed when fixing the rear of the car that it didn't have a big ugly Fog light But as it's necessary in the UK my dad insisted on me having one. I let him do what he wanted and was presently surprised with what he came up with!

Nice and neat


And that's pretty much how she sits just now. The bad weather is beginning to set in and I can't get working on it as much.

Which brings me to why I made this thread. See, my Dad is a more Function over Form kinda guy, he used to race and he doesn't understand why people modify their cars to make them slower...so I was over the moon when he agreed to let me lower it
So that gave me a little urge to get working on the car again. Earlier I stripped my spare subframe and started cleaning and painting a few of my suspension parts. To lower it I need to get some Adjustable Cones and lowered Dampers, which will hopefully get me lower to the earth

Anyway, enough of my rambling. Hope you enjoyed reading and I'm interested to hear what you think!

[Minuki]

Well, I thought I'd throw a quick build up

The car is a 1990 Mini Cooper RSP which I picked up for £300. There were around 1000 of theses made and mine is number 141. The previous owner said the sills had recently been done, so that was a big load off my mind. But as usual with a Mini things didn't always go to plan....

The original intention was to strip it, replace the front end, put a cage in it and use it for Hillclimb/Sprints. But went I started stripping it, i found lots and lots of rust that I didn't expect. Just my luck, eh?

Anyway some pics!

Loading it onto the trailer to be taken home


After a good wash!




The rusty bits -









The weekend after getting her(My friend Sammy named her Sammy ) I got her running...for a couple minutes at least. Then it developed an oil leak which turned out just to be a loose nut on the oil cooler.

I stripped the rear subframe and sent it off to the sandblasters. It's now painted black and ready to be re-assembled.

When I was poking around I noticed that my boot floor wasn't really a floor...it was just sort of a mix of badly repaired panels and shoddy welding. So I knew I had to do something about that.

Underneath the boot-


Inside




Next I went about lightening the car...with a hammer.









And that was it "repaired"!

I found some dodgy bits on the boot lid which turned out to be massive holes. So they've been repaired and the boot is now in primer. It's not perfect, but It'll do until I do a full resto...maybe.

A couple of weeks later, myself and my dad started to tackle the front end. I managed to get my hands on a new pair of wings and front panel from eBay for relatively cheap

Starting -


Couple minutes later with the angle grinder


Some more crappy "Repairs"


Fixed


...lovely


And that's all for now. I'll update this later, but right now I'm going out to shoot some MTB!