'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.