'72 Mini Clubman Estate

[markglasco]

always a pleasure to see fresh metal on vintage steel, awesome fabrication skills sir. i wish i was half as good as you, i cant even weld things together properly haha. goodluck on the build mate!

[Tupers]

When this is finished it will be so sweet!

It is indeed although there's still a lot I need to decide on. I haven't even decided what colour I want it although I do like the look of Nissan black cherry.

always a pleasure to see fresh metal on vintage steel, awesome fabrication skills sir. i wish i was half as good as you, i cant even weld things together properly haha. goodluck on the build mate!

Thanks Mark, I do love working with fresh steel especially when it comes to welding.

So another morning of work, I fired up the mig and welded the lip on to the floor section.


The floor need a little shaping due to the step in the cross member that it is welded to.


I decided the best way of shaping it was to Celco the floor in place and whack it with a piece of wood and hammer.




With that done I could finally move onto getting the floor welded in but as my luck is I ran out of shield gas after 18 plugs.

[Tupers]

We finally got a fresh gas bottle so I popped down this afternoon and got the floor welded up.


Slapped some primer on it before I left, more tomorrow.

[Minuki]

Your fab work blows my mind.

[Steinke]

Geez sooooo sick! I could spend all day reading threads like this!

[Welfare]

bloody hell.

talk about an impressive build.

keeping my eye on this one.

[PoLonY]

amazing!

[Ew!]

What he said!

[Tupers]

Thanks guys, I could read comments like those all day.



I did get more work done than I've got pictures off but this'll have to do until tomorrow.

The first lip I'd made to wrap around the arch went a bit wrong so I started again and came up with this.


I welded the rear section of the lip and then got the front piece sorted. I also got the underside of the panel zinc primed and 50% of it welded up.

[Tupers]

Back at it, I finished welding the drivers side floor section in this morning.




Once it had cooled I got the plug welds ground down and added a few coats of zinc primer.




Everything Celco'd back in for the last time.


I got the back section welded up but my knees were killing me so I'll finish it tomorrow.

[Tupers]

Chucked another couple of hours in this afternoon and got the rear section of the floor completely welded, ground and primed and the front section welded.







I should be able to do a few more hours tomorrow and get the sides on then I'm done.

[Tupers]

Got the tank box 99% fo the way there now, just a few plug welds left that I'll do when the shells bare again.

[SemperHumilis]

great build! sub'd

[Tupers]

I had a look into what Im doing with the rear valance. I didn't want to use the standard one as it's quite shallow so I'm going to have a local company roll some steel so I can make a deep one.


I use the shrinker to make a silhouette of the new valance. The standard one is 8CM deep and the new one will be 16CM deep.


I think it should help make the back end look a little lower and do a good job of hiding the exhaust that will be behind it.


I also started fabrication on the frames for my wind down rear windows.

[C-Hutch]

awesome work. It'll be something few ever notice, but it's the attention to details that makes a build special.