172 replies to this topic

[Sprinkler23]

I would remove the tires if it was mine. It's a bit too much for me 🙂

[MiniCarJack]

I would remove the tires if it was mine. It's a bit too much for me

 

The tyres won't be on the roof forever, they're up there for practical reasons more than anything at the moment. Basically I've got nowhere to keep them in my 2nd floor flat, so it's a choice between having them in the car, or on top   Once restrictions are eased enough I'm hoping to store them at my nan's place where I'll also be looking to park the Mk1 itself longer-term. 

[MiniCarJack]

The weather's been great for a bit of tinkering, so I cleaned both the cars and did a couple of minor jobs on the Mk1.

 

 

It had an issue yesterday evening whereby it completely lost all spark while I was out doing some food shopping, luckily I was just in the local Sainsbury's car park and was able to push it back into a parking spot to have a look. I narrowed it down to a wire going from the coil to the electronic ignition module, which had a poor connection between two spade terminals. Simply fiddling with the wire was enough to get me home but I got the crimping tool and some new connectors out to properly fix it today. All sorted now!

 

 

As you can see I also popped the Bodgwell rocker cover onto the engine    It certainly looks the part, and it's by far the nicest thing in the engine bay now, so it makes it pretty obvious that the engine itself is the wrong shade of green! 

[MiniCarJack]

I booked today off work for a bit of a break and an extra long weekend before the May bank holiday, but I was in a productive mood, so I did a couple of jobs in the MK1 while enjoying a bit of sun. This was also a nice distraction from all the faff following my crash in my daily driven Mini Neon just over a week ago!

 

It's actually parked up at my nan's house at the moment, which is a nicer space to work on the car than the shared car park at my own flat.

 

First up was an oil and filter change - it hasn't done many miles since the last change, but that was still quite a while ago when it was over in New Zealand, and fresh stuff definitely won't hurt!

 

 

While the grille was off, I took the opportunity to try and clean it up a bit. It's quite tatty and there's a load of tiny dents in the slats that mean it'll never be perfect, but some old school Brasso polish brought the stainless steel up pretty nicely! Once that was screwed back on, I finally got round to properly mounting the bracket and fitting the Kraken rum bottle/washer fluid reservoir 

 

 

I quite like how the engine bay looks now, the coil could do with not being bright red so maybe I'll get a cover for that, and perhaps some braided HT leads for a more retro look.

[MiniCarJack]

With show season looming nearer, I've had to finally get my arse into gear and sort out all the paperwork to get the Mk1 fully registered in the UK. So I sent off all the required forms etc earlier today, and hopefully soon I'll receive a new V5 and have some UK number plates assigned to the car. Sadly it doesn't look like the exact combination of "GUF815" is available to purchase as a personal plate which was my original plan, so I guess I'll just see what I end up being given by the DVLA!

[MiniCarJack]

Couldn't resist an impulse buy after these came up for sale nearby...

 

 

I've always fancied a set of twin SUs, and I reckon these will look right at home in the Mk1's engine bay! Picking them up on Monday morning 

[MiniCarJack]

Yesterday turned out really nicely weather-wise, and being off work it was a great opportunity to test the performance of the Mk1 on a longer drive. So I took it all the way along the M27 and through the New Forest, stopped off for a pub lunch, then returned back home with a mini photo shoot on the way back. It worked out to be a 70 mile round trip, and while it was noisy, smelly and a bit smokey (it does chug through a bit of oil!), it made it all the way no bother. Now I'm much more confident about taking it along to Beaulieu in June   

 

Here's a few of the photos I took on the day:

 

 

 

 

[cooperd70]

Look forward to seeing it in June!! 😊

[MiniCarJack]

I braved some questionable weather to attend the first event of the year in the Mk1, a classic car meet just a couple of miles up the road. However I wasn't able to get back home under my own steam 

 

 

It started misfiring a bit just as I was pulling into the car park, and I suspected moisture in the cap - so once I parked up I pulled it off to take a look, give it a wipe down & a bit of WD40, and re fit. But in doing this, it looks like the little spring-loaded carbon stack in the middle of the cap had somehow completely disintegrated, so after popping it back onto the distributor I wasn't able to get any spark at all. Annoyingly I didn't have a spare and none of the other attendees at the meet did either, so I was forced to admit defeat and call the tow truck in to get me home.

 

I've already ordered a new cap and rotor arm along with extra for spares, which will be staying in the car at all times for future journeys! Hopefully that will be dispatched tomorrow morning and arrive on Tuesday, so at least I'll be back on the road in a couple of days. Not the end of the world, and if anything, a lesson to make sure I've always got a good set of spares in case of breakdowns!

[MiniCarJack]

New dizzy cap and rotor arm (plus spares) arrived in the post today. I was a bit puzzled when I fitted these and still had no spark, as I'd verified the coil voltage and triple checked all the wiring, plugs etc. That just left the electronic module in the distributor to eliminate - luckily the cap & rotor arm set also came with a set of points and condenser, so I could fit these and hopefully identify the fault properly. It was intermittently raining today so I quickly got out around lunch time to pull out the distributor, and bring it indoors to swap over the electronics for the good old fashioned points setup.

 

Annoyingly I never kept the little screw for the condenser when I converted to electronic originally...

 

 

Determined to try and get the Mk1 back on the road, I had a rummage around, and in a random stroke of luck it turned out that the screws holding the handle onto my small handsaw are perfect size and the same thread I needed!

 

 

With this all fitted up, I plonked the distributor back into its hole, and the engine now runs again! Albeit, not perfectly - it's a bit farty and misfires a bit under partial throttle, but I'm just glad it's back on the road. I do remember having similar issues back before I converted to electronic ignition, for whatever reason I don't think this car seems to enjoy running on points. However I am booked in for a static tuning session with AC Dodd this weekend and perhaps he can help get to the bottom of this! If not, I think I'll start saving for a good quality 123 or CSI distributor; this is the second electronic conversion module that's failed for me now, so I won't be wasting any more money on those. 

[johnR]

That's a lovely looking car, shame you're having electrical gremlins, hope AC can sort them for you 

[MiniCarJack]

That's a lovely looking car, shame you're having electrical gremlins, hope AC can sort them for you 

 

Thank you, it does look good in photographs but truth be told, the car could do with a lot of money spending - it'd benefit from a full respray, interior tidy-up, engine rebuild, and probably a complete re-wiring too. But add all those elements together and it basically becomes a full resto project which is well beyond my means, and I'd rather just keep the car solid and on the road as best I can! I am hoping it'll be a little livelier to drive after the tuning session, it's quite possible that the distributor isn't curved very well to match the engine spec (and the current carb setup is definitely far from ideal), hopefully we'll unearth all of this and get it running more nicely during the tuning session on Saturday.

[colinf1]

I had a rummage around, and in a random stroke of luck it turned out that the screws holding the handle onto my small handsaw are perfect size and the same thread I needed!

Working on my replacement pedal box at the weekend, the pedal pivot pin had lost its little locating dimple, rummaged through some boxes and found a M5x6mm stainless screw that was perfect once I drilled and tapped where the dimple used to be...the screw was from a curtain pole bracket 🤣

[cooperd70]

She should run like a dream once AC has worked his magic...where's the tuning session on Sat?

[MiniCarJack]

 

I had a rummage around, and in a random stroke of luck it turned out that the screws holding the handle onto my small handsaw are perfect size and the same thread I needed!

Working on my replacement pedal box at the weekend, the pedal pivot pin had lost its little locating dimple, rummaged through some boxes and found a M5x6mm stainless screw that was perfect once I drilled and tapped where the dimple used to be...the screw was from a curtain pole bracket

 

 

It's amazing what you can find sometimes that'll get the job done! Ironically with the little screw I scavenged from the saw handle, it was slightly too long - so I used the very same saw to cut it down a bit   Felt a bit like a tool cannibalizing itself haha.

 

 

She should run like a dream once AC has worked his magic...where's the tuning session on Sat?

 

He's coming to a lockup belonging to one of the members of my local group (Midweek Minis) fairly close to me here in Fareham. The group has arranged a tuning day with a few of us all chipping in for a 'slot' to get our cars tuned, I'm quite looking forward to seeing a few other Minis in person again and getting our engines running sweetly at the same time! To be honest, I was really hoping that my crash-damaged '91 would be fixed by now so I could get that one tuned rather than the Mk1 - it'll still be nice to get the Mk1 running a bit more nicely but A) the engine is quite tired and needs a rebuild anyway, and B) I'll eventually be fitting twin carbs after which it'll need re-tuning anyway (AC will only do single SUs at this session so I can't get him to tune the twins if I fit them beforehand).