Hi everyone!
I've decided ive been watching everyone elses threads on here for far too long so ive finally got round to getting my cars out of my parents garden and garage and up to my end of the country. Starting with this....
2004 i think this was taken which would have made me 15. This was my first car. Its a '79 Mini 1000. It had been in a barn since '92 so it was a proper barn find. my Dad had a friend at work who's dad had died and left everything to him. Turns out his dad was a bit of a hoarder and had barns and sheds full of stuff dotted about all over the place. This was one of those barns. In it was an MG 1300, a 60's wolseley saloon of some description and a snot green mini. We paid £60 for it and came back the next week with a trailer. I Spent the next year or two taking it all apart, finding out how everything worked and started learning how to fix cars.
A couple of years down the line and i was old enough to learn how to drive and the green mini wasnt going to be ready so..
Car no.2. Another Mini 1000
This one had an MOT though. I paid around £900 i think. This would have been 2007. I ran it for about a year and a half and it was amazing fun! However some serious rust was starting to show. It had done a welding course at the college so i decided to investigate further. I wished i hadnt. I started off with the a-pillars and scuttle and found they where full of filler and news paper. The rest of the car was no better. In the end i took everything off it and scrapped the shell. I was gutted. Then i joined the RAF. This left me based at the other end of the country without a garage and i had no car. I borrowed my Dad's old mk3 Granada for a bit which left me searching ebay for something old enough to be interesting but new enough to be left outside and able to cope with motorways. in the end i bought this.
Hmmmm. The opposite of what i needed but 100% what i wanted. Regular drives through friday traffic on the M6 and this highlighted a few issues. The main one being it was overheating. To start with just in traffic but then it started creeping up on me at a steady 70mph. Also the heater didnt work, it kept throwing fan belts, there was a horrendous vibration from the back between 60 and 70 and no amount of timing and mixture adjustment could cure the cronic hesitation under acceleration. I was steadily upgrading it as much as i could. it had a new alternator, electronic ignition, oil cooler and a rad re-core but when i got posted to the other end of the country it was just a bit much to expect it to do 6 hour drives. So it went into my parents garage and it stayed there. For a few months i borrowed my Dads 2 litre diesel Vectra and i hated every minute of it. Its uncomfortable, twitchy on the motorway, its a diesel, it leaked water, set the alarm off all the time and kept flatting the battery. I needed a new practical every day car.
£300 later its the mk2 Granada at the back, the Mini at the front is my brothers. its a 2.8 ghia X on a carb with 12 months MOT and it was an absolute beast. 3 speed auto, capable of doing burnouts and easy to get the back out. I actually got my first ticket in this for racing a corsa at the traffic lights outside halfords like a massive chav! i won though
It was by no means mint and i suspect it had some hidden rot on the bulkhead as the floorpans always got wet and the door to wing gap would change when you jacked it up. After a year it passed it MOT with no advisories which i was very surprised at and i spent another 6 months or so enjoying it until the gearbox went pop, leaving me stranded. I was getting a bit bored of having to fix old cars out in the carpark in the cold by this point and as it wasnt that long after i'd changed the gearbox oil seals and filter I got a bit pi$$ed off with it and told the recovery truck to keep it. a Decision i regret massively. Its probably gone round the banger track by now.
Alfa 159 2.2 Ti
The most annoying car ive ever owned and the car that made up my mind that i hate modern cars. Awful understeer and snap oversteer, harsh ride, road noise, boring engine, annoying auto wipers that where never at the right speed, annoying auto climate control that was always fluctuating between a light summer breeze and full force gale in your face, too many gears, harsh brakes etc etc etc. However i needed a car and the Mrs liked it so i kept it for the year, refurbed the wheels and sold it for what i bought it for. I needed a car that was newish but had technology i could easily fix if it went wrong, small enough for the mrs to learn to drive in and cheap enough for me not to be bothered if she scraped it
The ZR! what a heap of cr@p but i love it. I bought it 3 years ago on 60,000 miles for £800 with 6 months tax and a years MOT. Its on 120,000 and still on it original head gasket. Ive crashed it, fixed it, revved the cr@p out of it on a daily basis, she learn to drive in it and we've been all over the country in it. Its fairly fun to drive for a bog standard 1.4 but it is what it is and after reading the builds on this site ive decided its time for me to finally crack on with the mini.
I dragged the mini up first. The bare shell had been sitting in my parents back garden under a cover for years and it wasnt getting any less rusty. Anyway we chucked it in the back of a box van with 2 minis worth of bits. The original engine was siezed and my spare mini engine was in my brothers mini as he'd thrown a conrod on his cars engine. Dad happened to have an old mate who might have an engine though so on the way we dropped by this blokes house. in his front garden was a mini on its side, a mini clubman under a collapsed shed and a mini traveller i think. all of which where rotton but there where bits everywhere. We ended up coming away with an Austin 1300GT engine in bits for my favourite price of free. Got a cup of tea out if it too. Anyway. Bought a welder and this is how it looks now.
Ive mainly done the left hand side so far. It turns out it had had a front end impact at some point and the inner wings where bent. So ive cut them back ready for a "flip front" front end. hopefully in carbon fibre. Rust wise its rotten in all the usual places. it's had LH scuttle, filch panel, Front floor pan, A pillar, A panel, A pillar strengthener, Door step, inner sill, outer sill, repairs to rear floor and rear 1/4, rear subframe mounting panel and a few other little bit in and around all this. don't have any photos of the work but i will take some from now on. The next bit is the boot floor. ive cut it out and I'm saving up the £200 for a new one. but itll be a big step forwards once its in.
Ive refurbushed the clocks too. its on 69,999 miles.
With her indoors using the MG as her everyday I was going to get another car and started looking at various older cars, but then i thought why spend money on another car when i can just get the GT6 back on the road. cant believe how long its been since it was last on the road. The brakes where seized on and there where various bits missing but its back with me now so stuff should start happening fast
In the long run i want it lower, faster and wider but for now i just want it on the road. But I'm going to take my time recomissioning it and sort somethings out that annoyed me before. I did buy some bigger carbs for it. some SU's from a dolomite sprint and ive got a longer bigger bore manifold for them but ideally i want a stage 3 head on it before they go on. so i searched and searched for the old strombergs but it turns out i sold them years ago thinking theyd never go back on. Doh! so onto ebay for some carbs and a refurb kit and here we go
There from a triumph 2000 and don't have the temperature compensators on the sides which the more i read about, the more sure i am it was them causing the hesitation i had before. I put them on the manifold and cleaned that up too and decided to see if it was the heater tap that stopped me having a working heater before. so i blew through it at hot and cold and colt blow though it at both which didnt make any sense so i tried blowing through the little 3 way water manifold underneath it and it was completely blocked. absoluteley rusted solid. And youre asking for it when you have a steel banjo bolt which screws into aluminium. i thought id try and take it off to clean it out and the inevitable happened
I'm going to weld a bolt to the remains and hopefully with a bit of heat itll come out. Ive got loads more bits to fit to the car. alloy thermostat housing as the threads where pulled on the old one, new water pump as the bearings where rough on the old one, braided brake flexi hoses, new fuel pump, a magnetic type electronic ignition kit, coil, leads and an oil catch tank. I also need a new starter, new battery and some new tyres. Ive got all of tomorrow to crack on with it so hopefully ill have an update tomorrow. Sorry if ive rambled on a bit, actually ive rambled on a lot, but its brought me up to date. any ideas, advice and encouragement are always welcome.
Cheers
I've decided ive been watching everyone elses threads on here for far too long so ive finally got round to getting my cars out of my parents garden and garage and up to my end of the country. Starting with this....
2004 i think this was taken which would have made me 15. This was my first car. Its a '79 Mini 1000. It had been in a barn since '92 so it was a proper barn find. my Dad had a friend at work who's dad had died and left everything to him. Turns out his dad was a bit of a hoarder and had barns and sheds full of stuff dotted about all over the place. This was one of those barns. In it was an MG 1300, a 60's wolseley saloon of some description and a snot green mini. We paid £60 for it and came back the next week with a trailer. I Spent the next year or two taking it all apart, finding out how everything worked and started learning how to fix cars.
A couple of years down the line and i was old enough to learn how to drive and the green mini wasnt going to be ready so..
Car no.2. Another Mini 1000
This one had an MOT though. I paid around £900 i think. This would have been 2007. I ran it for about a year and a half and it was amazing fun! However some serious rust was starting to show. It had done a welding course at the college so i decided to investigate further. I wished i hadnt. I started off with the a-pillars and scuttle and found they where full of filler and news paper. The rest of the car was no better. In the end i took everything off it and scrapped the shell. I was gutted. Then i joined the RAF. This left me based at the other end of the country without a garage and i had no car. I borrowed my Dad's old mk3 Granada for a bit which left me searching ebay for something old enough to be interesting but new enough to be left outside and able to cope with motorways. in the end i bought this.
Hmmmm. The opposite of what i needed but 100% what i wanted. Regular drives through friday traffic on the M6 and this highlighted a few issues. The main one being it was overheating. To start with just in traffic but then it started creeping up on me at a steady 70mph. Also the heater didnt work, it kept throwing fan belts, there was a horrendous vibration from the back between 60 and 70 and no amount of timing and mixture adjustment could cure the cronic hesitation under acceleration. I was steadily upgrading it as much as i could. it had a new alternator, electronic ignition, oil cooler and a rad re-core but when i got posted to the other end of the country it was just a bit much to expect it to do 6 hour drives. So it went into my parents garage and it stayed there. For a few months i borrowed my Dads 2 litre diesel Vectra and i hated every minute of it. Its uncomfortable, twitchy on the motorway, its a diesel, it leaked water, set the alarm off all the time and kept flatting the battery. I needed a new practical every day car.
£300 later its the mk2 Granada at the back, the Mini at the front is my brothers. its a 2.8 ghia X on a carb with 12 months MOT and it was an absolute beast. 3 speed auto, capable of doing burnouts and easy to get the back out. I actually got my first ticket in this for racing a corsa at the traffic lights outside halfords like a massive chav! i won though
It was by no means mint and i suspect it had some hidden rot on the bulkhead as the floorpans always got wet and the door to wing gap would change when you jacked it up. After a year it passed it MOT with no advisories which i was very surprised at and i spent another 6 months or so enjoying it until the gearbox went pop, leaving me stranded. I was getting a bit bored of having to fix old cars out in the carpark in the cold by this point and as it wasnt that long after i'd changed the gearbox oil seals and filter I got a bit pi$$ed off with it and told the recovery truck to keep it. a Decision i regret massively. Its probably gone round the banger track by now.
Alfa 159 2.2 Ti
The most annoying car ive ever owned and the car that made up my mind that i hate modern cars. Awful understeer and snap oversteer, harsh ride, road noise, boring engine, annoying auto wipers that where never at the right speed, annoying auto climate control that was always fluctuating between a light summer breeze and full force gale in your face, too many gears, harsh brakes etc etc etc. However i needed a car and the Mrs liked it so i kept it for the year, refurbed the wheels and sold it for what i bought it for. I needed a car that was newish but had technology i could easily fix if it went wrong, small enough for the mrs to learn to drive in and cheap enough for me not to be bothered if she scraped it
The ZR! what a heap of cr@p but i love it. I bought it 3 years ago on 60,000 miles for £800 with 6 months tax and a years MOT. Its on 120,000 and still on it original head gasket. Ive crashed it, fixed it, revved the cr@p out of it on a daily basis, she learn to drive in it and we've been all over the country in it. Its fairly fun to drive for a bog standard 1.4 but it is what it is and after reading the builds on this site ive decided its time for me to finally crack on with the mini.
I dragged the mini up first. The bare shell had been sitting in my parents back garden under a cover for years and it wasnt getting any less rusty. Anyway we chucked it in the back of a box van with 2 minis worth of bits. The original engine was siezed and my spare mini engine was in my brothers mini as he'd thrown a conrod on his cars engine. Dad happened to have an old mate who might have an engine though so on the way we dropped by this blokes house. in his front garden was a mini on its side, a mini clubman under a collapsed shed and a mini traveller i think. all of which where rotton but there where bits everywhere. We ended up coming away with an Austin 1300GT engine in bits for my favourite price of free. Got a cup of tea out if it too. Anyway. Bought a welder and this is how it looks now.
Ive mainly done the left hand side so far. It turns out it had had a front end impact at some point and the inner wings where bent. So ive cut them back ready for a "flip front" front end. hopefully in carbon fibre. Rust wise its rotten in all the usual places. it's had LH scuttle, filch panel, Front floor pan, A pillar, A panel, A pillar strengthener, Door step, inner sill, outer sill, repairs to rear floor and rear 1/4, rear subframe mounting panel and a few other little bit in and around all this. don't have any photos of the work but i will take some from now on. The next bit is the boot floor. ive cut it out and I'm saving up the £200 for a new one. but itll be a big step forwards once its in.
Ive refurbushed the clocks too. its on 69,999 miles.
With her indoors using the MG as her everyday I was going to get another car and started looking at various older cars, but then i thought why spend money on another car when i can just get the GT6 back on the road. cant believe how long its been since it was last on the road. The brakes where seized on and there where various bits missing but its back with me now so stuff should start happening fast
In the long run i want it lower, faster and wider but for now i just want it on the road. But I'm going to take my time recomissioning it and sort somethings out that annoyed me before. I did buy some bigger carbs for it. some SU's from a dolomite sprint and ive got a longer bigger bore manifold for them but ideally i want a stage 3 head on it before they go on. so i searched and searched for the old strombergs but it turns out i sold them years ago thinking theyd never go back on. Doh! so onto ebay for some carbs and a refurb kit and here we go
There from a triumph 2000 and don't have the temperature compensators on the sides which the more i read about, the more sure i am it was them causing the hesitation i had before. I put them on the manifold and cleaned that up too and decided to see if it was the heater tap that stopped me having a working heater before. so i blew through it at hot and cold and colt blow though it at both which didnt make any sense so i tried blowing through the little 3 way water manifold underneath it and it was completely blocked. absoluteley rusted solid. And youre asking for it when you have a steel banjo bolt which screws into aluminium. i thought id try and take it off to clean it out and the inevitable happened
I'm going to weld a bolt to the remains and hopefully with a bit of heat itll come out. Ive got loads more bits to fit to the car. alloy thermostat housing as the threads where pulled on the old one, new water pump as the bearings where rough on the old one, braided brake flexi hoses, new fuel pump, a magnetic type electronic ignition kit, coil, leads and an oil catch tank. I also need a new starter, new battery and some new tyres. Ive got all of tomorrow to crack on with it so hopefully ill have an update tomorrow. Sorry if ive rambled on a bit, actually ive rambled on a lot, but its brought me up to date. any ideas, advice and encouragement are always welcome.
Cheers