1990 Mini Cooper Resto & Lows!

[Minuki]

Just in from working on the Mini. Not much to report, but I do have some good news -

It's going to be professionally painted.

My mate came down to help with a few tricky little bits of bodywork and after a lengthy discussing, he said he would paint it for me. So, i'm pretty happy with that! The original plan was just to paint it in the drive as I couldn't afford to get it professionally done, but my Mum said she would pay for some of it Thanks Mum!

Apart from that, not much has happened. Just plugging away with the body work, it's a right pain in the ass, but I need to do it myself to cut costs down. My Dad just bought heaps of primer and black paint, so i'll get the subframe done this weekend, and hopefully a couple of panels welded.

Pics next time!

[Minuki]

Well, to give myself a little inspiration and to hopefully show you guys what I want the Mini to look like, I made this...



It'll be gloss black...the colours don't really show up well

[Minuki]

As promised, some photos.

Front subframe is now all painted and finished, ready to be re-built.

Primed -



(Excuse the mess of my garden )



And painted






Going to stone-chip the underside of it.

I'm going to be making a carbon dash, so I needed a template of my old dash. So I pulled it out the car and stripped it down. It's a bit of alloy glued to wood. I'll probably just use the alloy bit as a template and the make it out of carbon.


It's actually snapped in the middle, i couldn't get it out the car, so I pretty much just tore it out

In my current car, I don't have a headunit that I can connect my iPod to, so I knew I had to do something about that. Above the dash there is something called a Dash Rail which has an Ashtray in the middle of it. I don't smoke, so I have no use for it. I was thinking about how I could mount/hide my Ipod in the car, and came up with a genius idea....well, I thought it was pretty genius

The ashtray...


No ashtray


This is what I want to do. I'm going to take the ashtray out, and make a little box to hold my iPod. It'll have a connector, so that I can use it as dock and hopefully, somehow connect it to my headunit.





...but there is a little problem. The bracket that attaches the dash rail to the car, blocks my iPod from going in the hole fully.





It looks like I'll be able to cut the majority of it off though...problem solved! That way my iPod will be hidden from view and easily accessible.

That's all for now. Hopefully have a big update next weekend.

[ZUBZ]

Awesome man, nifty idea about iPod.... ;-)

[coleman262]

Nice work! really need to get cracking with my mini

Just a quick question about your pictures, any tips on taking snaps of welding? guessing it wont damage the camera internally because of the light? seeing as i know arc eye hurts.... alot.

[Spados.]

nice work, can't wait for the final outcome.

[Minuki]

Awesome man, nifty idea about iPod.... ;-)

Thanks!

Nice work! really need to get cracking with my mini

Just a quick question about your pictures, any tips on taking snaps of welding? guessing it wont damage the camera internally because of the light? seeing as i know arc eye hurts.... alot.

Thanks man. Your camera should be okay. When I usually do it, i'm not shooting directly at it, I'm usually hiding behind something to cut out some of the light.

nice work, can't wait for the final outcome.

Thanks, dude. Me too! It's been off the road far too long.

[Minuki]

Another little/quick update. I picked up a set of Spax Adjustable Dampers for a measly price of £45quid! I got my Papa to pick them up and he brought them to my house on Sunday. They're in good working order, just looked ruff. There was a lot of surface rust, missing bush and damaged rod shields (I think that's what they're called! )
So I got to work stripping and painting them. Got the fronts done on Sunday and the rears finished today. Just sprayed them in the usual Gloss Black.

Fronts done -




Rears before paint -


And primed -


And all finished -


Also won two auctions for some 52mm Smiths Gauges for my dash. An Oil Pressure Gauge and a Water Temp Gauge. I've just paid for them, so they should be here soon. Then I'll get some pics

[markshulikov]

lookin better and better everytime i see it!

[ZUBZ]

Loving the spraywork on the shocks...

[Minuki]

lookin better and better everytime i see it!

Thanks man. Just need to finish the welding, then paint

Loving the spraywork on the shocks...

Thanks!

[TylersEM2]

Lovin' this thread!

[-Erik-]

Lovin' this thread!

This! Subscribed

[Minuki]

Lovin' this thread!

This! Subscribed

Thanks guys! Appreciate the comments.

Hopefully I can get some welding done this weekend

[Minuki]

Haven't updated this in a while...not much progress. It doesn't look like it'll be on the road by April, my Dad has to fix this heap of shit Clio, which is taking away from getting my car done. It's really, really annoying me.

Anyway.

My gauges turned up the other day, but one of them is the wrong type, so I'll probably sell it and get some money back.

Got some pin-holes welded up...uhh...sanded for a bit and really, that's pretty much all that's been done the passed 2 weeks. I decided to strip one of my doors today, the bottoms are known to rust and as suspected, it was full of filler

Had to do some panel beating, which revealed a small hole that will need welded before I can do anything else. Threw some primer onto the bare metal to stop it rusting whilst it's in the garage.

















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