1943 replies to this topic

[mini_mad69]

I cant believe there is a picture of the sweetest looking set of dials i have ever seen, and there is a conversation about a little welsh sticker going on. ahahah. Seriously though... they're awesome!

Ha ha ha ha ha, nice one, cheers, took absolutly ages to individualy solder up the led's and resistors. Well happy with the outcome, you can see them in the day aswell which makes them look better aswell, just driving around with my sidelights on. Just ordered 50 more LED's, so im going to stick a few in the Aux dials, and maybe 2 or 3 more in the fuel / temp gauges as they have alot in them to stop light hitting the dials.

I did have the LED replacment bulbs and they just are no where near bright enough. (6 hyper bright cluster)
Soooo the dash will have to come out again. This weekend is going to full of soldering and wiring.

And fitting my new safety devices roll cage

[AndrewJ530]

try soldering two pieces of metal too each other. Bloody tedious work and sooooo difficult lol

[mini_mad69]

try soldering two pieces of metal too each other. Bloody tedious work and sooooo difficult lol

Why were you soldering metal togather?

Ben

[AndrewJ530]

Fixing my train set when i was 14 lol. One of the drive gears had come off it's spindle so i had to try and solder it back on because the glue would go everywhere and lock all the gears together lol.

[mini_mad69]

Ok a little bit of a story today.

I've fitted my cage, and it looks awsome. I then loaded up my car ready to drive too bath.
Cleaned it and set off for Uni.

Got onto the M4 made 2 junctions and there were a few flecks on my windscreen but only on one side. Werid I thought then within around 10 or 15 seconds, oil poored out of the bonnet, the cars begind me dissaperead in smoke, my oil gauge plumeted, the warning light came on and it stank. I turned it off and coasted onto the hard shoulder.

I was thinking, blown head gasket, hole in engine, blown gasket somewhere. Big work. Didn't look as I was scared my engine had fallen out.

Scuttled up the bank and rang RAC, they told me I was out of range of their 10 mile policy, I was 13 miles. SO they turned a blind eye, LEGENDS!
I then got loaded and taken home, where the patrol man said he didn't have any other jobs on, had nothing better to do so said he'd give me a hand to try sort it out. Now, my engine is from an SPI mine, but the oil filter housing it not, so there was a mismatch, so we cut the 2 pipes aand joined them with a piece of rubber pipe. I was hoping it was that but didnt think it would be.

We put oil in it, started it and it pi$$ed oil everywhere, straight through the fan, and that was at idle. It did empty the engine oil in around 15 seconds.
I was soooo happy with that, he found some re inforced pipe in his van, popped it in started it up and perfect. I was unbelievably happy.

The problem now, is that the engine/ engine bay has a very very thick layer of 20W50. If I drive it, it will smoke and may go up in flames. I need to get back tomorrow, so im going to have too spray brake cleaner all over the electrics, then all over the engine and hose off the engine. Then get it up on blocks and give that the same treatment. Then im going too have too clean the car agaaaiiin. As there is oil all over the bonnet, grill, front panel, scuttle, a panels, doors, and windscreen.

Some pictures from today:














Ben

[dezshearer]

Good luck with the cleaning!!

[AndrewJ530]

Nevermind mate, can't you just use a pressure washer with the dizzy covered up?

[mini_mad69]

I went to halfords and spent 20 quid on cleaning prodicts, engine is once again clean and made the journey from bridgend to bath, no problems at all. The reinforced pipe Mr RAC put on was perfect, and I reackon i'll never need to replace it. Sorted, sound guy can't speak highly enough of him.

[miniallsort]

good luck mate

[mini_mad69]

good luck mate

With what?

All I did, was poor, and spray engine cleaner over then engine, and then sprayed the elecrics with carb cleaner(which evaporated) then just hosed down the engine, which did end up in my hosing down the electrics aswell. I sprayed everything, fusebox, relays, carb, airfilter, dizzy, coi, everything. Put the jump leads on as the battery died from being towed with hazards and sidelights (carp battery). Turned the key and it started perfectly fine. Smoked out of the exhaust a bit which worried but then realised that there was alot alot of oil all over the air filter. I was spraying the engine bay for around 5 minutes, I couldn't believe there was absolutly no issues, I thought it would atleast splutter due to the water, but no it was fine. Happy I was.

Ive had to put my old headunit in as ive had so many problems with mine, it kep going nuts and playing realy realy distored music quite loudly on the minimum volume setting. Can't work out why it was doing it. I gave it all new power sources, new speaker cables, I thought the speakers my be knackered so unplugged them pair by pair and it still did it, then side by side completly illiminating any faults, disconnected all amps etc etc. It's rhubarbed, sometimes it won't do it and sometimes it would last 1 minute and go crazy. So for now ive got my old one in, which looks cool and a couple of years ago it couldn't be beaten. But now it seems so stone age, it plays CD's and has an aux in. Im going to buy another JVC one as the quality is supurb and it means I can use my CD changer again. I want DVD but just simply can't afford or justify the cost of JVC DVD unit.

At the moment all iv'e got planned are, new plug leads, new head unit, and to fit more LED's behind the dials. Nothing major, which is annoying because I need something to do too it. Oh I also need a new interior light as mine got munched by the roll cage going in.


Ben

[mini_mad69]

Done a little bit of work today, and this week. I fitted 23 more LEDs to my dials and aux dials. It took me around 4 hours to do all the soldering and insulating.
I feel a bit of a mupet actualy, because I had to drill a 5mm hole in the back of the dials for each LED, no problem accept when you drill into the mechanism on the rev counter which now doesnt work. SO may have to take the dials out again and see if I can repair the rev counter.

The oil presure gauge had a kink in the copper pipe and it has now split so thats been disonnected. And I broke my vaccum gauge in the preocess of adding LEDs. After I did that I gave up trying to drill the aux dials as its too easy to damage them. SO plumbed in 3 LEDs into the standard gauge bulb hole.
So Ive ordered some new aux dials for it. Their even brighter now and im well happy with them.

Ive been tidying the car up today for the Malvern show where I should be on the south wales mini stand. So ive hoovered the carpets and seats, which did not work as the carpets have clung to all the crud. My housemate kicked off the doorcard the other night so Ive taken both off and given them a new coat of paint. Ive stuck my carpets down a bit more as they kept moving. Im going to buy some mats for it at malvern. Ive come in for lunch now and will go back out later and fit the door pockets back on, tidy up the loose wires, and give the interior a good scrub.

My list for wanted list for malvern is:
Hif44 inlet manifold
adjustable tie bars
an interior light lense
mats
The screw that holds on an air filter
A nice gear knob

I'll update again later on this afternoon.

[mini_mad69]

As you can imagine they look even better in real life.



Back of my dash (messy)

Ive got a problem with my starter motor at the moment, so ive got too fix that tomorrow. Bad times.



Ben

Edited by mini_mad69, 03 March 2009 - 03:37 AM.

[mini_mad69]

Ok so now I feel kind of silly.
Took the starter off, took off the solonoid all looked fine, cleaned all connections and put it back on. And click, but now my volt gauge seemed to be quite low. SO I kept trying to start it, it kept clicking and then it engaged and turned over incredibly slowly while the volt gauge plumeted off the scale. Would seem my battery is bummed. SO im going to go down the motor factors and going to get an 075 type, 306 diesel battery.

[mini_mad69]

Im selling my 2 JBL subs in box.

The subs are JBL Gt-4 10" subs, they are 250 watts rms and 1000 wattes peak, each.
The box is a custom job from a bloke on ebay made to fit in a MINI's boot.
It's sealed and has the correct volumes for the JBL subs, and has bean silicone sealed, and it's split for 2 chambers, one per sub. It also uses 2 proper sub woofer connections.

The carpet is a little torn on the bottom of the box where a screw head has been rubbing on it. But it can't be seen once fitted and if you just rub the carpet it seems to dissapear a bit.

As you can see, you can still get a little bit of stuff in the boot, and carry a spare tyre and jack etc.












I used a Fli 800s amplifier to power these which was 200 watts rms per channel so these subs arnt damaged as the amp didn't have the power to do so. They have never been run at distortion and are just as good as the day I bought them.


Been in my car around 6 months.

C0llection from Bath ba2 or may be able to drop off at my parents house in Bridgend south wales.

I want £80 for them with the box, which is a little bit of a bargain seeing as the box was 35 and each sub was 50 new.

[zap]

Bored now, as Ive got nothing to do to the Mini.

Random picture


My enamel sticker arrived for my gear knob, but it was the wrong size so I stuck it on my bootlid. Almost certain it's for one of those winged badges.




And now onto my latest project. My PCD on the back of my clocks is seriously damaged, so only the temp/fuel lit up.
So I bought 10 hyper bright blue LED's and after a spending spree in maplins I got all the bits I needed to solder them all together.

Just ome of the 10 LED's all solderd up, with resistor.

Drilled some holes in the back of clocks after taking my dash out, and super glued in the LED's.




And started soldering, (badly I might add)


Also re mounted the little blue LED's in my aux dials.

And refitted dash. Wired them into the sidelight circuit and vwalla!.







As you can see the AUX gauges didn't work, I ripped the dash back out and all seemed fine, tried reversing the polarity of them and still didn't work.
But they did work which was weird. They were a cheap ripspeed 3 led splotlight thing torn apart for the LED's though, cost £3 i think, so not that bothered. Ill give them the same treatment as the main gauges eventualy though. And then put a dimmer switch on them all like on modern cars.

Also now going to go overborad on neon's/ LED's for Mini shows etc. Loved a mini at MITP 2008 that was lit up like an xmas tree.

Ive got 16 more LED spotlights like udner my dash/ seats. There going in parcel shelf/ speaker board.
1 Red LED strip which is going on my crossmember.
1 Blue 10cm LED strip for the centre console.
And 3 White 10cm strips which will probably go under the bonnet, or in the wheel arches, May have 4 but I think 1 its damaged.

I already have a 30cm LED bar in my boot.


Then the big challenge will be to get all of these to turn on with one of the buttons on my alarm fob.
Should be a clever little addition.

good work mate loving it, cant wait to fit my 12x6 and those sort of arches, but lots of work to do yet, should be putting up a project, when its all done