I stripped out the rest of the interior of Dante so that the shell can go (either into long term storage or more likely to someone who will have the time to fix him up into something more useful.) I removed all the glass, dash rails, clocks, pedals (but not the pedal box) and everything bolted down that I can use on Little Em.
Would you believe that the rear subframe came off EASY AS PIE. All four of the 'tricky' bolts came out cleanly. That's what nine months of regular application of penetrating oil will do for you I guess?
So whoever gets the shell will have one less job to do; no heal-board patches to do.
This is the view out of our front window. Minis!
That took the morning, so I had lunch and did a couple of work phone calls, then went to pick the kids up from school.
After that, I spent a couple of hours in the afternoon on Little Em.
Her engine turned over, but not very quickly. The battery was essentially dead, so it's having a charge.
Hopefully that will give her enough beans to get going later today.
I removed one rear brake drum. I'd have done both, but I couldn't get one of the retaining screws out on that side.
More penetrating oil and then left because I didn't want to ruin the head on it. Drilling that out would then leave me a mess to tidy up, but I'm prepared to do that today if I need to. The back plate looks to be ok and the adjuster looks alright. I think we'll renew the hoses ad cylinder on both sides though. The brakes are proper locked on with the shoes/drums on.
I guess I need to match the cylinders that are on there now (??) because I'm putting disks on the front, so the rear drums need to have a lower braking power. Or is a bias valve required? Anyone?
The immediate plan is to pop round there and hammerite the entire floor. It's in good nick actually, having been previously repaired and welded. But they didn't really treat it well, so it's surface rusted. So I'll use a drill and sandpaper to clean off the top surface of rust and then pour a tin of hammerite in there. Then I can get some carpet and seats in and it will start to look like a mini. (Actually, this is really so that I can win brownie points from the wife by getting 'that bloody mini interior' out of the house.)
