The Story :

With the ludacrisly high petrol prices of mid 2008 I had been struggling to justify paying £1,25.9 per liter of super unleaded that the Intergra required, So I decided I needed a car that was economical, but I wasn't prepared to go out and buy something I would hate like the obvious and mundane fiesta.

Having just helped my sister buy a Classic Mini (a 1992 British Open Classic which I later restored) and having had some fun driving it, I decided It could be an excellent choice to go for a 998cc mini, and I had though a Van or similar was more my style as I have always preferred the rarer less seen examples.

After alot of browing and thinking I eventually stumbled across a '79 clubman estate on eBay, it looked to be in quite good shape, especially compared to the vans and pickups I had been seeing for similar money, and it came with a great many spares including a 1275 engine, It also had the economical and quite rare 1098cc A-Series engine.

after a bit of bidding I won the auction at a finishing price of £1000 and had to make two trips to wales, first with the Integra to collect the car and a few spares, then with a friends american pickup, there was still more parts to be collected, but again I could not justify the cost of another trip for what was a bit of metal with a pedal box, master cylenders and a steering rack attached.

Having got it home it appeared there were a few issues that needed to be sorted out, firstly a fuel leak which was pouring petrol out of the side of the tank every time I went round a left hand bend, then there was the over heating problem, that seemed to come up every time I got up to motorway speeds for any length of time. The fuel leak was an easy fix, as the friends who had helped me bring the Mini back had a spare tank from a 60s Mini Van lying at the back of their workshop. All that was needed to get this into perfect shape was a quick rub down and a coat of paint. The over heating problem started as a bit more of a mistery, not being familiar with classic engines and getting different people telling me different things I invested in a few new parts from fresh coolant and a thoughrough flush of the system to a four blade fan and two core radiator, in the end in turned out that the previous owner had removed the thermostat without adding a blanking plate, so in went a brand new thermostat and the problem was solved!

From there I had a few months of trouble free, cheap and fun motoring, until the car started to run badly, on occation it would run on three cylenders, a quick rev of the engine brought it back, but only a few days later before I had been able to investigate fully, it went completely, although the car was able to get me the full 30 miles to work on the remaining three cylendars at 70mph.

Anyway that was the moment I had set to get the car re-built and restored to a better than new condition, originally setting a deadline of Mini World Action Day in September 2009. Having removed the spark plugs from the engine to find out what had happened I discovered one of them was bent, so proceeded to remove the Cylinder head to discover that the valve seat had crumbled on cylinder number three leaving no compression in that chamber and a large number of dents in the top of the piston.

The first job on the car is always the most enjoyable, Pull it all apart, bagging and tagging as you go. Once the car was stripped I worked my way around the car looking at the rust and deciding what could be repaired and what would need cutting out and replacing.

The first major panel to be replaced was the floor, and as this is such a big job I enlisted the help of my friends from Avon Classic Cars, who cut out the old floor and after cleaning out the rust, welding in my new Genuine floor and long wheelbase extenuation. Other panels that needed replacing included the rear lower corners, door steps, outer sills, all four door skins, a-panels, off side inner arch and complete front end.

I eventually decided that I would go with a Fibreglass two piece front end, with the plan to mount it in a way that would make it very difficult to tell it from a steel one, so as to keep the same standard look but with the benefit of no future rust in this area as well as a lightened front.

other ideas being added to the car include recessing the rear number plate into a smoothed rear valance, front seam finishers inverted half way down the panel, smoothed radio aerial and lightly tinted rear windows.

One of the hardest single jobs I found to do on the car was removing the old side stickers, it was all so old that heating the stickers didn't help much and the sticky residue left behing would not come off with any chemical I used. I eventually descovered an invaluble and very cheap tool that made the job very easy, It's called a fudge wheel and is like a round rubber that attaches to your drill and will remove all sticky residue with ease and without damaging the underlying paint.

With the new floor in place I had to remove the two subframes from the car so I could complete the underside, having done this I started on removing all remaining rust from the cars chassis (bottom of firewall and boot floor). Then it was on to treating and painting these areas. I saw no need to paint any colour on these areas as it would all be covered up sith underseal, so I simply applied a few coats of two-pack primer followed by some two-pack laqure I had left over from a previous job.

After painting inside the sill panels and leaving enough time for these to cure the sills were welded in place, I ended up welding on the over sills that came with the car as they will give a better seal preventing water from entering from the underside, later I will drill a 25mm drain hole front and rear so if any water does build up it can be drained out by removing the bungs. All seams have been tightly sealed with a seam sealer, the sills were coated in a spray wax to repel water from the panels and the whole chassis has been undersealed in black with a shults gun to keep a neat finish.

One of the gems of this car was all the spare parts that came with it. Both front and rear subframes were heavily rotted and were in desperate need of replacement and fortunately I had been supplied with a pair of very tidy subframes. The rear one had been badly painted in a hideous shade of yellow, but the front just had a few areas of light surface rust, so I set to work stripping these down, removing as much paint as possible and using drill mounted wire brush to remove all trace of rust. then a few coats of rust killer followed by a thin coat of red oxide primer and then the top coats. A black basecoat was used followed by a couple of coats of the two-pack laqure.

With the mini off it's side it was ready to have the subframes re-fitted so my next job was to get them ready for their wheels, After experiencing the standard drum brakes at speed I had decided I wanted to upgrade to something a little safer and more reliable, but I still wanted to stick with 10" wheels, meaning my only real option was to fit a set of Cooper S disc brakes to the front. Fortunately the car had come with a set of 8.4" disc brakes, so I was able to utilise the hubs from those and simply purchased a Cooper S Conversion Kit from Mini Sport, their kit consisted of new calipers, discs and pads, which I promptly assembled onto the hub after cleaning and painting it, as well as fitting new ball joints and both inner and outer drive shaft boots.

When choosing the suspention setup on the mini I had to take into account price, quality and adjustability, so I went with a set of Mini Sport HiLos matched with a complete new set of Gaz on car adjustable shocks, and decided that other adjustable suspention parts could be sourced after the car is on the road and has been tracked up, so I can determine what is actually needed, rather than just buy everything when the standard adjustment could have been sufficient.

Whilst trying to decide what colour to paint the car and which type of paints to use (quality brand House of Kolor or one of the cheaper paint brands) I decided that the interior of the car should be a simple black, so I aquired one quart of House of Kolor's BC02 (Black Basecoat) and sprayed the whole inside of the interior after removing or thouroughly treating any rust that had been found, then a few coats of 2K clear. The result is a spetacular shiney finish all over, it's just a shame that it's going to be covered up with carpet. after being so impressed with the HOK primer sealers, basecoat and clears I decided for the small price difference it was worth going with HOK for the final colour on the car, but will be keeping my choice of colour hidden until the very end.

I also needed a colour scheme for the parts underneath the car and with a few cans of Bronze and silver spray I thought this was a good choice to complement the colour to be sprayed on the outside of the vehicle whilst remaing fairly neutral and not OTT.

The job of fitting the fibreglass front end had been worrying me for some time, mostly with regards to cutting the correct line at the apanel and getting it to fit correctly at the front of the vehicle. I had decided I wasn't all that interested in having the front flip forward, which is why I had chosen a two piece front rather than the cheaper and simpler single piece. I also knew I wanted the front to look as much like a steel front as possible, that includes the bolt holes for the bumpers and no visible fixings, although I gave in in the end and went with bonnet pins at the front for simplicity. At the A-panels things got a little more complicated as I wanted to use a simple fastening but have it hidden in the wheelarch, so I welded a plate with a brace onto the a-panel and created a fibreglass panel that could be fitted to the flip front. The pieces I had created were then lined up and Dzus fasteners were added to hold them tightly together, then whilst in place the flip front has been lineed up and fixed to it's plate, giving a really neat look as you will see in the pictures.

My next job was to sort out the firewall, I had decided that I didn't want all the wiring coming through the centre and spreading out over the engine bay so had already cut a hole from behind the dash to the off side inner wing, and without that clutter or any of the sound proofing the firewall would be much more visible, so it had to look good. with alot of sanding, a few layers of filler and pleanty of high build primer it was ready for paint, I had already painted the lower part in black so the top section and brace bars were painted in one of House of Kolors fine finishes. Following that I refreshed and painted the master cylenders in black along with the wiper motor bracket and centre cover which had the hole for the electrics welded up. In addition all the nessasary fixings were replaced with highly durable stainless steel items, so they would not end up looking tired and rusty in a few years time.