Practically Classics Forum

Well, it seems slow going at the moment, I just hope everything works as it should gearbox / clutch wise once I get the wheels on the ground because I don't fancy re doing the last week.

I got the back end and roof painted though still need to polish that up good enough, so I got on with the engine.

Anyways, being an auto subframe it is wider than the manual one, so the previous owner had bought conversion plates ready for us doing the engine swap

Simple enough, here is the drivers side one in place



Now try as I might, I could not find the engine mount and plate for the drivers side anywhere, the lad who had the car when it first came to our house swore it was in the boot... nothing there, so on the upside, being a mini there are normally parts to be had, so a distress call was put out for a nearside engine mount and within an hour we had one, but obviously no adapter plate.

The engine went in the bay easy enough with the front end being off, just a bit of grunting and a trolley jack saw it in place



You can see the drivers side with mount and adapter plate



And the nearside with the emergency puce green engine mount and of course a little gap, though I had elongated the mount holes in the subframe so they at least match the mount hole pattern.



A couple of pieces of 6 mm plate took care of the gap and so I could get on again. Typically yesterday while searching for something in one of my sheds I found the missing engine mount and conversion plate, wrapped up nicely in a plastic bag and buried under loads of unrelated stuff. Ah well............

So a long round of fitting and building up started.

I'll just give the highlights,

the pedal box had been changed in readiness for the manual engine already, but I got the pleasure of lying on my back on floor of the mini, head under steering wheel, feet up on rear seat, in order to fit the clevis pins that connect the pedals to the clutch and brake master cylinders. I hope to god they all work ok, it took bloody hours, hours that were filled with pain, frustration and lots of swearing.

Most other stuff went quite well, this being an early 70's engine despite its A+ rocker cover chucked a couple of problems in though,

Number one being the starter motor, the mini had had a pre engaged set up previously, and now needed an inertia type starter, I found one of those and altered the wiring to suit (I shall tidy and wrap all the wiring at the end as I think this little car is going to be full of electrical gremlins from what I see here and there), I had a solenoid so mounted that but it turns out it doesn't work and has one terminal too few for my ballast ignition system, so one is on order and hopefully may even arrive today.

Number two problem was the distributor, when my lad originally collected the manual engine with his friend, they managed to roll the engine and break the dizzy cap, no biggie, but the lad whose car it was at the time for some reason took the distributor off, and away he went, then returned with distributor and cap. All well then, or it would have been if he just got a new cap, I went to fit the distributor only to find it didn't fit and belonged to a later mini. Where the original went is now anybodies guess, probably swapped for the one that didn't fit.

Now, in another shed I have an a35 engine, with a lucas 25d distributor, it is now on the mini, a perfect fit and hopefully fine.

So thats the engine in



Apart from the fact I have to bridge the solenoids terminals to start it, it works and sounds healthy, so as i say, fingers crossed it all does what it should when I get the wheels on the ground, my only real concern is the clutch / gearbox set up, when I first plumbed in the master cylinder the clutch pedal was very stiff and the clutch arm didn't return back on the first press, I gave things a wobble, and it snapped back in place, with adjustment made to the stop bolt and overthrow nuts it now seems to be actuating and returning correctly, the pedal feels right as well, so we will now just have to wait and see.

Drive shafts / hubs came off, a couple of new cv boots went on and one top swivel pin / ball joint



They are now back on, and new shocks fitted at the front




I'm just on with front brake flexis and pads then hopefully I can start on the interior, wiring and front end, oh, and one other small issue is the auto's didn't have a front engine steady to subframe, so I'll have to think about that one.

arceye wrote: my only real concern is the clutch / gearbox set up, when I first plumbed in the master cylinder the clutch pedal was very stiff and the clutch arm didn't return back on the first press,

You say it's now returning and working as it should - I'd advise checking that it stays that way and does indeed fully return every time. IIRC the clutch thrust bearing on these is a carbon-ring type, and if there's any continual pressure on the thrust bearing in normal running it will wear out pretty quickly and you'll be taking the whole lot out again to replace the thrust bearing, which will involve a lot mroe swearing etc. Ask me how I know..... (the Midget has a similar set up, and the hydraulic clutch slave cylinder was a bit "sticky" when I first rebuilt it and like the Mini it's an engine-out job to get at the clutch thrust bearing).

Good work though Mr Eye - keep the updates coming, I just love Minis.

Cheers!

No need to take out any (real) mini engine to do the clutch, Rick. In this case it's even easier thanks to the auto subframe being kept and modified rather than swapped for the manual one. The mount under the clutch cover end of the engine might only look about 3/8"" further away but that space makes the difference between blood and no blood when the cover goes back on!
A mini clutch looks nothing like a conventional one and the release bearing is like the one shewn in the image below these words, if it's pre-Verto:


..and this if the clutch is the Verto type:

Cheers chaps,

Yup, the pre verto set up is what is in this one, anyway, that side of things seems good, I've got the wheels on the ground and it selects gears and works as it should so hopefully will stay that way.

Feeling sad tonight, you will understand why later

I'll bring us up to date in chronological type order though

So, all was going quite well, I fitted the fibreglass front, I opted for bolts and she is on really nice and firmly though did take a fair bit of lining up and general trimming here and there to get right.

I then cut the holes for grille, lights and indicators, painted it and then got on with fitting lights and general electrical work.

That all came good, a little detective work at the 4 fuse box showed someone had put one of the supply wires to the wrong fuse, which upset a few things but once I figured that out everything worked as it got wired up apart from the hazards which turned out to be a bad connection on the wiring where someone had spliced into it in the past. Sounds simple but it took an afternoon to find it Oh, and I replaced the dodgy starter solenoid with a nice new one and she now starts on the key.

So then we looked like this



I decided to spend a little time fitting the new carpet set and the dashboard the PO had ripped out





That has all gone in and cleaned up well but I don't have photos of the finished article yet. I'd actually have preferred the original 3 clock binnacle and an open parcel shelf, but I don't have one so thought I'd just work with what was already with the car.

I then fitted the grille using a couple of bolts through the front so it can be taken off in about a minute rather than fiddling with loads of screws, I've always found that to be a worthwhile mod on a mini.

Wheel arches and side trims went on, again I haven't took all the pics yet but I have a couple of work in progress.





I have also fitted the bonnet, in the end I went with the bonnet pin set up for the sake of simplicity, that needs paint yet but I planned on doing that after a MOT.

Which fetches us nicely to this evening, I'd been busy stone chipping under the car and freeing up the back brake adjusters today, apart from a knackered brake light switch and a non working foglight (both easy fixes yet to be done) I thought that all I had left to do before we see what she actually fails the test on ( ever the eternal optimist me) was bleed the brakes.

So, with the help of my lad we set to getting fluid round the system tonight, I'd already bled the fronts, but we could barely get a trickle from the rear cylinders, after a few attempts we decided the master cylinder is up the creek, but what the heck we'll give it one more go using the Eazy Bleed.

Again not much happening in the way of fluid or a pedal, just one last try then and then see about getting a new cylinder or seal kit.

Pumped up the tyre for pressure to 32psi just a little over correct pressure but hey ho, I connected the bleed to the tyre and....

a few seconds later the bloody plastic pipe flicked off from the master cylinder end, and even as I immediately discconected the air supply a lovely jet of brake fluid flew through the air towards the roof of the garage in a trajectory that if it had not included in its path the frame of my up and over door guide would have landed safely away from the car.

However, said door guide frame which is all of an inch wide performed a wonderfull job of stopping the jet of brake fluid and reversing it back to fall all over the front half of the car in about a million droplets

Despite the fact we immediately went running for buckets of water and swilled it all off within about two minutes the damage has been done. Once dry the front half of the roof, the windscreen scuttle and the wings were covered in white spots. Literally hundreds of them.

I haven't taken pictures as I simply don't have the heart, it isn't something I wish to see again anyway. I don't know if the immediate and severe reaction is the paint type or if it was just because the paint is still relatively fresh but that DOT 4 ate it bloody rapidly.

Anyway, I then spent 3 hours t cutting the paint and have managed to make it one colour, but when the light catches it just so it now has hundreds of little dimples like reverse micro blisters.

So, I'm a bit fed up tonight, it doesn't matter too terribly as it is shiny again and I had always intended to mask everything up once the car is on the road and have a go at the little blemishes here and there, but it makes it a little more urgent and a lot of prep will now be needed before more paint is applied, it will have to wait regardless until the car hits the road, I haven't the will to do it before.

So, the master cylinder is now off the car awaiting a solution, a little delay but nothing that can't be sorted, the Eezi bleed is heading for the bin, and I'm sat here with a nice large Vodka and Coke pondering the Armstrong curse that apparently has passed from my mothers side of the family...

On the upside, someone called round the other night and gave me a Citroen Xsara Picasso that supposedly just needs brakes and a power steering leak looking at for an MOT. Nice 2001 vintage with a scrape in the passenger door that surely adds value, well you can't grumble for nothing, but I did find myself toying with the idea of fixing that instead as a potential quick route to getting mobile again, but then I came back to my senses and decided I shall continue to persevere.

Yes, I know that feeling quite well. Whenever I use eazibleed now, I do a dummy run without any fluid just to check everything is sealed and I can't hear any hissing.

Heroic restoration though. Really enjoying reading about it. (And it's good for incompetants like me to know that even restoration heros have a bad day now and then!)

Oh I do feel your pain, that's a real downer.

However, I do think that 32psi is WAYY over what you should need, and I can't say I'm surprised that it popped, they're not designed to take this sort of pressure. So I wouldn't bin it if I were you, they're normally great bits of kit, I've used mine loads of times with no problems but then I never go over 20 psi, usually around 15 is plenty enough.

Sleep on it - it's only paint, you'll sort it out soon enough.

All the best!

I run my easibleed at 10psi or lower, works fine. I only use the easibleed for complete fluid changes though, for bleeding after a repair I find the old fashioned way of using a trusty assistant much cleaner and affords a lot more control of the situation.

I feel your pain however, chin up..just a set-back but one you can sort with time and effort.

Kev

Yeah, I knew it was a little high but it didn't stop me

As I say, I did know better, I should have stopped when we decided the master is most likely kaput, but something made me push my luck last night. I did have it in mind that the kit was rated at 30psi, I only use it as a last resort and it has lived out of its original packaging and in a biscuit tin for that long my memory must have clouded, a quick internet search would have revealed that 20 psi was the correct figure.

Ah well, live and learn eh chaps, and I did always intend to give it more paint in the near future

I'm going to see if I can get a master cylinder off the other mini in little while and see if that is still useable, please keep your fingers crossed that I avoid another dose of stupidity today

Well, scrapped using the other master cylinder as that is a black tag of model of 79 vintage and I'm needing the later yellow tag.

Insult to injury I also have a later servo type master cylinder on the shelf which is no good for this situation either.

So I have took it as a message from the heavens not to cut any corners on brakes and ordered a nice new rebuild kit for the original cylinder from Minispares. I'll take advantage of the few days wait and sort out a few other little jobs in the meantime.

Hopefully when I get back to the brakes things will go a little better, I'm hopeful the lack of bleeding and pedal is to do with the original master that had sat idle and empty since the car came off the road about six years ago. Most of the pipework has been replaced along with new flexis and everything else seems ok, I guess I shall have to wait a few days and then see.

Well, getting back on track, brake master cylinder thoroughly dismantled, cleaned and rebuilt with new seals to secondary push rod and a new primary pushrod, spring and seals, reservoir cleaned out aswell and new seals on reservoir to cylinder fittings.

Fitted back on car and then approx 10 minutes to bleed the system back and front with pedal pressure only , moral I suppose is to know when to give up rather than keep pushing on and bollox it up in frustration

Anyway, I'll spend a bit of time over the next few days just checking and titivating, setting everything up (lights, engine mixture etc etc) and hopefully get to the MOT garage next week if all goes well and I don't find any other jobs.

At least if she fails I'll have a list of jobs. I'll report back when either (A) I've been for a MOT, or (B) I discover something else to do that I haven't already seen before I can go for one.