'97 Rover Mini 1.3i

[Bailes1992]

Think it's time for an update.

The Mini got locked away in the garage last September and I haven't touched it at all despite all my plans.

I put a Noco Genius 1 on the battery for a week and she started right up first time!

I decided it's time to start the work I wanted to do over the winter.

The rear suspension seemed to be a bit worn out, there was play in both radius arms and a brake imbalance brought up during the cars last MOT.

I planned to drop the subframe and anything on the underside between the bulkhead and rear of the car, strip it all back to bare metal, paint in an Epoxy Mastic followed by Upol Gravitex tinted to the cars original colour. I wanted to them strip and replace all the suspension components and reinstall.

I've tidied the garage, got the car in the air and pulled the exhaust off so far. Hoping to get all the brakes disconnected and fuel lines tonight then I'll be ready to drop the subframe.

So far, nothing scary found but not sure what I'm going to find when I start stripping back all the Waxoyl.

Made a grave error. We have a second freezer in the garage. I've put the Mini so close to it I can no longer open the freezer...

 

[Trav]

Nice to see the old Mini getting a little TLC. Good project!

 

[Bailes1992]

Not sure if I should update this on a daily basis or not. I'm trying to get an hour or two on it every night.

Plan last night was to disconnect all the brakes. Disconnected and drained the hydraulics before being totally stumped by how to disconnect the rear handbrake cable. Need to do some research today and get that done tonight.

Used a vacuum bleeder to drain the brake reservoir. The brake fluid was quite dirty and lots of sludge settled at the bottom.

You can see in the picture below where I disconnected the brake hydraulics but you can also see handbrake compensator in the exhaust tunnel which was absolutely caked in grease.

I gave the handbrake compensator a good clean but couldn't work out how it came apart. Looking at some diagrams online it seems I may have to disconnect the front handbrake cable and then it the cable pulls through the compensator which enables you to release the rear cables. Will look at that tonight. In the meantime, I have a nice clean handbrake compensator

Once I get the handbrake cables disconnected I just have the fuel filter and battery cable to remove before the subframe is ready to come down. After the subframe is out then there is just the remainder of the exhaust to remove followed by all the fuel lines and brake lines before I'm ready to start stripping the underside back to bare metal. Hoping by the end of the weekend it's all removed ready to start doing the stripping next week.

 

[Bailes1992]

Later than planned, but finally managed to get the subframe out of the Mini.

Read a lot of scary stories online about the bolts that hold the subframe to the heel board snapping, with most guides saying to expect half of them to snap. Also a few stories about people uncovering a lot of rust between the subframe and heel board as it holds dirt.

BUT... all the bolts came out with no problems and the hell board appears to be totally solid!

I'm hoping I can have everything stripped from the underside by the end of this week. Then next week I can concentrate on getting the underside back to bare metal. But we'll see.

 

[Bailes1992]

So it's been 14 months since I've done anything with the Mini. Lots of reasons from starting a new job, to having puppies then seasonal depression kicked in like every year and so forth.

So the Mini has sat, untouched and looks like this...

I decided to get a tattoo of the Mini on my arm as I want it to look when finished to try and give me a bit of a kick in the balls to get going with this again. Especially as technically it's my Wife's and I've just dismantled it and left it be for so long.

I decided to start hacking a few small suspect areas with a screwdriver and unsurprisingly found some rust...

Repair panels are easily available so not too worried about this. It's also not as bad as I was expecting but I'm sure I'll find more in the future.

 

[Bailes1992]

So I started work on removing the gear linkage. Luckily everything is well lubricated under there so nothing was too much hassle other than the roll pins that hold the linage onto the gear selector on the back of the gearbox.

And after a little bit of fighting, gear linkage is on the floor.

 

[Bailes1992]

Next up, removing the fuel hoses. My plan was to remove them whole and return the system to a factory standard with the EVAP system fully functional.

The fuel tank was removed first (but forgot to take any pictures of this). And then disconnected the fuel lines from the engine bay.

I then started undoing all the clips that hold all three pipes in place.

There's a cover on the bottom of the front bulkhead that protects the fuel hoses as they go up into the engine bay. This is held on by plastic nuts, one of which wouldn't move and was seized and subsequently rounded off when I tried to remove it. I decided therefore to attack it with fire.

So I'm not left with a burnt stud covered in melted plastic in an almost inaccessible location. Will have to come up with a way to deal with that at some point.

Unfortunately, it quickly became apparent that there was no way I was going to be able to remove the fuel hoses with the front subframe fitted so I ended up having the cut the fuel hoses.

You can also see there's a pipe clip that sits behind the front subframe and is also totally inaccessible. I ended up using a socket extension bar and a hammer to snap the stud on the bulkhead to get it to release.

So fuel hoses totally removed, the underside is now totally free of anything and ready to be stripped back to bare metal.

So after having the hack the old fuel hoses out, I'll be replacing them with flexible rubber, ditching the EVAP system and going for vented fuel caps. I say caps because this will be having a twin tank conversion during the course of the underside resto.

This month I need to clean the garage and then start hacking away at the layers of underseal and stonechip. You can see in the above picture where I already had a go at stripping back the underseal and stonechip with a sharp chisel to the left of the exhaust tunnel. It seemed quite easy, but famous last words.

Next month I'll be using Norton blaze discs, sanding discs and a sand blaster to take the undersize back to bare metal in prep for a layer of Bilt Hamber Electrox which is a zinc based cold galvanising primer which can be welded through.

Then I'll have to save up for a welder, some gas bottles and some replacement panels before I can continue.