625 replies to this topic

[rich2]

Haha! Yeah thankfully its not too bad so I'll be back on it soon enough. Just can't bend my leg very far right now. Oh well, Monaco grand prix tomorrow, so good excuse to park myself in front of the tv for a few hours.

[garrett3]

Are you sure you are an amateur?

This thread look like that from a seasoned pro...

Got to take my hat off to you mate, this is excellent work!

[Gefstar1]

Excellent and inspiring work.. keep it up dude

[rich2]

Cheers guys!

Despite my little injury, I managed to get the stuff done that I wanted to do this weekend. Here is the new inner wing with all holes drilled, clamped up and 'carefully' hammered into place ready for welding.



A few plug welds later:



Looking OK from the inside:



Grinding: DONE.



A dusting of etch primer on the bare bits.



Then, just as a precaution, I roughly welded a few more steels across the shell. I'm planning to keep all the bits these are welded to, so they can stay in place while most of the stuff around them gets replaced or repaired.



Hopefully the triangular structure will hold some rigidity when I remove the old heel board. I think thats probably the next job on the list. I'll mull it over this week and see if there is anything else I need to do first.

[garrett3]

Ahhh..... the procrastination of a heel board, I know it well

[Scholes2012]

Are you sure you are an amateur?

This thread look like that from a seasoned pro...

Got to take my hat off to you mate, this is excellent work!

+1. This is gonna be a very nice solid Mini, your not afraid to get stuck in. keep it up. Top work.

[minidream94]

Any more progress on this fella? looked good when u were updating it

[rich2]

Sorry for the silence!

The mini has been on the back burner lately as I'm getting married in 8 weeks and the wedding is sucking up all of my money! I don't think any serious panel purchases are going to happen now until after september. My drill and my grinder also gave up the ghost recently, (on the same day!) and I have only just picked up a new grinder. ANYWAY... enough with the excuses. Today I got back in the garage and tackled the heel board removal.

After much head scratching over best approach, I decided to keep as much floor as possible until I can get the car upside-down. I therefore resolved to get rid of all the rotten bits in this area (almost everything) and rebuild from the sound part of the floor outwards. First of all, I butchered the companion bins as they were rusty and patched anyway, and too difficult to remove cleanly.



Then, with access to the whole floor, I made a couple of card templates to record the shape of the floor in its intact state.



I marked out the areas of rusty floor to be removed, and cut the whole end of the floor off in one piece including the heel board.



Bosh.



I know this looks drastic, but the whole discarded portion is cheese, and the various parts would have had to come out sooner or later. I'm not worried about losing rigidity as the joins to the quarter panels were non-existent anyway, and the temporary bracing I put in is doing a good job.

I could now tape in the templates I made earlier and trace the shape of the cut, and make up an accurately fitting floor repair:



Here is the N/S repair roughly clamped in as a test. Annoyingly, I forgot to account for the one flute that intersects the join, but I will make sure that is welded up neatly at the final fitting. The inner sills will be replaced up to this repair so I won't fully seam weld that part in. I'm not going to have the holes in the new floor that were there previously (presumably for drainage?) as they seem to have been the first areas to rust.



Next job is to form the repair for the other side. I've got a piece of old heel board stuck to the tunnel still to remove, and then I should be able to weld this lot in and eventually get a new heel board fitted.

[sonikk4]

Nice looking repairs pieces there Rich, congrats on your forth coming wedding.

[grahama]

Hi,

nice fabrication work. Wish my panels came out so neat fitting !! Glad you have braced it up, saves such alot of heartache long term. Keep it up, and see how near the wedding you can get while still welding things up, just for a laugh !!!

Graham

[hughJ]

Hi Rich great to see you back. I always kept an eye on your project. Your work is just so tidy. My patches are just bashed up with a hammer - yours are precision pieces!! All the best for your wedding in eight weeks.

Hugh

[rich2]

Thanks guys!

Just a quick one today. Starting getting a bit of floor in place.

[miniQ]

Just clocked onto this thread...what a great job your doing! keep it up.

[SAL 821X]

great thread enoyed reading that alot thanks.

awesome fab works too

[izzy]

really looking goodkeep up the goood work