762 replies to this topic

[Ethel]

I'm surprised the cylinder is too tall I have a Metro Master on mine, but I'm pretty sure it's the same casting. There is zero clearance mind.

Quick check...
It also measures 193mm, but I note your bonnet reinforcement is different.

[Artstu]

but I note your bonnet reinforcement is different.

Guessing your's is a mk 2 ?

[MrBounce]

I have turned my attention to the bodywork now that most of the mechanical bits are off the car. There is an alarming amount of cracking by the bumper/front panel/front wings and I have no doubts that this car has been driven into something at some point. The attempts to repair it have been rather poor, with lots of filler and the total disregard for any crack rectification.

I started with grinding out the cracks on the passenger side wing by the headlight and where the repeater used to sit. I don't like repeaters on the Midas - I think the ones that were on my car came from a Maxi or similar and were so knackered they went straight in the bin. I will probably replace them with something else small, maybe from a Fiesta or something. Suggestions welcome! Then again, I might not fit some at all... There were a large number of cracks but they have ended up making a pretty pattern. It looks like a map of a large Motorway junction now...

Then I moved to the front of the car. Initially I thought there was an enormous chunk of filler in the front but it was difficult to tell because it had been primered and/or repainted really badly. I spent a few minutes sanding it with some 60 grit, and I was greeted by some good news and some bad. There wasn't as much filler as I had expected (a lot was primer which sanded off) but there were at least two applications and not all of it was blended properly. There was a massive crack where the filler met the fibreglass - some of the fibreglass actually fell out with minimal persuasion. I have ground down the first load of cracks that I can see but I am undecided on the best way forward for the front end. Do I keep what is there and work with it? Do I grind out all the filler and start again? I will take advice and decide later.

Finally I dealt with the chunk of filler on the bulkhead - I had a bit of a prod and a poke here - it turned out it was covering a hole in the bulkhead but I am not sure why or how the hole was made. I shall be attacking this with some fresh fibreglass in the future.

Cracks in front wing - lots of 'em!



First crack ground out (still a bit to do...)



Looking like a motorway junction...



Sorry looking front end



Sanded down. Some fibreglass broke off without much help



Close up, at least two filler applications



Most of the cracks ground out. What to do from here?



Wad of filler on bulkhead hid this. How/why was the hole here?

[MrBounce]

Well it's been a little while since my last update. Mrs B had an operation (she's fine - nothing to worry about) so a lot of my evenings and weekends in Novemeber were spent looking after her and the house. Plus there's also the fact that recently it has been a little bit chilly in the garage... I have however been acquiring some more bits and bobs from various forums and the good ol' bay of E. I have managed to get hold of the following: two longer track-rod ends for my Negative Camber bottom arms, an LCB (my old one has a dent in the centre pipe), a brand-new Mountney D-shaped wheel along with a secondhand boss, one of the two new rubber doughnuts I need, and in my quest to avoid any likelihood of ever using a Mini heater again, an heater unit from an MGF complete with controls (Many thanks to Rob Bell for the above). I WILL make it fit!

The front end had not got any better since I last attacked it so I thought I would have a look at the filler. I made two vetical incisions through it then attacked it with a screwdriver. Yup, off flicked great chunks of it. Whoever had "repaired" it after the crash had not done a good job at all. I don't know a great deal about bodywork, but just slathering wads of filler over cracked and broken fibreglass is NOT the way forward. I spent the next half an hour chipping of great chunks of it (some of it the size of a custard cream biscuit). I then put a sander on the Dremel and ran that over the damaged fibreglass underneath. This also revealed more cracks. All of these will be properly ground out and carefully repaired.

I am not sure what the car hit, but I can only assume it was something fairly solid and immovable, like a wall - or possibly a cathedral. There are cracks all over the front end (probably due to the impact) so it is going to take an age to clean it all up. I am determined to do it properly as I want it to look half decent! Thre may well be more updates to follow which involve a great deal of Dremel use and sanding. For that I can only apologise...

Front end hiding obvious horrors.



Two small grooves then flick out the crap with a screwdriver...



Amazingly, there was gelcoat under it all. What a bodge!



Big chunks of filler. Yuk.



I am left with this...



...and this...



Front end looks ugly right now. To paraphrase the 6 million dollar man, "We can rebuild him!"



LCB - needs a clean up and a coat of high temp paint - only cost a tenner!



MGF heater. Am looking forward to the challenge of fitting this!



Funky "D" shaped steering wheel and boss, all for under £35...

[MrBounce]

Back in the Manroom for yet more body horrors, I kept my attentions on the nearside front corner. Closer inspection reveals that this side has also been smacked about by something solid. Whoop-di-do. The area surrounding the sidelight/indicator recess has been made up from a selection of remaining bodywork and standard body filler, so that all needed chipping out. The hammer & screwdriver have become a useful pairing here. And yes, I did manage to make at least one hole. Where the bumper sits is a mass of badly applied lumpy fibreglass which I will eventually try to smooth off. Beneath the light recess is a nasty myriad of cracking (worse even than by the headlight area) so I am going to deliberately avoid this until I can get the car on its side - that way I can work at a decent height. It also (of course) goes under the bottom of the spoiler (as it's an early 80s car do I call it an "air-dam"?) so all of it will need to be re-done. I guess I am going to learn a fair bit about repairing fibreglass.

I spent the rest of the afternoon avoiding the front end and doing a bit of sanding; the front wing top, roof and pillar area and the heat affected bulkhead were my main targets. It's amazing what a bit of 60-grit will do to a surface to clear away the crud. The whole body will be resprayed anyway so I will of course be using finer grit then eventually wet & dry to get a better finish! I also have numerous holes and gouges to fill in so it is all going to take a while. More soon.

Full of filler & other assorted rubbish...



Close up of the "underneath the bumper" horrors



It's a cracker! There are WAY too many of these!!



Most of the filler removed. Yes, it did make a hole...



Wing top looking MUCH smoother (and clean!)



Bulkhead area - looking a little better.



Roof. Still attached and looking clean. No cracks, which makes a change...

[Mini-Mad-Craig]

You are doing a really great job on this mate! I love it. I really want one of these one day.

Still following with a keen eye

[Ethel]

If it looks alright before you start digging it might be an idea to take a moulding off it. It doesn't have to be very solid, you can sort that after if needs be. You can get specific gelcoat repair filler, handy for cracks, but if you're painting just grp may be a better option on flat areas. Best to wait until the weather's drier to start laying up resin.



Mine was registered in 1980, 11th out the mould if the chassis number is to believed. The bonnet is very likely a replacement.

[MrBounce]

Had a bit of a tidy up in the Manroom (and boy did it need it!) and due to the cold weather not being ideal for playing around with fibreglass, I thought I would have a look at the front hubs. I have two sets; one is the set covered in Gold Hammerite (yuk!) which were on the car and the others were a pair that were in the spares box and are normal disc brake hubs.

I set about removing (and binning where necessary) the balljoints. Having hammered the lock tabs back down I then had the delights of trying to undo someone else's over-exuberant work with the torque wrench. On both of the "spares" hubs, the balljoint nuts were stupidly tight. I ended up using my 1 1/2 foot bar with a 3 foot metal pole on the end of that before they would shift. Something tells me someone did them up "as hard as they could", probably using the same method as me. The gold ones were much easier; just the weight of the bar plus a gentle lever seemed to have them clear.

You've also got to love the way something allegedly so simple can turn into a nightmare that takes stupid amounts of time. The rear oil seal on both of the "spares" hubs was seemingly welded in place. It eventually took much brutality involving heat, screwdrivers, pliers and a hammer. The bearings in the spares hubs were nasty - full of grit and not actually complete in one instance. The gold hubs seemed in better condition with fresher grease but both sets of bearings were binned anyway as they're an unknown quantity. Having given both pairs a cursory wipe down I noticed that the gold hubs are a bit, well "weird". Someone has taken a grinder to the front face and hasn't done a great job. I have no idea why they've done this but I won't be using them all the same. This car still never ceases to amaze me...

Two pairs of hubs for stripping



The poxy oil seal that took far too long to remove



Gritty, nasty interior. Will clean up nicely after a dunk in the parts washer.



Gold hubs. There's something not quite right about them...

[Artstu]

All the normal Mini/Midas related issues. I've seen much much worse.

[MrBounce]

It is January, and as last year, the Manroom is a VERY cold place to be. As such I have decided to bring some of the work inside, and for now that meant wiring. This is very possibly my most hated thing with any car, as I don't really understand it well enough. Guess I will be learning...

I first of all cleaned up the rear loom as it had been inside a car which had been sat for 11 years. A wipe down with some white spirit made it much nicer to handle. The exposed end near the rear lights is not partcularly pretty, mainly due to the constant ingress of water. The connectors for the rear lights are poor (not usually a problem as they're easily replaced) but it's disconcerting when you try to pull them off and it brings half the (rusty) light fitting with it. There's also some butchering where the wires themselves have been cut a few inches before the connectors, then soldered back together badly and not insulated. I have no idea why this has been done, but in due course I will be replacing all the crimped connectors with proper soldered terminals and will re-solder and/or heatshrink the butchered bits. I will also remove the yellow tape and re-tape it.

Then there was the main loom to look at. This scared me a lot, so I took it round to see my good friend Mike. He is familiar with most aspects of car electrics and said he'd be happy to sort it out as I've been helping him with his Biota project. He spent the best part of two hours on his kitchen floor removing stuff that wasn't needed and identifying what wires did what. It is of course, second nature to him as he's been working with electrics since the age of 16, but to the untrained eye (like me!), the man is an utter genius. He has carefully unravelled things once I had discarded all the wrapping, old tape & plastic binding, then bunched all the wires together in the proper order with the minimum of electrical prior to further modification when in the car. I want to have the fusebox inside the car anyway, so this will happen in due course.

He also gave me distinct instructions to sort out yet more exposed soldering in the main loom. I have duly cut out said rubbish, resoldered and applied heatshrink. At least I did once I started using different solder to the cheap garbage that was in my new soldering kit... It seems the old stuff is definitely the best. And I didn't set the smoke alarms off, which pleased Mrs Bounce!

Rear loom, just after I cleaned all the old gunge off.



It holds such horrors as this...



..and this. Soldering iron's gonna get a lot of use.



The main loom. I kept pretending it wasn't there.



The Master at work.



All the junk taken out of the loom that wasn't needed. It's a lot.



Beautifully laid out and almost good to go. Modification, fusebox, new soldered terminals & wrapping to follow.



Butchered bits were re-soldered, and heatshrink applied.

[MrBounce]

There's not too much of interest to report as I have been stuck inside due to the horrid weather or been waiting for parts etc. We have managed to put an accessory feed into the loom along with the appropriate wiring for a manual fan switch. No pictures yet - all is more likely to be revealed once it's all finished - wiring isn't the most exciting of things to photograph. I have also removed the (almost always corroded) bullet connectors for the headlight looms. I find these give unnecessary problems so I always solder these together and apply heatshrink accordingly. Finally I've removed the nasty corroded bullet connectors on the end of the rear loom and used heatshrink where they were inexplicably soldered. No new spade connectors yet because Mr Numpty here ordered the wrong ones...

I suddenly realised I hadn't done anything with the rear light lenses after the studs snapped other than clean them, so I pulled them out of the lights box and set about cleaning them up so the M4 set screws I'd got would sit flat. I used my old friend the Dremel for this and ground everything flat with the smallest die grinder I had. I then mixed up some epoxy resin (which stinks of course) and glued them in place. To make sure everything was in the right place I slid the light fittings over the studs and kept them off the lenses using a screwdriver, just in cas they bonded themselves together.

After a couple of hours they were solid enough so I put them back where they should be on the car to avoid damage whilst I throw stuff around the garage!

Rear Lenses dug out of the box



Old fittings ground flat



Light fitting added with screwdriver to make sure all was correctly placed & didn't stick...



..and the other side too.



Solid as a solid thing. I will leave it for several days to cure properly.

[MrBounce]

February sucks. It is either too cold outside to do anything worthwhile or something rubbish happens (whilst I like doing project stuff I do draw the line at working in temperatures of -4 degrees). Can you guess what happened this weekend???

Thought I would turn my attention to the rear hatch hinges which have been sitting in a box in various places whilst I tried to find a pillar drill. They were in the garage, then my brother's shed (he didn't have time despite having a pillar drill) then in the car whilst I went to pick up a pillar drill (which wasn't there - long story...) then back in the garage again. All four bolts in these had of course snapped off when I tried to remove them. This was most likely something to do with the bolts being steel and the hinges being aluminium. They don't tend to like each other over time. So my only option was to drill them out, hence the pillar drill - many thanks go to Paul for the loan of his.

So off I went to the hardware shop and bought some amazing (& expensive...) drill bits - bolts are notoriously evil things to drill out. I grabbed a piece of scrap steel and drilled a 6mm hole in it (the same as the bolt) so I could then use this as a template to accurately find and drill a pilot hole in the centre of the bolt. I also used chalk to mark exactly where the bolts sat as it was all the same colour. I started drilling with a 3mm bit and gradually worked my way up to 4.5mm. Once I had done this I should (in theory) be able to collapse the remains of the bolt and then re-tap.

However, this was not what happened. Having successfully drilled the bolt, I put the hinge down on top of the vice. And knocked it on the floor. It broke. So I now need a new one, preferably two. If you have a pair please get in touch.

February sucks.

Hinge with broken bolts & template



Using chalk so I could accurately place the template.



Then this happens. Nuts.

[MrBounce]

I really know how to rock a Friday night. Mrs Bounce was out with the girlies so I did man stuff. This meant opening a bottle of beer and getting down with the rear loom in the lounge. I had already had some help from Mike the previous evening (in between inhaling cellulose thinners and fibreglassing his Biota's underside) where we tested all the wires to make sure they were all working. One wasn't (one of the rear lights). This was because it was all corroded, black nearly all the way through. All the others were fine.

So we took the tape off that section of the loom and followed that bit of wire down to where it joined the other rear light wires and cut it off. We then replaced it with a new wire (the same colour from another loom in Mike's bits box) and soldered it in place. This was then heatshrunk and everything tested again. All that remained was for me to clean up the ends and fit new connectors where required and re-tape the loom. I even used yellow tape. Attention to detail and all that...

There's still a couple of small bits to attend to i.e connectors on the foglight & fuel sender, but they can wait until I have fully decided what I am using.

Loom on sofa (Don't tell the wife)



New wire soldered in & heatshrunk



Now all tidy & almost finished.

Edited by MrBounce, 23 February 2013 - 11:47 AM.

[MrBounce]

As I was wanting to avoid the wiring (and hatch hinges!) for a bit I started looking at the front bodywork again, now that I could go into the Manroom and not lose all feeling in my hands. I needed to have a closer look at the offside front as well as finishing off the nearside. I have avoided the very bottom of the airdam for now as it will be MUCH easier with the car on its side.

My afternoon was mainly spent using the Dremel, chasing cracks and grinding them out. I also found a bucketload more filler, most off which was unceremoniously chiselled out. It seems that whoever did the "bodywork" on this front end just used a bucketload of Plastic Padding with little regard to what it would end up looking like or how it would react. Still, once I've stripped it back, resin, fibreglass & a LOT of sanding will have it looking better before painting. It surely can't look any worse... There was one piece of gelcoat that had so many cracks on it that I ended up just cutting it out with the Dremel & throwing it away. It's pointless chasing 93 cracks in such a small piece of plastic when I may as well start with a blank canvas.

Engine bay lip, star-crack ground out.



Indicator surround, looking a little... gouged.



Full of Filler?



Not any more...



More filler removed



Offside is full of gloop too



It appears to be a USA Freeway Intersection map



This bit was rubbish...



...so I removed it.

[MrBounce]

Had an unexpected afternoon in the Manroom today so made full use of it. As it was unlikely that I would be able to get the cast aluminium of the one hinge I have left to take a thread given my meagre tool set, I drilled it ready to take countersunk bolts (similar to the type that hold the rear drums in). It was then that I realised that the hinges are "handed" to match the small curve of the hatch opening. James from the Midas forum had sent me a spare and we didn't realise that they were different. Guess what I have got... That said, I don't think it is necessary to change them. A small amount of work on a grinder will make the "wrong" one fit fine, and unless you look REALLY closely I doubt anyone but the most anal will even notice.

Whilst at the bench I also took time to knock out the rings that the bearing races roll against in the hub. It's a job I have been meaning to do for ages (thanks, cold weather...) and I will shortly clean up the hubs ready for paint before sorting replacement bearings and balljoints.

I went back to the front end - the area where the bumper sits on the driver's side was a total mess. I reckon it was here that took the brunt of the impact when the car was shunted. There was so much cracking and badly replaed fibreglass I cut it all out - it saved a hell of a lot of time. Although it would be under where the bumper sat and therefore "unseen", I would rather it be solid than the dodgy mess it was. Dremel cuts! There was a large lump of fibreglass filler which fell out - this was where one of the bolts which held on the grille mesh had snapped. Horrible.

Talking of the bumpers, I haven't even looked at them since removing them 18 months ago. I grabbed the front one and spent AGES removing all the expanded foam from inside. There's plenty of star-crazing all over it just like on the body, which someone has tried to disguise using badly applied black paint. It's also been repaired (badly) at least twice. So that's another thing to add to the long list of repairs to do. I will also try to sort some "invisible" fixings rather than using a wood screw through into the bodywork as it was when I took it off...

Hinge redrilled & countersunk to take crosshead screw.



Oops! Two the same...



Hubs now bare apart from steering arms. Time for clean-up & paint.



This area was nasty and needed to be taken out of the equation...



...so out came the chopper.



This was the lump that fell out. Yuk.



Bumper before being attacked.



All the crap foam removed. It's a lot lighter.

Edited by MrBounce, 03 March 2013 - 07:31 PM.