Bootlid

I have 3 bootlids amongst my junk of mini parts. One is sandblasted and rusted out, the second one is also rusted out which i later discovered after removing the paint, and the last one was bought from a local and is pretty much brand new except for a few dings. Now the thing is that the first two are normal MK1 / Aussie Clubman bootlids (although the clubman license plate surround is actually shorter as seen the the real life pictures) and the last one is a UK MK3 type bootlid. As mentioned before they dont really make reproduction parts for Aussie Clubmans so getting a new one wasnt really an option.

The difference between them are that they have different license plate lights and the moulding around the license plate is different. See below.

I decided on the MK3 bootlid as it was the easiest choice but adopted the license plate light from the MK1 simply because i didnt like the MK3 light. I cleaned up the bootlid and mounted the plate with some rivet nuts.

 

It took awhile mounting the license plate and light but im still convinced its not straight. If you look carefully its actually the moulding of the bootlid that isnt straight. Trust me i measured it over and over and over again. >_<

Doors

I have decided to replace the door skins on my doors.

Originally i was planning on just repairing the doors i had but i don't like the thought of the rust and rot inside. I was only able to find a clubman passenger door skin that was 'New Old Stock'. This was from Mini King in NSW which cost me just over $200 shipped. See the thing with Australian clubman doors is they no longer make door skins for them and they never had a door in the UK with the same door handle. So as it stands i am only able to fix one of the doors.

I had previously researched on how to replace the door skin of a Mini and found a nice write up by a member on The Mini Forums. Looked easy enough.

How To ~ Change Your Doorskin. - The Mini Forum

This is the door skin i removed. Looks better than it actually is.

Underneath i found a bit of rust and rot.

Cleaned up, primed and replaced the rubber (i think this stops the skin from rattling with its support)

Here are the supports to take note of when re-assembling the door skins.

Door skin on. Need to apply some knife putty over the spot weld and prime.

Finished door mounted.

What colour paint?

My decision on what colour my mini was going to be had changed several times. 

Originally i was going to do an Orange & Black paint scheme, which soon changed to a two tone White & Black look... It wasnt the easiest decision because i wanted to stick to 70's solid colour either bright or pastel and wanted a colour that wasnt common. Pretty much every colour has been used on Minis in Australia.

My final decision was based off an Aqua coloured Mini in Mini World and a topic about Aqua Minis on The Mini Forum. I would still maintain the Black roof and flares for some contrast and my Black rims would match up well.

When it came to finding the colour code and purchasing the paint it was only available in a Dekron Direct Gloss which would of costed almost 3 times as much as normal auto paint. A colour which i found to be similar was the GM/Holden Aquarius used on the LH Holden Torana in the 70's. This came in a solid base coat and was easily available from Amcap, my local supplier of Autothane and PPG paints.

The colour on the Holden Torana.

And here is a sample i sprayed up.

 

The colour looks quite blue in pictures but thats the way it came out through the camera. In real life it is a lot more green. 

In the end, im pretty happy with the final decision.

Body Preparation - Shell

I've taken on the job of preparing the body for paint myself. Although, I will be getting a friend to check over it and paint it for me. He recommended i used Autothane products as they are the brand he uses at work and they are a trusted brand by PPG.

For anyone who has done any body preparation you'd know its not the most enjoyable job. In fact its probably the worst job. It consists of long hours of sanding, bogging and more sanding. I spent countless hours after work and im still not a 100% sure its perfect but its currently in a reasonable good state. Primed and smooth. But ill take you through my journey.

Here is the shell almost ready to be primed.

A few layers of prime and she's looking pretty good.

A dust coat of black and the blocking begins. Here is where the body preparation really aches. For those who dont know what blocking is: you apply a thin dust coat of black paint then use a block with reasonable fine grit wet and dry sand paper (i used 240grit) and rub off the black coat. If there is any black paint remaining that means there is a low spot in the body, and if you rub back to bare metal, this usually means there is a high spot.

With the help of some knife putty. Below.

You have this patchy body. The most tedious of all jobs!!! >_<

Now here is the body in its current state before its final rubbing. I primed the shell with several coats and rubbed back with 400 grit. It will need a further rubbing back before actual paint but i do need to move onto the doors, bootlid and bonnet.

Bleeding + Test Run

With the engine running you wouldnt believe how excited i was to drive it. It cant be far now.

I attached the custom made driveshafts and installed the 4 pot brakes calipers. I had previously purchased some DOT3 brake fluid which will also be used for the clutch, and proceeded to bleed the clutch system first as it was a single line. Next was the brake lines, so i continued bleeding in the order of: Left-Hand Rear -> Right-Hand Rear -> Left-Hand Front -> Right-Hand Front.

It took a few tries and almost 2 bottles of brake fluid to get rid of the air in the pipes but i wasnt convinced they were completely gone. I found a link off the net on how to make your own brake bleeder for $20. All you needed was a few bits of hose, some hose fittings, a pressuried garden pump and a pressure gauge. This specific brake bleeder would pressurize the master cylinder (15psi is fine) and force fluid through the pipes, rather than relying on gravity. This worked an absolute treat! I'd definitely recommend making your own.

So finally i was able to drive the car and test out the brakes. But before i did i had to be safe, even though i am already in the wrong for driving a unlicensed car shell, i needed to install my seat belts. Quickly enough they were in and i was out the workshop going for a joy ride.

From 4EFTE Mini

The reason for wanting to drive the car was to test that everything was okay before i painted the shell and so i knew i wouldnt have to make any more modifications if something didnt work.

After driving the Mini a few times, i am rather impressed. The weight of the car is barely even felt. I did have some issues with traction though and found only the passenger side wheel spinning, which is why i ordered the Quaife LSD. Although the reason may have also came down to the car being a lot lighter than it will be once its finished or the fact that my camber was terribly out.

I did calculate the Power to Weight of this project based on standard figures:

Mini clubman. Weight 640kg
4E-FTE Engine. Power 100kw/130hp
= 156W / kg

So from Wikipedia. It has an equivalent or slightly higher Power to Weight of 2008 Subaru Impressa STi @ 150W / kg.



In the end, im pretty happy with its progress and cant wait to drive it again once its all painted and back together for the last time...

Engine start up

Ive had the engine running in the mini for awhile now but it hasnt came without its problems.

With the loom in and the engine topped up with fluids, the car cranked over just fine. I had installed my oil pressure gauge to make sure i had sufficient oil pressure before i actually started the engine. But even after getting oil pressure, it wouldnt start. It had me in pieces trying to figure out why, checking the fuel pump to make sure it was working and whether the spark plugs were giving a decent spark. I did have a friend from work watching over me at the time and he suggested i checked my earths.

I found that the casing of the ignitor needed a ground as it was originally mounted to the firewall and mine was just sitting on my car seat. I ran a wire to the car body and that basically fixed the problem. The car started up! What a huge relief that was, but then it started to hunt on idle. Long story short and after several weeks in denial of me messing up my wiring loom, it ended up being a vacuum leak.

I swear i went over my loom a hundreds times metering all the cables making sure they had the correct polarity and/or continuity. But in the end it was something i thought i had checked over properly. The car started up and ran just fine from then on.

Here is a video of the engine starting up and running... the way it should.

From 4EFTE Mini

Seams.. remove or keep?

As much as they contribute to the standard look of the mini.. they are a pain in the ass when it comes to rust. Water gets trapped and rusts the shell out. Then on the other hand its another type of pain in the ass to de-seam the mini.

I eventually went with deseaming.

I dont like fully de-seamed Minis so i went half way and only removed the front and rear corners. Again its not an enjoyable job but i was running out of motivation on certain parts of this project so i jumped to other parts. The rears were cleanded out and welded from the inside first, then i started de-seaming the Mini with the method used by everyone else:

- Cut 100mm at a time
- MIG weld
- Hammer in weld
- Grind and clean weld
- Cool with wet rag
- Then moved on to the next 100mm.

I continued doing this with the rest of the seams. 

There were rather large dents and odd shapes left in the panels from the hammering, but it was essential, because if i had removed too much of the welded seam there wouldnt of been much structural integrity left.

Moving on to body filling of the dents left by the hammering, I spent countless hours after work doing this and getting the shape just right. It really takes that long, doing layer after layer after layer.. i figured i might as well prep the rest of the shell of other imperfections while i was bogging it. I think i have done about 90% of the main body filling and figured id leave the engine bay for later because i wasnt prepared to remove the engine just yet.

So while the engine is in.. i might aswell get the engine running right?

Here are the pictures.. Probably need to finish up and put some primer on it!

The wiring loom...

This job definitely proved more difficult than i had intended. You hear many rumours about people spending countless hours into reconfiguring it and I was one, despite being an electrician by trade. I did find it quite simple as i understood electrical theory and made sure i wrote out each of my findings. The hardest part was that there wasnt a proper english wiring diagram for the EP91 4E-FTE. After gathering all the info i could i did eventually suceed.

As the Glanza was a later model version with the 4E-FTE engine it had some ancillaries that i didnt require for my mini build. These included the ABS brake system, air con and heater demister. Although i do need to modify the heater demister circuit because i wont be using the Glanza heater box but require the demister for registration.

I had already decided to keep the Glanza odometer and indicator binnacle so everything was pretty much plug and play. The modifications i did do other than the removal of the abs and air con systems were:

- Extending battery and alternator cables to allow for rear mounted battery
- Installing a water to air intercooler fan and water pump into existing relays
- Installing a 12V hair dryer as the heater demister using existing relays
- Extending and making up rear wiring loom for the fuel circuit, taillights and license plate light
- Re-configuring and extending cables to allow for only one firewall penetration
- Re-wiring of side door open switches and addition of a switched roof lamp
- Re-wiring and extending of cables for new stereo and speakers

An important note to keep in mind is that the metal body of the Ignitor MUST have a ground (-) otherwise the car itself wont start, and yes i found this out the hard way. It would be a good idea to make sure you have sufficient grounding throughout the car including a proper ground from battery to body, body to subframe and body to engine block. Also remembering there are ground cables throughout the standard wiring loom which would also prevent the car from starting or running properly. I have marked some of these in my modified wiring diagram below.

Here is the EP91 ECU pinout which should match up if you pay attention to the cable numbers.

Driveshafts

A few months back i had sorted out my driveshafts.

They consisted of mini splines at the wheel hub end and Toyota splines at the other for the inner cv joints to the gearbox. This was done with the car on the hoist and all the suspension in place. I had to cut the existing driveshafts with a fairly large overlap to allow for adjustment in order to find the right length.

You ideally want to make the driveshafts the right length so that the shaft and cv joints are as close to the gearbox as possible without the shaft bottoming out as you hit a bump in the road. What i found is that the mini suspension worked in the complete opposite to what you would think. Instead of the shafts pulling away from the gearbox as the wheels were lowered (car raised), they actually pushed them inwards. It didn't take too long to get the jist of things until i marked the two shafts, cut them and tack welded them.

Originally i had planned to take these to a shop to reproduce and to make up into single billet heat treated driveshafts, but this didnt end up happening. I spoke to John at Rotomotion who previously did this for another Ausmini build, and he told me it would cost almost $1000 to make as the cost of heat treating had gone up since then. The other option he offered me was for their boilermakers to properly pin them, weld them then have them sort of heat treated by letting them cool slowly overnight. I forget what this method was called.

When speaking to John i did ask whether this was suitable and strong enough to withstand the force from the engine, and he said that because the rest of the driveshafts were already heat treated from factory and that it was just the weld that needed treatment, it would suffice. Also that the spline of the mini hub would break before the weld would, as long as it was welded properly. I took his word for it and it cost me $250.

Sadly i dont have a picture of them at the moment. But i will update with one in the future.

Christmas in November!

Look what just came in the post....

^_^

For those who dont know.. it is a Quaife Automatic Torque Biasing LSD. This little sucker will slip right into the standard 4EFTE gearbox and comes with a lifetime warranty.. It will also help with keeping the power on the road as i may or may not of driven it.....