684 replies to this topic

[surfblue]

Brilliant thread and restoration just read the whole thing (over several days) well done for rescuing a mini that has needed serious work. Fantastic work by Ben as usual.

[MikeRotherham]

I take the wheels off.  Saves a lot of anger

Do you mean you remove all the wheels and take them to the tyre fitter?

 

If so do you have a spare set or just leave the car up on jacks?

[floormanager]

 

I take the wheels off.  Saves a lot of anger

Do you mean you remove all the wheels and take them to the tyre fitter?

 

If so do you have a spare set or just leave the car up on jacks?

 

For the mini, I take the wheels off and leave the car on stands and take the wheels in another car.

 

I have for my road car, driven to the tyre place and taken each wheel off in turn for them to fit the tyre.  Can't stand the way they throw the jacks under the car.  Had a mondeo some years ago and they bent the sill lip once, took all the paint off.  Another time, they jacked it up on a spare exhaust hanger and bent that!!  Once bitten...

 

PS Ben's doing my mini wheels and tyres later in they year

[JXC Mini GT]

The mistake you made was not reading the side of the tyres, somewhere it will say "only specialy trained people should fit tyres", this means people who have a forehead that keeps the rain off their shoes and whose knuckles drag along the ground in my experience.

Previously when I replaced the rear tyres using SETyres, the fitter asked me where he should jack up the car, what torque I wanted the wheelnuts, did I want chrome valves and what pressure I wanted in the tyres, unfortunately SETyres no longer sell 12" Yokohama tyres.

[T5FAU]

 

A panel welded to wing

 

 

 

 

Cheers

Ben

 

Ben,

 

These pictures have been so helpful to get my clubman front on so thanks !, strangely mine is fitting exactly the same as this with the bonnet needing a slice in the same place.

 

I have one question though if you dont mind. It looks like in the above pic that your door line crease and a-panel/wing top dont line up. Mine is exactly the same and although adding some metal ontop of the a-panel would be easy, i cant think doing the same to the wing top would be quite so easy (already welded in). I saw the other side of this project lined up, but did you do any alterations to this side ? Or any suggestions how this could be improved on mine ? perhaps some filler rod onto of the wing ? but the gap is around 8mm. or just leave it ?

 

Thanks

Tom

[JXC Mini GT]

Thanks Ben for carrying out the work on the Mini (it attracted lots of attention at Warners with lots of people taking photos) it performed really well on the way home, no wheel wobble so the balance seems to be fine. I have ordered some parts from minispares that will hopefully sort out the small oil leak (I am not sure when I will be able to work on it), the car has been cleaned and put under its cover, I am hoping that I will be fit enough to drive it before the red funnel isle of wight mini run in September. Fingers crossed

[Ben_O]

Thanks Ben for carrying out the work on the Mini (it attracted lots of attention at Warners with lots of people taking photos) it performed really well on the way home, no wheel wobble so the balance seems to be fine. I have ordered some parts from minispares that will hopefully sort out the small oil leak (I am not sure when I will be able to work on it), the car has been cleaned and put under its cover, I am hoping that I will be fit enough to drive it before the red funnel isle of wight mini run in September. Fingers crossed

No problem John.

Glad the wheel balance worked out in the end. Quite an unusual issue there.

 

Best of luck again with everything and I hope to see you on the mini run in September.

 

Cheers

Ben 

[MikeRotherham]

Hi Ben, have you had 2 orange (Blaze?) minis at the garage recently?

 

When I was there I thought I spotted a K registered orange mini with black and white plates or did I imagine it?

[Ben_O]

Hi Ben, have you had 2 orange (Blaze?) minis at the garage recently?

 

When I was there I thought I spotted a K registered orange mini with black and white plates or did I imagine it?

If you mean the one in the workshop, that was the one from this thread WFR423V.

no other blaze minis in at the moment.

 

Cheers

Ben 

[MikeRotherham]

Thanks, Must have been mistaken, just remember there was a very shiney orange mini to the left as we came in. What surprised me was that it had black and white number plates.I didn't pursue it at the time because you were otherwise engaged.

[Magneto]

What's the story on the wheel balance?

[Ben_O]

What's the story on the wheel balance?

Thr wheels were balanced elsewhere when new tyres were fitted but the wheel weights were stuck over the old foam tape remains from old weights so fell off.

 

I had the wheels balanced here and the guy doing it said that when spinning the wheel up and identifying where the weights needed to be added, he added them, spun back up expecting zero but it kept asking for more weights.

He then noticed that when the wheel was spinning up, the rim was spinning true but the tyre had a very slight wobble.

He balanced them as close as he could and had to leave it there as time was running out.

Pleasingly though, the owner has reported that there is zero wobble when driving at motorway speeds.

[JXC Mini GT]

When the car was with Ben recently he kindly identified my small oil leak was coming from the distributor, so I replaced the oil seal and thought as Ben had marked the distributor position with yellow paint I would put it back in the same position, unfortunately when cleaning the distributor the paint came  off, as Bill Richards had originally set the timing, Ben kindly contaced Bill who has confirmed timing was set at 27 degrees at 4,500 RPM. I have just set it up and its now running like a dream again.

It's all ready for  its next adventure to the Isle of Wight mini run in September, from the Isle of Wight I will be travelling to Devon and then back home, I estimate that it will cover about 900 miles over 5 days.

Thanks Ben and Bill for all your help.

[Ben_O]

Glad you got it all sorted John.

 

900 miles eh? Hope its enjoyable.

 

I'm really hoping to see you at the mini run this year.

 

Cheers

Ben 

[JXC Mini GT]

Decided to change the original oil pressure switch for the Minispares upgrade which will indicate at pressure less than 20lbs, also even though I replaced the Rev counter the fluctuating needle problem has returned, having read through some old posts regarding erratic rev counters, I have reterminated the LT connectors and replaced the coil which seemed to have improved things.

New Coil and Chrome bracket