764 replies to this topic

[Tupers]

So today the rest of the rear crossmember got welded in and I painted as much of the void inside with red oxide.


Then I moved onto to finishing the arch, not my best piece of fab work to date but it looks pretty good for an inner arch.


All welded in just need to do the black piece now and a can move onto sorting out some of the other holes.

[Tupers]

More progress.

Finished of the welding on the inner arch.




Started smoothing the welds off.


Took the rest of the passenger sill off.


And found a lovely little hole where a cross member void is.


Out can the cutting discs.


Made a little plate to fill the hole.


Welded it in.


And ground dow the ares that the new sill will sit on.

[Tupers]

How about a few pictures of the past few days development?

When I took the bins out the back I managed to tear the sill by missing a spot weld so I thought it was about time I sorted it out.


Cut out with the grinder.


Made a little plate to fill the larger hole.


And all welded in except the top edge that I'll do from the inside.


Removing the bins meant I'd also gotten rid of the mounts for my front seatbelt reel so I set to work cutting some steel to make a pair of plates for captive nuts to weld to.


Got 'em cut out and welded the two together so that the holes I was about to drill would be in the same place of both plates. Then clamped them to the drill press and drilled away which took forever as final drill bit was particularly blunt.


Separated the plates and mig welded on a couple of nuts to serve as captives.




It will probably sit somewhere like this once welded in but I haven't gotten around to that yet.



Next on my list was to remove the remainder of the out sill that basically consisted to the but with all the spot welds in so I got to drilling. :evil:


Took me a while but I got the first half off and yes that is a *melon* load of spot welds.


Just this bit left to take off now.


And I beat it so now onto the the little piece of sill that was still attached to the jacking point.


I may have gone a littler to deep the the grinder so I'll have to to a little plate and mig it up at some point.


Now it would seem I've made my way to the front of the car so i really should sort out this great big hole.


Cut some.


Cut some more.


Grabbed some steel and made a rather purdy lookin plate.


Welded some.


And hit with a hammer a few times and welded some more.


So that's the passenger side done short of welding in the new seatbelt mount, fitting a sill and making a plate for the flitch. :shock:

[mk3 Cooper S]

You are sticking at it and keeping the quality up.

Nearly half way there with the bodywork.
What are the plans for the final colour etc

[Tupers]

You are sticking at it and keeping the quality up.

Nearly half way there with the bodywork.
What are the plans for the final colour etc

Thanks fella, I don't think I'm quite half way thought yet but it's certainly getting there. This is the first time I've ever done any work like this so I'm pretty happy with how it's coming along.

I've still got to do:
A' panels,
Drivers wing,
Drivers front floor pan,
Half a heel board,
A big chunk of the inner sill on the drivers side
And two outer sills to do.

Once I've got those panels (the first ones I'll have bought for this car) it should only be about a weeks worth of work to get it done. I think I'm going to go with quite a dark metallic red with a set of black stripes a bit like the standard ones running down the side. I don't want anything too austintatious just something that'll stand out form the crowd.

[Tupers]

Today I repaired the jacking point as it had rusted out and had a few cuts in it from where I'd gone to deep with the angle grinder.

I started out by taking as much of the rust out of it as I could.


Cut a little piece of metal out, welded it in and welded up the cuts.


Finally I ground the welds down so the outer sill will sit on top of it nicely when I fit it.


Next I turned my attention to welding in the captive plate for the seatbelt.
I already knew where I wanted it positioned so I went ahead and drilled the hole for the bolt to cone through.


While cleaning the area with the linisher I found two holes that needed sorting.


Fortunately the mig was close at hand and the weren't to hard to weld up.


Of course the plate would be sitting over this area so I ground it flat and also painted in red oxide to protect it.




The captive plate was rather large so I decided to drill some holes in it so it could be plug welded for extra strength.


I also painted the back in red oxided as I'd really rather my seat belt anchorage didn't rust away.


I had Dad weld this as it's pretty important it was strong, I think you'll agree it look rather beefy.



I was feeling pretty good about this side but then I remembered there was another patch of rust that need cutting out.


Since I knew this would be a hard piece to form I cut the plate and beat it over the area that needed cutting before I attacked it with the angle grinder.




I marked the area that I wanted to cut out and erm cut it out.


All welded in I think it looks rather good.


And then ground it down although it does still need a bit of work.

[Teapot]

Since I knew this would be a hard piece to form I cut the plate and beat it over the area that needed cutting before I attacked it with the angle grinder.

See, it's tips like this that are so useful to us lesser mortals.
Great work, keep going & putting the pix up.

[82hle]

Good work. It's important to show all the little tips and tricks, it helps others loads. I wish my boys would come down the garage and get stuck in in the Mini, instead of lolling around in their pants playing computer games.
Mart.

[Tupers]

Since I knew this would be a hard piece to form I cut the plate and beat it over the area that needed cutting before I attacked it with the angle grinder.

See, it's tips like this that are so useful to us lesser mortals.
Great work, keep going & putting the pix up.

Good work. It's important to show all the little tips and tricks, it helps others loads. I wish my boys would come down the garage and get stuck in in the Mini, instead of lolling around in their pants playing computer games.
Mart.

Thanks for the kodos guys, this is my first proper resto project but I guess I've picked up more knowledge about this stuff from my dad than I thought had.




More work.

I decided to cut out the rear quarter bumper lip and it had a few holes in it and i though it would be silly to mig them all up.


Got the new piece in, Just need to drill the stud holes and cut the contour.



I thought it was about time I rebuilt the lower section the the rear door frames, starting on the left.


Whipped up a plate that followed the angles of the door frame.


Finally welded it in.


With the left done I move to the right that required a bit more work as the rust had gone all the way through.


I made up a two piece plate for this as the back section couldn't be made with the front because it's U shaped.


Then I cut 90* tab and plug welded the two plates together.




Now all welded in, check out those funky colors.



Next job was to make a plate for the rather large hole I'd cut behind the arch with the body bow back on it's floor.


To get the curv of the trim lip right I cut the repair section out the the front wing that I'l be replacing.


And I managed to cut the new section to small so had to cut another.


I trimmed the new section in a few places and clamped it in place. I also got it welded in but I forgot to take a picture before I left for home.



My final task of the day was to cut prep the drivers front floors pan, there's more rust here than I had expected when I got the car but it's still better than a lot I've seen.


Here's how it looks now after half an ultra thin cutting disc, just need a floor pan now.

[Tupers]

So today day I started grinding down the welds on the two door frame plates. I need to get some new stones for my die grinder but so far it's going well.





I figured I should probably cut the rest of the OS front wing off today seen as it already had quite a few chucks taken out of it.


Got most of it off.


Pulled out the spot weld drill and removed the rest off it.


Darn tin work has gotten into the headlight mount so I suppose I'll be replacing that as well.


A nice little pile of scrap, free to a good home.



Went out to have a look at the river and found a mother duck basking in the sun with two ducklings.



For some reason I still hadn't removed the shock mounts so off they came and stunningly they wasn't any rot behind them.





With all that done I figured I should write a list of all the metal work at I've got left to do and it's a big one.

[Tupers]

I spent most of today cutting up the off side flitch after removing the A panel and finding lot of rust.

A nice bit of rot on the end of the scuttle panel.


Rot on the lip that the a panel folds over.


Few holes below the cold air vent.


A nice big hole above the cold air vent.


And plenty of rust at the bottom spreading to the step sill.


So on with the cutting disc and out with the rust.




The rot at the top of the flitch turned out to be worse than I had hopped.






More cut from the top of the A panel folding lip and a chuck taken out of the scuttle.


The scuttle panel closing plate had too many holes in it to be worth repairing so it came out as well.


I got board of cutting so stuck a grinding disc back on and found a few nice holes on a near side wing. Hopefully I'll be able to mig these up and wont have to replace this wing as well.


Last thing I did was to fold up a plate for the off side flitch that I'll weld in and drill the hinge holes for tomorrow.

[mini-geek]

Looks good seeing this is making me want to start my mk1 restoration, keep it up!

[Tupers]

Looks good seeing this is making me want to start my mk1 restoration, keep it up!

Go on to it you know you should. Cutting all the rust out isn't great fun but welding new metal in is soooooo satisfying.


I thought I'd get the plate I made for the flitch welded in today.

I drilled 3 holes in it for plug welds and clamped the plate it in with our funky new panel clamp thing.


Tacked it in and removed the clamp.


Miged all the way around and plug welded.


All ground smooth ready to be painted and stone chipped.


The last job was to drill two holes in the plate so I'll be able to mount my door.





With that done I moved on to a hole in the near side rear quarter that I made a plate for a miged in.


Now all ground down and once I've linished it you'd never know there had was a hole there.



I had noticed a few spots of rust on the off side step sill so I went at them with the grinder and they got a lot worse than I was hoping for. I've decided to replace the step as it will actually be quicker than welding up the holes and grinding them down.

Edited by Tupers, 30 April 2010 - 09:42 PM.

[Tupers]

Todays job was to make and fit the repair panel for the top half of the O.S flitch. The first step in this this was to replace a section of the dash tray that I had cut away due to rust. It the but welded to the frame on the right of the picture and has 3 plug welds holding it on the left.



With that done I cut a pattern out of card and made the repair panel.


I want to keep the fresh air vents so I used card to make a template of the main hole and fixing holes on the other side and laid of over my repair panel.


Once I was sure it was in the correct position I traced around it had marked the area that needed cutting out.


After a minute or so with the snips and I was ready to see if the vent would fit the hole and line up properly. Fortunately it did.


Now the final stage welding, I tacked the panel in first to make sure I hadn't made any silly mistakes.


Here you can see half of the panel welded in. I was rather silly and miged all 4 joints in quick succession and the metal has bowed more than I can lose with some crafty hammer and dolly work. I expect me and Dad will probably end up shrinking it back down with the oxy-acetylene before welding top half of it up.


So since my welding work was done for the day I figured i try out my new Ansell hot sleeves and start grinding down the welds I had some on the flitch so far. They seems to do a pretty good job of keeping the sparks away from my arms even if the are in a awful color.


More importantly the areas I ground down look really good and the joins should be indistinguishable once painted.

[Tupers]

After some persuasion with a few different panel hammers I managed to get the repair on the flitch straightened out and and welded up from inside the car.



For some reason there was a split in the front valance when I got the car so I thought I have a crack at sorting it out.


I put a couple tacks on the bottom to keep it in place and worked the top back into shape.


Once I was happy with it I welded it up from both sides.




And finally I ground down the weld on the outside.



Hopefully I'll have my new panels soon so I thought I'd better cut some more rust out so they've got something decent to weld it onto.




A few minuted with the grinder and the rust was no more.




The only part I've left on for the moment is the piece of the heelboard/inner sill that has the subframe mounts on as I want something to line the new one up to.



One of the jobs on my giant list of erm jobs was the cut out the rust on the O.S side window frame so i thought I have a crack at that.


All cut out with rust killer painted on I'll make the repair section tomorrow.


I also thought I'd knock grinding down the rust on the scuttle panel off my list. Just need to find a scrap scuttle to cut the repair out of now.