Classic Mini - Low, Wide and Built on the Drive

Update:

Lenny's ready for his new paint! Today we keyed the inside ready to lay down the primer so, weather permitting, tomorrow we will be (in order) sanding down the exterior, priming and spraying the inside, sorting out any over spray on the exterior and then priming and spraying that. The whole thing will be in Ferrari Maranello Red, with grey primer for the inside and white primer on the exterior to hopefully make the red nice and bright (only have limited amount of white primer, so thought the interior wasn't as important for brightness so went with the standard primer to save the white for the exterior. Not sure how much of a difference it will make but it's worth a shot)

Part of the prep for spraying that was done today included dropping out the rear subframe (which will need replacing by the looks of the rust, and the left radius arm had seized which would explain the heavy clunking from the rear left when going over bumps) and, we thought, repairing the rust on the underside of the car. But THERE WASN'T ANY! Completely solid as a rock, still with the original layers of stone chip on the underside from the factory. We scratched this back in the usual places to look for rust, but instead found shiny clean metal. I can only assume it must have been garaged for a few years or something

Photos will follow soon (finally) and wish us luck with the weather tomorrow!

Tom

Looks awesome matey :-D
How much for the interior?? I only really need the door cards though...

There is a (slightly rubbish) photo of my carpet 'roof lining' on my project thread (link in sig.) but that was before I trimmed it back / finished it off... I will try to get some more photos somewhen this week but we'll see how it goes...

Otherwise keep going!! I heard all the 'camber won't be the same either side' talk when I decided to buy my adjustable suspension and tbh I don't think camber makes that much difference - track and castor is more important at the front - however I would suggest getting toe/camber brackets for the rear, I tweaked the adjustment on mine at the weekend and its like driving a different car, so much more lively and much better feel at the rear...

With regards to getting massive wheels, it sounds like you're on a pretty tight budget so make sure you save money for important stuff at the end of the project - i.e. suspension set-up (have the corner-weights done, full track, camber and castor adjustment by someone who knows what they're doing!) and engine tune... that way you'll make the most out of the money you put into shiny bits already!! The car will be awesome on 12" wheels, just won't have quite the same outright grip, but a badly set-up 13" wheel car will be significantly worse than a well sorted 12" wheel car so spend the money in the right direction... :-D

Post pics of that respray!!!!

Only looking for £50ish for the interior, don't want to split because it will be hard to shift some of it on its own and just need to clear up some garage space

With regards to set-up, so far I have adjustable front and rear camber arms/brackets and adjustabe tie rods so going by what you've advised I should be able to get a pretty good handling car sorted with the money I have left over for set-up right? That's the plan anyway

Leaky, not sure what you mean by the soundproofing as all of the floor and rear seats are completely bare (and solid) metal as the soundproofing I'm thinking of came out with the carpet in the original strip-down. Please tell me if I've missed something stupid?!

From standard their is some thick black curse word stuck the the floor that is then painted over. Looking again it looks like your may have already been removed. This means 2 things. Either one. Someone did it a while back and probs saved your floor as it pretty much the main this that causes the floors to rot. Or. At some point someone has already fitted a new floor in to the car. Either way its saved you a job cause as above its a massive pain in the balls to remove lol.

Leaky, good pic :-D

itom - you have no idea how much hassle it is to remove that stuff and hence no idea how much blood sweat and tears you have avoided because someone else did it for you!! :-D

how is the progress coming along??

Yes, Sticker Bomb FTW.

Love this project!

Done the primer! Rain stopped play today, but we're ready to apply the paint as soon as it brightens up. The interior's finished but I forgot to take pictures before we masked it up so you'll have to wait until it's all finished







Seam sealer worked well:





Deleted wiper holes:



Debumpered front turned out much smoother than we expected!:



As you'll probably have noticed, we're painting it with the arches on. This is because instead of running fat black rubber strips between the arch and wing, a very minimal amount of sealant has been applied to blend the top of the arch to the body. Hopefully there's not enough of it to cause any cracking, it's barely visible but it's the details that count

Paint will be some time this week if the weather gets better,

Tom

I was going to ask about the arches!!
I think it'll look a bit odd but should be ok as long as the paint bonds to the sealant properly and doesn't crack...
You could have riveted them on and filled over the recesses so you didn't have screw heads showing... Will be very interesting to see how this looks when it is finished!!!

You don't have top coat on yet so you could still do the rivetting and filling VERY CAREFULY...
Otherwise black chrome or stainless will certainately look different and interesting.... :-)