I have read somewhere that changing a master cylinder in a Mini is an absolute bar steward of a job, mainly due to the horrible job of removing the split pins from the little roll pins at the top of the pedal arms. In short, you have to put your head by the pedals and your legs go wherever you can place them, and then you try and work with your hands practically behind your head. In a stripped Midas, it is somewhat easier, mainly due to the nice flat floor, lack of seat and no carpet or underlay. My record for getting the old ones out when I stripped the car was about 6 minutes, which included me folding my chunky frame into the car in the first place. This was helped by the previous owner having used R clips. Although I have no aversion to them, I did want to replace them, and as I didn't have any new R clips, then split pins would have to do.
So, down to the job in hand: replacing the pedal box and popping the master cylinders back in. I like the arrangement I have on this Midas - a simply made captive plate on the engine side of the bulkhead with two welded bolts on it taking care of the mounting. Then it was "simply" a matter of pushing the studs up through the pre-drilled holes at the top before starting to add everything and tighten it down. This took some time, because if you're half a millimetre out, it won't go, no matter how much grunting, swearing and cursing you do. Eventually, after some interesting language and various scratches to my wrists and fingers, it was in place. I then set about sorting the master cylinders. Gaskets went on, followed by clutch and then brake MCs. The clutch MC was the same as before and went in easily. The brake MC is a brand new yellow tag item - I remembered this time to attach the pipes that go to the brake splitter on the bulkhead BEFORE bolting it down. The reason I changed the MC was that despite me refurbing my old MC, it wasn't working properly (pedal travel was very short and it locked up so I'd obviously done something wrong). I took the pedal box out because I needed longer bolts to mount the new one. The initial ones were too short and I had to modify the MC itself so I could mount it. I didn't want to break out the angle grinder with a new one hence the pedal box came out for the longer bolts. 10 more minutes and all was happily bolted up, including both sets of split pins. I also took the time to bolt in my now modified throttle pedal. This now clears the wheelarch properly - it's amazing what half an extra inch will do!
Having already broken one rear hatch hinge by accidentally knocking it off the bench, I didn't want to do it again, so I thought I had better chuck them on the car. I made up some rubber gaskets and simply bolted them on to the hatch area. Hopefully I will never have to move them again.
Brand new Yellow Tag in place.
Throttle pedal bolted in and ready to go.
Simple rubber gasket made up...
...and hinges mounted.