'72 Mini Clubman Estate

[StanceandTuck]

Never seen a clubman stanced! Looks dope so far

[Tupers]

8 pages down, and i'm not sure how many more there will be. But, i'm in. Cant wait to see this done!

Thanks for reading it all, I'd imagine they'll be a fair few more to go.
You guys have got it easy over here, my original build thread is up to 44 pages now.

Never seen a clubman stanced! Looks dope so far

Thanks, I think the length of the clubman estate lends it's self to being hella low and you don't see many about anymore.


I didn't have much time to work on this evening but I thought I'd give mounting the seat sliders a go. I found some M8 threaded inserts on ebay to weld into the lower frame on the seats.


I had to drill out the original holes in the seats to 12MM and tacked the inserts on.


They all bolted up nicely with four M8 cap head bolts and slid nicely.


They look nice and tidy with the seat the right way up. Now I just need to do the other side.

[Tupers]

I got the threaded inserts welded into the other seat this afternoon, no pictures though as it's just the same as the previous one.


I need to get the pedal box mounted in the car before I can do the final fit of the seats so I started measuring it up and making patterns.




I cut them out of 4MM steel plate but that's all for today.

[Tupers]

Today's job was to get the engine bay crossmember completed starting with cutting out holes for the engine steady perches to sit in.


Then I knocked up a pair of cups to hold the bushes.




I sat the crossmember back in so I could tack the cup in place.


After that it was time to weld the whole lot together.




I also added a pair of gussets around on the back of each cup to save anything from moving.

[Tupers]

I smoothed the welds on the crossmember of this evening and rounded the steady bar perches in. It still needs some hand finishing but it's looking good.

[Tupers]

Well I'm back and I've finally solved my belt issues with a Peugeot 106 idler pulley and tensioning pulley. This should be easier to adjust than the other system I had and it looks much tidier.


I'm going to need a pretty long belt but I've got plenty of contact on all of the pulleys so it should work nicely.

[Tupers]

I forgot to go and buy a belt at lunch so I decided to spend this evening making the tabs to mount my seats from. They're pretty simple 3MM steel with 30MM slotted holes to help get the seats centred in the car.


They'll be welded onto sections of 30MM box running from the inner sill to exhaust tunnel. (I finally found a use for lime flavoured Starburst)

[Tupers]

The other 4 mounting tabs are done now so the seat mounting bars can go in soon.


The pedal box also need mounting so I took the air saw to the bulkhead and made some more clearance.





I knocked up a new lower dash rail from some 32MM tube with 3MM spreader plates on each end.


After a lot of measuring and repositioning I've got the pedal box to where it's comfortable. Now I just need to measure everything and figure out the mounts.

[Boundless]

Insane project... Can't wait to see the final result !!!

[Tupers]

I've been making a few bits to mount the pedal box but nothing note worthy yet so until later here's a picture of the estate back on it's wheels.

[Tupers]

I'm still yoyoing between mount the pedal and mounting the seats. This evening it was the seats turn.

I had made a set of bars between the inner sill and tunnel but they sat too low so I've gone with two tubes that are the full width of the car and notch around the exhaust tunnel.


I need to tack the mounting tabs onto the other side and straighten everything up but it works.

[CubbyChowder]

Nice work!

[Tupers]

Thanks Chowder, I just need to try and up the pace now.

I took a little time to bolt my drives seat up just too make sure everything lined up.


Thankfully it all sits very nicely. I'm thinking I might be able to get a decent sized speaker under each seat as well.


Once I was happy with everything I got the other mounting tabs tacked on and then went over the whole lot with some nice wide welds.


I also linishing down to allow the seat sliders to sit flat.


The bars are both back in the car now and ready to be welded in then it's back onto mounting the pedal box.

[RattyCabby]

Dude, your fab work is incredible! not only the quality of welds, but the intricacies and beauty are taking your build to levels unknown. I'll be watching!

[Tupers]

So the seats bars are tack welded into the car and the seat are mounted. I must say it's very comfortable and luckily there's still plenty of clearance to the rear seats when they folded up.




I've reassembled the gear shifter so that I can figure out the internal gear linkage.


As the shifter will be higher and further back than standard I'm fitting a universal joint at each end of linkage. The shifter side of the linkage is tapped with a 1/2" UNF left hand thread and the engine side has a 1/2" UNF right hard thread to act as a turnbuckle for fine adjustment.


There's not much more to do on the gear linkage yet so I sorted the majority of the pedal box mount instead.


It still needs a few gussets and a bit of tinkering but for the most parts is done.