Thought it was time to upload my project! A blue 1977 Clubman Estate!
I first acquired this clubman off my housemate for a cool £100 about 5 months ago. It had just failed the MOT (drivers floorpan gone) and so was SORNed in our garage. Unfortunately he couldn't afford to fix it up so i offered to take it off his hands. At the time of acquiring it was perfectly drivable and from the following pics i think you'll agree it looked pretty nice! Benefits from the 1098 cc engine with 70,000 miles on the clock.
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As you'll see the car is completely original in terms of interior and bodywork and thats the way it will stay. After some initial tinkering though, i came across some shocking repairs which had been completed before my housemate took ownership. To begin with, i started removing some "surface rust" on the front wing and after a while, white powder came out! After attacking with an a sander, this was the outcome!
Some monkey had filled rust holes with filler. The story was similar on the drivers side of the scuttle panel. Not quite sure what happened here but seems to be a huge dent filled in with filler! Once id removed this, my garage was covered in white dust hence why lots of the other pictures look dusty!
At this point i decided to strip the front down fully and see what the story was. Suprisingly, the drivers side wing was pretty good as is the front panel. Just need to weld in a new panel for the passenger side headlight:
At this point i decided it was time to strip the interior out as didnt want it getting damaged when i started work. At the same time i took all the sliding glass, window frames and rear doors off and put it all somewhere safe.
When i first took this off i decided to check underneath the frames - its all suprisingly good! a few small holes which i can patch but otherwise good. I now had a chance to probe the rest of the car for rust. Turned out the drivers door had been bodged in a similar way with filler and paint so this had to come off. I have since acquired a new door frame which will be reskinned in time:
The drivers side a panel was a similar story as were the sills on both side. I decided to start on the back end of the car considering it was poking out the right end of the garage! Turns out the whole rear valence and fuel tank and bottom corners were rusted and yup you guessed it filled! After removing the tank, i drilled all the spot welds out and started cutting. Here's the progress:
Finally a clean underside:
This is the rusty tank and some scrap metal:
It seems that the rear subframe is in really good condition:
I shall take it out at some point and check around how it looks underneath - currently need it on all 4 wheels though so i can shift it round. All the new rear panels are currently waiting to be welded on when i get a chance and i shall then move on to the rest of the car.
Another odd bit of damage was a strange crease on the roof-guessing something was dropped on it at some point. So i hammered it out from the inside and will be smoothed when i get to painting:
Thats about all ive done so far! The plan is to sort out all the bodywork then restore it to standard. I really like the standard mini's and have noticed they have now become pretty rare so not planning on changing this one! A full respray in standard colour will be completed - am i right in thinking this is Pageant Blue??
Let me know your thoughts!
Cheers People!
Dave
Edited by davos1983, 04 December 2007 - 06:20 PM.
