1981 mini van - overdue update - on the road.

[blackpopracing]

Sorry to hear about the neck injury, wotcha do???
Look forward to a speedy recovery and more updates.

[Oldbus]

Get well soon Dave ;D

[An Fear Ó Dhoire]

Good thread. Wasted too much time reading it.

[dave21478]

Just bumping this up from the depths, but have little to report.
My neck is still knackered, and the pain in my side has been re-diagnosed as cracked ribs too.

Stalling the project so close to completion has destroyed my mojo. A good weekends worth of work, and new master cylinders, would see it finished and on the road, but I am currenly just not physically capable of doing it. God-knows when I will be, either.


As for how I did it, well, I was dismantling an old shed/shelter/lean-to thing and had removed all the boarding, leaving the heavy timber frame, which collapsed on me. One of the main roof beams caught me on the head, shredding my ear, properly screwing my neck and my ribs caught another beam on the way down.

[dave21478]

PROGRESS AT LAST!

Got a few hours on the mini today, for the first time in a long while.

With a lot of drilling, filing, hammering and wearing, I have finally got the left hand side door fitted. The panel gaps arent great, but it will do for now. The paint is knackered too, but it will do for now too!



I also got the glass, the seals the ltches and the handles fitted to both doors...

This was a pain in the ass for the latches, as since I have converted to LHD, I had to drill the latches apartand swap all the internals over so the loc mechanism is still on the drivers side and the internal lock latch is on the passenger side. Its wee curse word like this thatyou don't think of when planning that takes so much time!

The interior is looking a bit tidier too....

[mrbhp426]

good man, looking sweet ;D

[davej]

Good work! Its great to see the door finally on, looks complete now. Is there much else to do?

[luckygti]

Looking good, good to see you back on this and regaining some mojo. That first drive is gonna be so much fun

[dave21478]

The door alignment still isnt great, and once the door seal is on, its almsot ompossible to close th door without slamming it really hard. I tried fettling it today, I need to bend in the lip the seal sits on alnog the bottom of the door step, but as I was hammering it, it started to tear out the spot welds, so I will drill them out and reshape te step and re-weld it.

[dave21478]

Got it running today, which is a pretty big milestone, I suppose.



Still waiting for the master cylinder parts to turn up, so its undriveable for now

Oh, and my phone has somehow made a metro engine sound like some kind of `charged V8.

[dave21478]

hmmm, how do I embed the video?

[Siert]

Good job, looks like you're on the final stretch!

Aug 24, 2009 19:28:37 GMT dave21478 said:

hmmm, how do I embed the video?

Put the link in between the [youtube] and [/youtube ] tags.

[dave21478]

new tyres and alloys finally painted.








I tries them body coloured centres and it looked ok-ish, I then tried cream rims and it looked gash, so back to basics - black centres and polished (ish) rims.

[tonybmw]

That looks like some interesting tracking setup rig, tell us more

[pitcrew6464]

Great project page brilliant mini van!!! you've done well fighting the tin worm!

[dave21478]

Aug 25, 2009 21:48:19 GMT tonybmw said:

That looks like some interesting tracking setup rig, tell us more

Its nothing special - a 2 meter masons rule with 2 bits of flat steel bar clamped to it with g-glamps. Use a decent set-square to get the bars at right angles to the rule.
Place it on blocks (or batteries if you have them handy!) so its roughly at the height of the centre of the wheels.
Use a ruler to measure the gap between the rim and the bar on each side, taking 2 readings per wheel, at the front and back edges of the rim. You can them work out the wheels alignment. FWD cars generally need about 2mm of toe-out.
Its not super-duper accurate, but it does me well enough, and is a minimum standard to get a car to a garage to get it set properly after major work on the steering/suspension.

[dave21478]

I had ordered rebuild kits for the brake and clutch master cylinders bloody ages ago. The supplier was out of stock so that delayed them a bit, plus I had them sent to my sister who was to forward them to me here in France to avoid their extortionate international postage rates. The useless curse word then forgot to send them to me, so that was another couple of weeks lost. Never mind, they arrived today.....
But they are not the right parts.

Dunno....its not as if there are a million variants of mini master cylinders, I definately ordered the right ones, but the seals are far too small. Neither one works worth a curse word. This afternoon was spent fruitlessly curse word about assembling, dismantling, fitting, trying, dismantling, trying mixtures of old and new seals.... for the second time during this project, I got a proper rage on, and launched the lot out the garage door. All the cylinder internals are now scattered across the yard, so thats it proper curse word.

"curse word off" doesnt even come close. curse word wrong bits, curse word useless, lazy sister, needless delays....I'm so angry with it i can hardly think straight.

[dave21478]

took some photos though. First time its seen sunlight for a long time.

[rysz]

Man, that is looking really, really sweet! Bumhats to the crappy parts, if there is anything I can do, let me know - there is a good Mini garage just outside Nottingham that I used to use years ago that should be able to source what you need!

Rysz.

[Keefy]

christ mate, if you were working on aircooled vws daily, and thats whats make your blood boil, you'd have your house demolished within a week

Mini is looking great though, I'm sure a fan of this! Stick with it dude!!!