108 replies to this topic

[jayare]

Through the week I'd been thinking about what to do with the scuttle and LH flitch panel. I decided to open up the LH A-pillar to make sure all was good inside there and also to replace the whole scuttle panel so yesterday I went to Minispares and splashed some cash.

One full heritage scuttle, a pair of Heritage scuttle closing panels, a Heritage A-panel for the LH side and a flitch repair panel were purchased and I also picked up a door step section from my Dad which he'd used part of.

Today I got the thermals on and spent some time in the garage. I cut the flitch panel out to reveal this between the A-post stiffener and the flitch panel:



I'm glad I decided to open that up! I also cut the end off the scuttle panel to get at the rust which I found on Monday above the closing panel. I cut out the rotten bit and used it to help with the CAD pattern before cutting the repair out in steel. A bit of shaping and I had this:



Then cut down the flitch repair panel to fit:



I need to get the door on to check the fit of the A-panel but I was starting to get a bit bored of trimming, checking, trimming, checking...... so decided to drill the spot welds out of the scuttle panel and get the rest of that off.



Above the RH scuttle closing panel was not too bad but there was rust starting on the closing panel and in the joint between the closing panel and flitch, so again I was glad I took it all out to check. The top of the bulkhead isn't too bad - a couple of little patches will need to be put in but nothing major - I may end up with one or two bits of the top dash rail to replace too where the panels are pushing apart.

I finished up by test fitting the scuttle panel - it looks like its going to fit well and without much buggering about with which is good:



Tomorrow I'll finish up getting the LH A-pillar sorted and test fit the door and A-panel, cut the grotty bits out of the top of the bulkhead and top dash rail and make up patches for them. I'll also try to get the repair for the front of the door step made up then start painting the repair panels and hidden bits the same as I have done on the RH A-pillar to try to stop it rusting again.

JR

[MateyTheMini]

WOW! i love it! Love the blue and i've always wanted a clubby estate

[jayare]

Cheers!

Got the LH flitch repair pretty much there today and made up some patches for the top of the bulkhead and the top dash rail. I gave the bare areas a coat of etch primer and then a couple of coats of primer on all the bits which don't need to be welded. I'll try to get a couple of coats of hammerite onto the hidden surfaces during the week and then give the seams a coat of weld-through primer.

I didn't get round to making up the LH doorstep patch because I got side-tracked cleaning up the corner of the LH front floorpan and the bottom edge of the toe-board to see how much work is going to be needed there. It's not too bad but I think I'll hold off making any decision on it until I get the sill off and see what lies beneath!

No photos today as I forgot to take the camera out there!

JR

[Bean]

That's one hell of a solid base to start from - Well, it looks it from the pictures anyways!

Best of luck with it all!! Looking forward to latest piccies!!

[jayare]

Cheers Bean - it's not too bad - it was restored first time round in about 1997/98 but the pictures flatter a bit! There's a lot of little bits which need sorting out and I've decided if it's going to get done it'll get done properly!

I haven't done much over the last week or so - I need to get hold of some panels so I can line everything up on the front end, but the wings are like rocking horse manure at the moment - going to give Heritage a ring in the week to see if there's any ETA on them.

JR

[kcchan]

Love the progress so far. The repair work looks well done. I like the mini clamps aswell, where are they from?

[jayare]

Cheers - the little clamps are Cleco edge clamps - got them off eBay with the correct pliers for putting them on and off and a load of skin pins which you can also see in the photo of the N/S air vent area.

JR

[jayare]

Bought a 'dummy' engine off eBay today - hopefully going to pick it up on Saturday. Only cost £30 but then it does have 16 bent valves. Be fine for mocking up, making brackets, manifolds, etc and for spare bits & bobs. Also got a lead on a Corsa diesel gearbox which is only a few miles away so going to check that out tomorrow too.

JR

[jayare]

I've also now won a gearbox on eBay with the ratios I'm after - an F17 wide with 3.55:1 FD. Bargain at £45! I'm going to pick it up on Saturday, along with the £30 engine which means I have to do a complete lap of the M25 which should be fun.

I also ordered £250 worth of panels from M-Machine yesterday - drivers side floor half, drivers side rear quarter panel, side window aperture bottom panel, passenger side front floorpan and a toe-board repair panel - which should all be here some time next week. I've also spoken to Heritage to try to find out when Clubman front wings will be available again and they reckon they've sorted the problems with the tooling and will be sending them out to their approved stockists at the end of the month. I'm not going to hold my breath though!

JR

[jayare]

First chance I've had to update this since picking up the engine & gearbox on Saturday. The joys of a trip round the M25! After collecting the engine from Bracknell, I popped into Moss Europe at Twickenham (only about 20 miles away) and was actually prepared to hit the credit card with about £500 worth of panels but as the stock of Clubman front end panels is non-existent at the moment all I came out with was £45 worth of genuine outer sills! Then it was on to Northfleet to collect the gearbox before a bit of lunch at Bluewater then back home. All in about 240 miles and including all the stops, etc. about 8 hours in the car.

The engine has had a timing belt tensioner failure but will be fine for mocking everything up and should be a good source of spares or a base to build a modified engine on in the future. You can see in this picture the angled inlet manifold face on the head which is different from the 1.4 and 1.6 small-blocks:



And a view of the absolutely mahoosive inlet manifold:



You can see why this won't go into the Mini without inlet mods! So I started to have a play about with it and worked out it's actually in 2 parts which are bolted together. Not any more!



I should be able to cut this bit to get the flange and injector bosses and get some tubes fabricated to connect to a plenum. The manifold itself actually has a flappy bit in which can vary the inlet manifold length from a relatively short path from the throttle body through the ports at the top of the picture above into the head. With the flap in the other position the charge has to go right round the bottom part of the manifold adding about 300-350mm length to the inlet length. I assume this is to try to get a better spread of torque. Still seems quite restrictive though.

The gearbox I'm sure you all know what they look like, but here's the important bit:



The markings show it's a wide ratio F17 with a 3.55:1 FD which should work well with the 10" wheels - it gives an effective 4th gear ratio of 3.35:1 and 5th is 2.7:1. The guy who I got this off said it was out of an '04 plate Astra 1.7 diesel (I've verified the date from the code) but didn't know the mileage unfortunately. He also had the driveshafts which he threw in as well, so I've also got the right inner CV's .

JR

[The Matt]

Good idea using a scrap engine as a jig. Me like.

Soooo, is it a large or small block engine? Mr Matt confoosed!

[alexcrosse]

small block engine, slightly different block to 1.6, same bore, but different stroke and larger ports to keep the rev limit.

[jayare]

Yep - small-block as Al says. Bore is 80.5mm (slightly larger than 1.6) and stroke is longer at 88.2mm. As I understand it some of the oilways and breathers are internal rather than on the outside and the head design is different. I've still got to check if it's an X18XE1 or Z18XE (almost identical except the crank sensor is external on the X and internal on the Z).

For £30 I couldn't really go wrong - I could probably weigh it in for more than that!

JR

[The Matt]

Ah okies.

Just wasn't sure if it was something like the C18XE that I was gonna use. That was a large bore block. Didn't have as much chance of getting that in the roundnose though.

Keep up the good work, I is subscribed now!

[jayare]

These 2 boxes turned up from M-Machine this morning:



Inside were O/S floor panel which is saloon length to use with the estate floor extension (all the underside fittings are estate type ones though):



O/S side panel - mine needs at least 7 areas repairing so this should be a better way of doing it:



There is also a N/S/F floorpan which I'll cut down to suit, a toe-board repair for the N/S and the lower window frame panel. Hopefully I should get round to doing some actual work on it this weekend!

JR