51 replies to this topic

[Hexxeh]

I needed a redesigned switch panel to accommodate the new push button switches. 10 minutes in CAD, 2 hours of 3D printing and a little bit of sanding (to knock off the rougher plastic wisps) later:

 

 

It needs a tickle with a dremel to neaten up the recesses and a coat of paint for a proper finish, just wanted to try out the idea. Not sure how many switches I'll need yet, but it's easily adjusted for 4 instead of 5 if need be.

 

Happy to share the CAD file with anyone who wants one if it's useful!

Edited by Hexxeh, 18 December 2021 - 10:53 PM.

[Petrol]

Wow
Mucho impressed

Have you sanded the front or is that the finish from the 3D printer?

 

Pete

[Hexxeh]

Wow
Mucho impressed

Have you sanded the front or is that the finish from the 3D printer?

 

Pete

 

I sanded the front. I forgot to take a photo straight off the printer but it looks a bit like this:

 

 

You get lines in the finish from where the melted plastic is deposited in rows, and also what's called "scarring" where the nozzle has oozed out molten plastic when making a travel move (ie, moving across the print to get to the next bit to be printed). Sometimes happens if the nozzle physically drags on the printed surface too (eg if it starts to warp a tiny bit during print and lifts a fraction of a mm up). You can dial scarring out pretty much completely but it takes a lot of fine tuning and even adjustment for the particular plastic you're printing with (even plastics that claim to be the same can be very different from batch to batch, or manufacturer to manufacturer). Having a slightly more expensive printer built to better tolerances helps too, mine's only a cheap one.

 

So I tend to just sand and paint bits to get a better finish because it's quicker/easier. If you print in ABS you can also smooth them with acetone, but it's much nastier stuff fumes wise and you need a heated enclosure to prevent warpage, it turns out pretty okay generally. This is another piece I did for my MX5:

 

[Hexxeh]

Not too much progress of late unfortunately, I put a coat of paint (direct gloss) inside the companion bins now they've been treated:

 

 

 

Not the best finish: it's bloody hard to get a rattle can to paint the inside face of the bin without being too close... but it's fairly hidden away once interior/seat belt reel is in and won't be seen. I noticed the finish on the outside of the bins is pretty crap too so I'm going to flat those back and give them a coat as well.

[Hexxeh]

Finally getting back to this after a 3 month break, owing to a leaky garage and a baby!

 

Deliberated a bit on what to do for switches. I didn't like the idea of having separate sidelight/headlight switches you had to press in turn.

 

Originally planned to use RGB momentary switches like these with a counter chip to do a tri-state switch (off/sidelights/sidelights+headlights) changing the colour to denote what lights were on. Then I was thinking actually I use a microcontroller I can do some fancier stuff like auto-headlights, PWM-dimmed dashboard lighting based on ambient lighting...

 

Spent a week or so on it, but ended up changing my mind. It's too much complexity and too much to go wrong. So back to simple latching Savage switches we go!

 

Savage switches use a slightly different panel hole size, so printed out a new panel (used some new matte plastic this time, since my old stuff has gotten too moist with the printer being near the dryer...):

 

 

I didn't sand it before taking a photo this time, this is the finish off the (not very well calibrated) printer. The stray lines are either scarring (nozzle touching print) or more often oozing of molten plastic as the nozzle moves from one part to be extruded to another and hasn't managed to pull the filament back. I could calibrate this out but I don't use the printer often enough, and in this instance once I'm happy with the fit I'm going to send the file off to get printed on a proper industrial resin printer - it'll be stronger and the finish will be pretty much flawless.

 

Switches test fitted:

 

 

Back to the car, more stripping down. Boot lid and bumpers off:

 

 

Lip needs a bit of a wire wheel and lick of paint, hoping I can wire wheel and mask/paint it carefully into the edge where it meets the panel to keep it looking neat and hidden behind the bumper once it's back on:

 

 

 

Inside the boot has been quickly brushed black at some point, and there's a few brown spots appearing here and there:

 

 

 

I'd like to clean this up and paint it body colour, but with all the nooks and crannies it looks like a bit of a pig to do a nice job of (without going to a bare shell and blasting it). Any tips, or is it just a long, long time with a wire wheel carefully getting in all the edges?

 

You can also see somebody's hacked away at the parcel shelf at some point. Not really happy with that, and the rear windscreen is coming out anyway since the heating element is gone and I'm doing the headlining. Don't want the entire rear end to come off to replace the parcel shelf, but thinking perhaps I can get somebody to fabricate a small patch and weld it in to neaten it up just a bit?

 

Drained the fuel tank out and removed that too to make it easier to remove the rear loom and let me get to the NSR lights and shock top bolt (some brand new suspension upgrades to go on soon...).

 

With the rest of the loom removed, measured up with string for all my cable runs - gonna get cracking on making the new one. I think for now I'm going to keep the mechanical fuel pump, but I'll run a spare wire back there just in case I change my mind in future.

Edited by Hexxeh, 08 March 2022 - 07:05 PM.

[1330RG]

Awesome work so far. Loving seeing more 998 fast road cars being built for a change.

[Hexxeh]

I've been stalled for a while on this: just haven't had time for it. I ended up having to do an unplanned supercharger to turbo swap on my MX5, since the poorly designed supercharger bracket I'd bought was ruining superchargers and I got a bit fed up of it:
 

 
With that out of the way, I'm back on the Mini!
 
Been really back and forth about what to do with it: it's currently a rolling shell with a bare engine in. The engine/gearbox is about to come out: it could do with a rebuild, and I'm looking forward to learning how to do that:
 

 
I've been torn between sending the shell off to get it blasted and doing a full-on shell up rebuild, or just tarting it up a bit to make it look more presentable, treating any rust, and putting it back together to enjoy it for a year or two.
 
I'd really hoped to be able to use the car this summer, so I definitely want to make sure it's done by next summer...
 
Realistically I suspect anywhere that's going to do a good job on it is going to have a waiting list long enough that makes that fairly impossible. I've also not really had much chance to drive it yet, so I'd like to know that I enjoy it and I'll get the use out of it before pouring (more!) money into it.
 
So, I think I'm back to doing a bit of a freshen up shell-wise and aiming to get it back on the road next year.
 
I'd been stripping the nasty brushed on black paint from inside the boot, and it's been proving a pain. Currently looks like this:
 

 

 

 
There's some areas left to get off, but it's mostly there. Attacking with the wire brush revealed a few patches and a few small holes on the boot floor. I bought a compressor to sand blast some of the trickier areas, but it worked fairly inconsistently.
 
Really, the whole thing could use painting. The roofs got a couple patches of bare metal, some paint has peeled off with stickers on the front wings, the scuttle has some patches of primer where it's had repairs before I bought it, and the bonnet and boot aren't remotely the same colour as the panels next to them...
 
I'd think I'd like to do a "basic" blow-over kind of paint job on the whole thing - feather out the chipped paint, scuff the whole thing back and blow it over. A "looks fine from 8ft" sort of job to just make it look presentable for a couple years until it gets redone completely...
 
Once that's done, I can crack on with making up a new loom, and sorting out fitting all the new bits that've been sat around for almost a year now!

Edited by Hexxeh, 10 October 2022 - 12:32 PM.

[Hexxeh]

Good progress over the weekend, the engine came out! Big thanks to Petrol and Mike for the loan of a crane and help getting it out!

 

 

Stripped as much as I can down without a flywheel locking tool, will borrow one soon:

 

 

 

 

The latest in the list of horrors I've found disassembling this car, the two front hub nuts were barely finger tight, the offside didn't have a split pin at all and the nearside had this lovely piece of engineering:

 

 

With that, probably best the subframes come out too. The brake/fuel lines are loose and not properly attached to the shell, and very wobbly where they should be straight! So, made up a quick dolly out of a pallet and some heavy duty castors to move the shell around with the subframes off:

 

 

 

Not going whole hog on the shell, but thinking the oversills really could do with removing sorting out. Emailed a local mobile welder to see if they can sort them for me before I go much further with the shell.

 

Hopefully get the flywheel puller and finish stripping the engine so I can get parts off to the machine shop, and get the shell onto the dolly and drop the subframes in the next week or so!

[Hexxeh]

A bit more progress, got the car onto the dolly:

 

 

This was a pain with just a single jack, ended up craning the front of the car up and jacking the back of the car one side at a time to get enough height to slide it under. Brake lines want replacing anyway, so I pulled that and the fuel line off to avoid squishing them against the shell.

 

Then I got the flywheel locking tool (thanks again Petrol!) and managed to pop the flywheel+clutch off. Wow was that tight, it took two of us holding the engine in place and a scaffolding pole on the breaker bar to free it off...

 

 

 

 

 

I realised I'm really going to need a jig to be able to sort the sills and it'll make it easier to sort the underneath, run new brake/fuel line etc anyway, so I've ordered a rollover jig. Also trying to find somebody local who can come take the oversills off and put new inner/outer sills in for me, that's going to be the next step body-wise before I can do anything else. In the meantime, I'll clean up engine bits a bit and get them over to the machine shop.

[Sunnymini]

nice work mate, switch panel looks nice too. 

got a pallet waiting to make a trolley like that for mine too, but its around a year since i bought the castors and now i cant find them ahahahahaha.

good idea to put the mats on it though, protect the bottom

Edited by Sunnymini, 16 October 2022 - 12:48 PM.

[Hexxeh]

Rollover jig arrived yesterday, started to put it together but realised they'd welded it up slightly wrong. Waiting for another bracket to be posted out to weld on to sort it so I can have the pivot centre a bit lower to clear the roof supports in my garage.

 

In the meantime, got the subframes off ready to mount the car onto the jig:

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's absolutely caked in underseal which is flaking off in places, so it's hard to tell what the underside is really like.

 

Not much left to come off at this point. Other than the doors and rear quarter glass, it's pretty much ready to lift onto the jig. Need to have a sort out of parts and make some space before I can do that.

 

Noticed this when dropping the pedal box, no idea what somebody's tried to do but there's a cut into the lower dash rail:

 

 

More bodges discovered include a single bolt (with no nut) holding the pedal to the brake master cylinder fork. Pushed it out with my finger... :/

 

Also went to spray the door nuts with plusgas, only to find of the 8 nuts that should hold it on, 3 are missing...

[colinf1]

Also went to spray the door nuts with plusgas, only to find of the 8 nuts that should hold it on, 3 are missing...

Well that's 3 less to shear off when loosening them 😂😂

[Hexxeh]

Got the new brackets for the jig and had them welded on (5mm steel, didn't think my 150A would manage it):

 

 

I can set this at three different heights now. I'm hoping the middle option clears my garage roof but isn't too low...

 

Jig frames bolted up to the car ready to be lifted on:

 

 

 

 

Took the doors off and rear quarter glass out, and now it's ready to lift on:

 

 

 

Except when I got to this point late last night, I realised that the lower pivot points mean the self-loading attachment threaded bar fouls on the jig stand itself. Needs cutting down a couple inches or so. Very close to getting the car on the jig now though!

[Maccmike8]

Thats a serious bit of kit.

[stuart bowes]

where it has no rotation locking pin thing at the back as well, is there not a chance of putting a twist in the chassis (depending how much is cut out and what bracing is put inside I suppose..)

 

and even on that lower setting it still looks quite high to me (maybe the angles of the picture is deceptive..)  other than that though that looks really well designed and built