1991 Mini - Project Trig

[MartinsElerts]

Killer color!
Haven't seen grip tape on pedals before.
Can't wait to see it finished!

[Night Colors]

91'? damn , looks like this thing is 71' lol.

[rsingh3g]

Beautiful work so far, cant wait to see the finished product

[Mini 360]

Another wee while out at the car tonight. Got my dad to take my hubs and driveshafts into his work at Jaguar to get one of the lads in the workshop to take off the hub nut. The wonders of the proper power tools!

So with the hub nut off I managed to separate the shafts from the hubs. The dust covers on both sides were well split and grit and grime had invaded so they needed cleaned out badly.

Took a bit of brute force to get it all apart but was all part of the fun. Ball bearings were shooting left right and centre but thankfully found them all again.

So here we have separated....



All laid out and cleaned!



Then this is a before shot. Going to give this the once over with wire wheel and a drill to get rid of the crap and then deox gel, clean and paint.



Was going to get more done but will go out another night to finish it all off for this side.

[CubbyChowder]

awesome build! love it

[Mini 360]

awesome build! love it

Thanks man!




Another evening down. More good progress.

Continued on from the other night and got my second driveshaft separated from the CV joint. Then cleaned it all out again, thoroughly coated it all in Deox gel, left for an hour while I cleaned other bits and degreased and painted them!

So this is after wire brushing...



and this is after deox gelling. Doesn't appear much of a difference but theres no rust to come back through the paint now



and the CV joint cleaned. See above post for the before!



and painted everything up. I know some paint is on contact surfaces but I'm going to scrape that off with a new blade before reassembly. saves time masking up etc.







Also when everything was under deox gel I tried to get my ball joints taken off the hubs. Unfortunately that ended in me snapping the vice clean in two......its safe up to 1 ton too!




So I may get out to work on it tomorrow night but if not sunday/monday will be next time Im out. I gave PPS a phone the other day and after being assured I would get my subframe back within 'at the absolute max, 2 weeks' 2 and a half weeks later its not been touched. Hopefully I can get it back sometime next week....

[Mini 360]

Managed to get a couple hours in the garage tonight after 9. Aimed to get a driveshaft and CV joint reassembled and managed it easy enough.

Getting the bearing into the cage/race was a bit of a pain. Then realised I'd forgotten to grease up the bearing channels. Once I had done that it was unsurprisingly, much easier.....

So here the race, cage and bearings reassembled in the joint



then greased it all up with the perfect sized sachet that came in the kit





I then gently tapped the driveshaft into the CV joint to locate it. I made sure I had the new gaitor in place BEFORE i did this otherwise I would have to take it all apart again to put it on. One thing if you are doing this yourself is to make sure the inner race has the machined face with the 1mm inner section in from the outer face pointing TOWARDS the driveshaft itself. This allows the driveshaft to locate itself in this race face. This is important to get right.



and then I popped the gaitor over the CV joint itself and sealed with a heavy duty tie wrap. Job done!



And the whole driveshaft almost ready to be refitted. Need to do the point joint end next but that should be quicker as Ive got the method now.



Oh and I also found the bracketry for my throttle pedal, so thought I would bung that on. I like it but not decided whether to keep it or just grip tape the throttle pedal to match the others. We shall see.....

[CubbyChowder]

haha I just went through the exact same process with my CV joints. I tried putting one back together without greasing it and it kept seizing up, then I realized 'wow, I should probably grease them up a bit first...' oh the wonders of grease. Keep up the progress, this car is going to be amazing!

[Mini 360]

Haven't managed to get anything done today/tonight as I was too busy doing a 3000 word essay due tomorrow on propaganda for uni :lol:

However PPS finally phoned today at twenty to five saying the subframe was ready. So I went down straight away to collect it much to their surprise. No discount even though its two weeks late though......

It is stunning! The finish is beyond amazing as stupidly tough. Much tougher than Hammerite or any other paint. The gloss of it is awesome too so no need to polish up! Im glad they managed to get inside the towers done so well as its pretty tight in there but I shall let the pictures do the talking now.....



















So as you can see, epic finish! Just need to drill out some of the holes and retap the threads of the captive nuts on the towers.

Need to give it a wipe down and a few layers of tough wax before fitting to keep the dirt at bay. Definitely need the rear frame (once it arrives) done in powder too

[Mini 360]

Managed to finish off my epic essay this morning so went to the garage all afternoon as a reward. Before that though I got a couple coats of wax onto the subframe to protect it from the elements a bit more before reassembly.



and then got cracking. This was the hubs state as it came off the car. LOADS of curb caked on and loose rust that needed chipped off.



So this was if after the drill had attacked it with the wire brush on it.





and then given its first coat of black hammerite





Then cleaned up the other drive shaft and deox'd it then realised my top arms had some rust patches coming through already. Probably due to not being thorough enough with cleaning before painting. So I stripped them back to bare metal and redid the deox'ing. Leaving these overnight to fully dry off



and started putting the bits back onto the subframe







Loving the yellow and black contrast on it

and here it is almost ready to be put back in....




Not sure when I will next get out to work on it but hey ho, will keep going with it!

[Jozi]

Deox gel is brilliant stuff! Hope you covered it with cling film or it goes hard and is stubborn to come off!

Some shine of everything! I might wax my powdercoated parts as well when I get them Friday

[Mini 360]

Yeh I let it work its magic for an hour or so as I do other things and then go back to it. NEver leave it longer after experience on the block.....

[Jozi]

I've gone some on the E30 shell for prob 3 weeks now Some of it is still soft, the hardened stuff is going to be a paint to remove. I find it great though, certainly better than kurust

[superturbodiesel.com]

Looks very nice! Great work

[Mini 360]

I've gone some on the E30 shell for prob 3 weeks now Some of it is still soft, the hardened stuff is going to be a paint to remove. I find it great though, certainly better than kurust

Ive never been brave enough to leave it for THAT long! Much better than Kurust though!

Looks very nice! Great work

Thanks! More to come soon...