Irish Mini Owners Club

wooohooo!
after lots of decisions and a lot of driving me and my brother made it to basildon england to scoop up ''Project Nancy''
a good bit of work was done on her by the previous owner (cheers) and hopefully i will restore her to her former (or better) glory...

i have no set date as to wen it shall be finished, but if i can help it, it may be at the IMM 2009 (fingers crossed)

here she is when we squashed her into the van..... (teaser, because its not actually out of the van yet)










And here is the link as to what the previous owner had done to her ...
http://www.theminiforum.co.uk/forums/in ... opic=13151

Planning on a big V8 conversion then Steven ?

how did u kno that!?

i got a 998 and a 1275 engine wit it so gonna keep it original-ish...
i got a serious amount of stuff with the project, havent even had a proper look at it yet, but thats wat the weekend is for..
one thing i plan on doing but dont know much about is ''de-seaming''....
i bought a mig welder while i was in england so after some practice the panels will be stickin together soon enough hopefully

Deseaming can look very goo when done well, but brutal when done badly. The trick is to do small bits at a time to avoid warping.

well i have all the time in the world to do it so hopefully i dont make a balls of it so
im after finding a nice 1 1/4 twin carburettors in one of the boxes with all/most of the parts cleaned and labelled in bags and a twin carb heat shield too....
did a 89 mayfair come with a 3 clock dash??? found one dem too... found the front lights in bags with a little note in them saying what colour wires connect on to them and where everything im finding is labelled where its from including all the little bolts and nuts.. this fella was really organised...
jolly times indeed

Seems as though he was doing it right, why did he give up ?

nice job fitting it into the van lads

class pics steven best of luck with the build

i still cant believe u got it into that van

tmg he gave up because he had it for three years, hadnt done much to it over that time (well..) n broke up wit his gf and had to move out of his rented home incl garage....

tmg have you still got those old smaller rear lights u had at the auto jumble???

was tight squeeze gettin it into the van, too toght.... the whole front arches etc are of of it but we had to bend (dont kno wat ya call em so heres a pop at it) the two panels extending from bulkhead and connect onto the arches, bonnet etc....
not to sure if it was a smart move but was easily bent so hopefully easily bent back too will need to strenthen it im sure tho..?

D_3m0_n wrote:tmg have you still got those old smaller rear lights u had at the auto jumble???

No, sorry they're sold.

the two panels extending from bulkhead and connect onto the arches, bonnet etc....
not to sure if it was a smart move but was easily bent so hopefully easily bent back too will need to strenthen it im sure tho..?

Inner wings

I have deseamed a mini and its not a easy task, it takes lots of patience and a good steady hand, my only advise is to do 6" at a time, I mean cut 6" out of the seam leave 6" etc, this will prevent it from warping, be very careful with the welding as mini body steel is very thin and blows out very very easily. Make sure you clean all the paint off before attempting to weld as it will aid in a good neat weld. The best deseamed job I have seen was one a panelbeater friend of mine did, he actually indented the panel edges before welding so that the level of the weld did not protrude and therefore required no grinding and only a little filler, this gave a very strong seam as the tendancy is to weld and grind off which only leaves a tiny amount of weld holding the panels together. Good luck with the project.

Have a deseamed shell looking for a good home.

tmg that was the ! inner wings... why didnt i know that??
cheers for that tip gtm coupe, the mini shell is still in the van as i really didnt get a chance to take it out yet but my parents are back from holidays and my father will need the van for monday so it'l be out by then hopefully...
i was looking at all the parts etc. thinking of going wit a black shell wit everything else red... well sorta
just opened the box of my new mig welder too, little puzzled, should i use 0.6 mm or 0.8mm wire for all the welding il be doing?
will grab some old panels somewhere and do some practicing, did a welding course before and doing one at the min and told i have quite a steady hand, practice results will bear all tho...

not that im interested in the deseamed shell woody because i just got a normal shell but just out of curiousity how much are you looking for your shell??

While 0.6mm wire is the theoritically better for thin steel it a pain in the arse to use because its so soft it will get jamed all the time in the feeder, I use 0.8mm everywhere now and have no probs, much more forgiving. Good luck, good mig welding is all down to practise.

Shell belongs to Simon(webmaster).We are clearing his lockup at the moment so contact him for price, but I know it will be small price. Good shell with most of the work done and no rust.

"good mig welding is all down to practise." and good preparation.

sorry to butt in but any chance of a few pics of simons shell that he has for sale

miniireland@gmail.com

si...

no worries si

ah im good, have 2 and a half minis now and really wanna do all the welding etc myself to get the experience and hopefully acquire some new skills......... definately need them, was practising doing a bit of welding tonight, was gettin nice welds on the flat but when i tried to join to piece it all went a little hay wire... so gave up for tonight and started to read the manual to find out i had the wire feed set slightly to low
we moved the shell at the weeknd there too and i took some pics on phone and camera but cannot find the leads anywhere to upload onto pc and post em
first time doing anything on the shell was last night, most of the time i stood looking at it as in ''wher should i start''
the previous owner has treated most of the shell but there was a little surface rust on spots so i went at them and put some rust preventive stuff on it afterwards..
previous owner had also started the sills, looked quite rusty but cleaned most of the rust of and found no holes
i was gonna start cutting the seams as previously stated (cheers) but instead of 6'' at a time i was gonna cut 4'' just to be sure ...
but as ya do , i forgot a cutting disc for the grinder

anyone wanna give me a starter or in wat order to go at the project??

You would want to be pretty competant at welding before deseaming a car.
Simons shell is burried right at the back of his lockup beside my Hornet that I'm trying to retrieve so as soon as I can I'll get photos but it could be weeks.

ok been a while since i posted..

progress so far:

the floor inside the car has been fully stripped from paint and sound deadening material to check condition, found slight rust at the footwells, cut the rust out forming two big holes one on each footwell.. whole floor sprayed with zinc primer..

scuttle panel removed..

the engine bay zinc primed after clean up and rust removal..

mock fit of the boot floor (extends to inner car to form the back seats), its a genuine panel and the fit is actually spot on. genuine panels shall be bought from now on

tipped over the car onto its side, bottom stripped from gunk, paint and a little rust to original metal and zinc primed..

next up :
remove over sill, thinkin it was just placed over original rusty sill just like the other side


in the meantime i also de-skinned two doors, one is patched up and rust free and ready for a new skin to be put on..

got the welder figured out and set up properly, going good so far am happy with the welds..

also while i have the car fully stripped i decided to do this http://www.theminiforum.co.uk/forums/in ... opic=85420
got as far as making the fibreglass mould and its lying in the garage now ...

started re-building the twin 1 1/4 carbs...

and have a good mind to give this a go as some twat reversed into my grill and dented it and drove off

http://www.theminiforum.co.uk/forums/in ... &hl=grille


my red mini is up for nct next week so had to make some adjustments to it to make it more ''nct friendly''
and my green mini has had its seats switched from original to half leather coopers, new head unit installed, rear under seat speaker board made up and fitted...

so been busy-ish.. i have too many minis imo so once the red one is nct-ed and the new door skins are on im thinkin about selling it not to sure though as the car market is fubarbd so that might just give me a reason to hold onto it actually

i need to get some pics up i know, but all the pics iv got so far were taking on a crappy phone camera so will try get my hands on a camera over the next week or so and post them up..

heres few of the camera phone pics

spot the mini



new home comes included with guard dog (theres two more but just not in the pic) biggrin.gif



bit of practice welding at the evening fas welding course
wat ya think?



fire hazard (saw dust) cleaned up..



front end before (has now been made rust free, scuttle panel removed and all zinc primed)



rust in the left side footwell ( original rust patched over never removed)



closeup (has now been cut out, not patched up yet)



more rust patched over on the right side footwell (has been cut out also)



thats all for now, they were the only half decent camera phone pics taken..
more to come..............

Nice little setup you have there Steven, nice bit of welding too. you'll be giving KMG a run for his money soon. Nice troly, but bigger wheels would be easier to move over the rumble strip floor.

cheers tmg. i dont need the wheels at the min as the car is resting on its side
took off the oversill today and as expected :rust... the oversill was put on over the original rusty sill which was practicly fallin apart.. heres few more crappy camera photos of it... any ideas on if there is a replacement panel for that area? or will i need to make up something?

here is the bottom cleaned and zinc primed



removing oversill started

Doesn't look too bad apart from the sill itself.Inner sills and floor look ok apart from the big hole. I would make up a piece to fit the hole,doesn't look too hard.

the floor is a bit worse than it looks me thinks..
plan was to make the whole car absolutely rust free, and to me (with not much rust experience) the surface rust has dented and weakened the floor metal.... so i was nearly thinkin if there is a replacement panel just to cut this rot out and weld new in....
anyone know if there is such a panel???
if not il have to make one up...

ps. all the patches needed to weld up so far i have used an old door skin (recycling) but its running out n just wondering where n what kind of metal to get???

steven

well steve, shell looks good

its sole destroyin cuttin and cuttin, it looks as if ur gettin no where. u d be surprised what a new inner and outer sill would do