4G63 RWD - We Have Steering

[boy1_]

I have decided to take some initiative and post some of the progress of the car I have been building in partnership with a friend. I will start posting some pictures and write ups of what we have done so far, and once caught up to where actual progress is, then post what is happening to the car in real time.

First some background. This project is the ambition of two engineering students idly chatting during basic first year programming lectures. What started as a big "What If" while listening to C++ being taught in the background, we decided to go ahead and actually build the vehicle. The first thought was to make an front engine AWD setup from a Subaru Justy or Metro. However it was quickly discovered that these vehicles are as rare as unicorns in this part of the world. After much humming and hawing it was decided to build a RWD car running some relatively easy to find 4 cylinder car with as much power as possible. The 4G63 motor from what is most common in Canada as an Eagle Talon, Plymouth Laser or Mitsubishi Eclipse was decided upon. Thus we set forth.

Summer of 2006. We found a shell we felt we could work with. A rather entertaining tow of about 75km to our shop (read friends garage) by a 5 ton tow truck (overkill? no such thing,) led to this. Watching a mini with no front wheels be pulled behind a 5 ton tow truck capable of pulling a bus is not something you see everyday, a feeling felt by most cars on the highway home.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/carjuly72006013.jpg
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/002Unloadingcar.jpg
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/carjuly72006020.jpg
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/carjuly72006075.jpg
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/carjuly72006076.jpg
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/carjuly72006102.jpg


The shell had been in an accident at some point, resulting in a ruined door and door sill, as well as a nice sized dent in the roof. The door sill damage followed by some of the rust we would have to deal with.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/DSC00654.jpg
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/DSC00656.jpg

And apparently we get a sunroof too....escape hatch i guess?
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/carjuly72006033.jpg

[boy1_]

Day 2.

After purchasing this 1978 Leyland Mini, we needed to get it down the driveway into the garage. Being used to cars that weigh more 86lbs (estimated) we fretted over getting it down the driveway with just rear wheels. An ultimate decision to see if we could simply lift the front end and walk it into the garage resulted in the car successfully making it into the garage. (It turns out that a Mini, minus the motor, weighs considerably less then the Volvo station wagons, mini vans and Ford station wagons we are used to.)

Here you can see the car in the shop. We even had the presence of mind to build two short sawhorses to hold the body up.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/007minishoehornedintogarage.jpg

The next big step was to completely strip the body. Out went the back seats, car had no front seats, steering wheel went, front and rear subframes out, exhaust off, mouse removed, headliner and carpet gone. And yes, I did say mouse. Turns out a mouse decided that under the back seat would be an ideal resting place.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/005mummymouse.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/006Thecrimescene.jpg

The first step to turning the house into a redneck dream: leaving the rear subframe in the backyard (where it remains 2+ years later)

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0163.jpg

At this point we decided for some strange reason to attack the front end with angle grinders and wire wheels. To this day I do not remember what the reasoning was. But it made a lot of deadly green dust, and helped get some aggression out.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/007minishoehornedintogarage.jpg

[boy1_]

Summer 2006 - February 2007

Sheetmetal (read "Getting Rid Of Rust") work was what needed addressing next. For two guys who have never done any sheetmetal work in our lives, I'd say we did a not horrible job (the panels wont fall out, so I'm happy with it.) This may be the time to note that myself and my partner in crime started this project with little to no actual experience working on cars, or more then a couple of years of high school shop for welding.

Here is our job on the passenger wheels well. I should note that the sheet we used to replace the footwells with was considerably heavier then that which the mini was made with. The footwells are now the strongest and stiffest pieces of sheetmetal on the car. (A lot to say on a unibody car.)

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/016floorfixcloseup.jpg

Next up we had to address the rusted out portion of the door sill. This required replacing the entire outter door sill. Parts were ordered from a guy in Victoria. Best part of buying from him was that we somehow managed to not pay shipping...Greyhound Canada Shipping is my friend now. Here are the results. (Look real close and you can see where we welded up the shifter hole as well.)

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/013rockerfinished2.jpg

We also cut out the air vents just infront of the doors. Replaced with 15guage steel. No more vents there, no pictures of it as of now either.

This would be a good time to talk about safety as well. It would appear that while welding around body filler, paint and undercoating while adding these panels, some rather nasty smoke is made. My safety conscious partner in this endeavor suggested we make some sort of smoke removal tool. Breaking a window out of the shop window, a bathroom fan, some tuck tape, a cheerios box and 20' of dryer hose gets this for you. The end of the dryer hose a a foot or so from your work results in a nice working environment. (We have yet to hear from the neighbours who are directly outside the exhaust)

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0175.jpg

[boy1_]

February 2007 - December 2008

That's a long long time is it not? Close to two years for a cage you say? Well, I do. The first reason for such a long time to complete this task was that I spent 12 of those months working. 8 months driving this 1000m underground:

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mines/P9220926.jpg

and 4 months around these:

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mines/IMG_0571.jpg
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mines/IMG_0577.jpg

In addition, being students, and having heavy work loads at this time, it was hard to get time in the shop. However, we did get it done. Three important purchases were made to make the cage possible.

Drill press and tubing notcher. I have some pictures of how we added a reducer gear to the drill press to turn it from a wood speed press, to one that reliable and quite nicely does metal work.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0166.jpg

The second piece was this tubing bender. Although it does "crush" the tube while it bends, we discovered that the easiest solution to this problem was to make many small bends, by "calculusing" the bend we are able to have essentially no deformation of the round shape of the tube using this style bender. (Benders that do not deform the tube tend to be much more expensive.)

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/025Cagehoopbending.jpg

Cage design was to be a main hoop over the occupants head. Then one piece on each side following the roof, then following the A pillar to the floor. Two door bars, two floor bars parallel to the door bars, dash bar and head level bar above windshield. Here are some shots of this in progress. We are using 1 5/8" tube with a 1/8" sidewall.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/026fwdcagebothbentsame.jpg
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/034Bearingplatecloseuptacked.jpg
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0209.jpg
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0187.jpg

All the bars buffed and ready to be re-fit and welded.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/DSC00934.jpg
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/DSC00921.jpg

Here is the driver door with the cage buffed and ready to be welded:

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/DSC00941.jpg

The idea we have come up with is to have the cage in several sections that will fit through the door and into the car. For final installation we will have sleeves between the butt joints of the cage sections. These will be bolted on both sides, and then welded. Once I get pictures of this in its finished state you will understand.

[Quadra]

Looks like good progress, just a few points to note though. If you can, I would mount the main central hoop further back, as you may find it difficult trying to mount two seats far enough back otherwise. Also the door bars look very high, I suppose they will give good protection, but you also need to be able to get out of the car quite quickly if it all goes wrong, either that or weld the doors shut and just use the windows instead like they do in the Dukes of Hazard (did you get the Dukes of Hazard in Canada?).

[mininut]

Are you using sched 40 pipe? thats really heavy stuff, did you look at sched 10?

looks good so far, keep it up.

M.

[Oz]

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/006Thecrimescene.jpg

Nice ICE :wink:

[Drinkwater]

Yeah, that's SCH 40 in there! The thought was that since the cage will double as a frame, we might as well go big. We also read up on the NHRA and other rules, and it seemed like SCH 40 would meet and exceed any roll cage requirements.

The hoop and door bars are a bit of a pain in their position for sure, but there's a method to the madness. The thought was that we would need to be mounting a pretty big engine in the back seats, so we didn't want to short ourselves on space. we double checked widths and we can fit at least 1 model of seat from sparco, and probably many others if we stagger the position of the driver and passenger.

the reason for the high door bar was not so much safety, but structure. the plan is to pick up the donor car's rear suspension and that height on the door bar 'looked right' to do that.

stay tuned: by some fluke we guessed right on!

cheers and thanks for the compliments! we'll get caught up to our current status over the next few days.

[Drinkwater]

Summer 2008 - Front Suspension and Brakes

While Colin was of raping the earth I was surveying leaky condos and working on the mini.


we had been putting off the front suspension for a few reasons. The biggest was finances, but we we also looking at doing a coil-over setup and hadn't decided on brakes. There isn't a whole lot of after market support for minis here, so I decided to just do a stock setup with Hi-Los. Of course the donor didn't come with a front suspension, only a subframe so figuring out what parts to buy was a bit of a challenge. Long story short, I spent a bunch of cash and got a box of goodies in return.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/DSC00001.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/DSC00002.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/DSC00036.jpg

The incomplete list includes:
Rubber Cones
Hi-Los
Dampers
Adj. Camber arm
Tie rods
Used hubs + outer CV
Wheel Bearings
new Rotors
Rebuilt calipers + pads
Poly Bushings all-round
Rear subframe mounts
New steering rack
And probably lots more I can't remember

Standard drums weren't going to cut it, so we went for metro discs. Looking back, I think I wanted the vented version. Hindsight being 20-20.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/DSC00010.jpg

what was supposed to be a simple assembly project turned into a major ordeal when the damn wheel nut wouldn't come off. I tried everything: Heat, hammering, penetrating oil... I lit the thing on fire half a dozen times! eventually I was sitting on the end of the breaker bar with a 4' length of tube over the handle while bouncing and pounding with a 4lb sledge... Still no dice. Then all of a sudden, Boom! Finally! I thought as I got up off the ground. Nope, I had only sheared off the wheel stud I was using as a wedge.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/DSC00035.jpg

This happened 3 more times, at which point I had to replace all the broken studs with the ones from the other hub. Needless to say, I was a bit pissed off! At this point I've been going at it for a few hours over the course or several evenings.

I say, "Fine, I'll give it one last go". Famous last words!

This time I bounce and hammer as usual, the hub eventually goes bang as usual, but instead of the stud breaking, I land flat an my ass beside the breaker bar. Oh joy, the breaker bar is broken. Sheared right through the square drive lug.

The following day I stopped by Home Depot and picked up a new bar. What a difference! The new one has to be 3x Stiffer than the old one. I set up the hub as usual in the vise and gave it one firm bounce. BANG! The wheel nut is off! That simple 5 minute job only took 10 days and about 4h of work.

The rest of the rebuild went smoothly. The wheel bearings were replaced, everything was assembled with anti seize and lubed up. By mid August the mini was back on its own two feet again!

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/DSC00019.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0659.jpg


At the end of it all the mini is put together and the garage is in pieces. The world is as it should be.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/DSC00034.jpg

[boy1_]

September 2008:

Back from digging holes, with a new front end installed, and some money in the bank account, it was time to start looking for a donor car. The wonder that is craigslist brought us an ad for a 1991 Plymouth Laser RS. The description was as brutally honest as any car ad I have ever read. Hole in the exhaust, that's fine it's getting ripped out anyhow. Bad body and paint, perfect that's going to the scrap heap anyhow. Drivers head rest covered in ancient hair gel, gross, and fine, it's going to the dump as well. What redeeming qualities did this vehicle have you may ask. FWD, standard transmission, turbo, several recently taken car of engine maintenance pieces. A drive into the suburbs, a quick paper transfer, and I now owned another car.

She ugly...
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/DSC_1530.jpg

Within a week we had the motor out. A process that at first seemed like it might be daunting. But a couple of evenings of McDonalds dinners and rye to drink, and it was out of the car and on the floor. Careful to label anything being unplugged from the motor, and taking pictures of almost every step, we pulled the motor. The highlights:

Pre-removal:
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/DSC00047.jpg

When its hard to reach some sensor connectors on the back of the motor I found the easiest way to reach them was to jump right in.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/DSC00093.jpg

Warm September nights lead to working into the night:
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0606.jpg

And there it's out:
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0619.jpg

Axle nuts had to be the worst to remove. However a 4' extension on our breaker bar and one guy standing on the brakes solved the issue quite quickly. Overall the removal went very smoothly. The day after motor removal we started to pull the shifter, the e-brake, and the wiring harness.

Here is where the car sat on the street for the next 4 months, this date should be noted as the official "rednecking" of the street. Cue the banjo music. Notice the considerable gain of clearance after a large mass is removed:
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0628.jpg

The interior got a little nasty during removal of wiring harness and other goodies.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0624.jpg
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0627.jpg

[Drinkwater]

Fall/Winter 2008

It may seem hard to believe, but pulling the motor from the donor car was a big letdown. we were really hoping it would be a challenge, and that getting it done would be an accomplishment that would spur on further progress. nope. it was easy. 2 evenings pulling and labeling wires, hoses etc, and an afternoon to yank it was all it took.

because we lost motivation, and because we both had a very heavy course load at school, not much more was done in the fall. we stripped various bits from the car (like removing 1000 screws and plastic panels to get at the dash wiring loom) and piled it up for future consideration.

The spoils of our rape and pillage:
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0657.jpg

the gutted donor:

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0634.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0635.jpg

and don't worry, the clutch and brake master, and a few feet of that exhaust will be coming with us too!

-----------------Fast forward to christmas break---------------------------

For all this time that pesky bloody rollcage was still just sitting there tacked together but not welded. now that we had the engine out, we finally needed the cage mounted permanently (after over 2 years of not doing it...). over the christmas break we borrowed a bigger welder and spent 2 afternoons pretending to know what we knew how to weld.

Here it is assembled out of the car
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/DSC00062.jpg

sorry we don't have more pictures from welding up, the camera batteries were dead for about 2 weeks.

before you offer congratulations, consider this: the cage was designed to be bolt together. it is made of 3 pieces: 2 door sections and a hoop that goes over your head. we chose to do it this way so that it could be welded out of the car, then bolted together in the car.

adding it all up, there were 10 joints, which needed 2 holes per joint, and there is a tube inside the joint which needs to be drilled too. that comes to a total of 40 holes which needed to be drilled in the stupidly thick 1/8 sidewall pipe.

but like in all good kingdoms, it is the peasants who suffer for the mistakes of the king.
it was drill bit carnage. we now have no numbered bit from about #8 to #25. we also killed a 5/16'' in the process too:

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0642.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0645.jpg

a closeup joint:

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0647.jpg

the joints will be welded up as best as possible next time we have the big welder around for added strength

and its finally done!!!!! after 2 years of farting around with bodywork, rust, rollcage we are finally in a position to put a stupidly big engine in the back seat of a mini! needless to say this christmas break was a happy one.

ok, so technically we're only just starting this project after 2 years but it still feels huge!

coming up next: back seats out, engine in!

[ingravido]

congratulations excellent photos, is now manufacturing the subframe or the process of painting ... I'm anxious to see the structure of the subframe. :P

[boy1_]

Hi ingravido. We will be doing all of the frame fabrication before painting. I see your from Chile. I hear it's great there. I hope to be able to go there for work one day.

January 2009

Cage went in the car, we're happy. Progress. Time to move onto the rear seats...and our goal of making them disappear. Zip discs and one of our many angle grinders (somehow we've ended up with three) and we took care of that pesky element. Again we have no pictures for several days worth of work. However at this point we rolled the motor into the large hole we created and smiled at it and thought "By golly, this might work."

Proof we cut the seats out. Some rough calculations, and it would appear that for every pound of scrap we leave in the driveway we are dropping the property value approximately $50,000.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0638.jpg

Fast forward to the next day, and it's time to remove the subframe and crossmember from the Laser. One afternoon of not attending class, and we had the subframe and crossmember out.

Fast forward another couple of days. Subframe is attached to the motor, motor is positioned within the car and excess floor is removed as to allow motor and subframe to fit.

The motor in place:
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0652.jpg

At this point it was determined that wheels may be a good idea. Ideally we wanted the smallest wheels possible, 16" stock wheels from the Laser were not going to work. We decided that we would grab some steel wheels from Canadian Tire with the cheapest tires possible. I believe we accomplished the goal of being the first pair of people to walk into a Canadian Tire in the city of Vancouver with the entire hub and brake assembly from a car and walk up to the parts counter and say "We need the smallest rim that will fit over this." After much confusion we ended up with a pair of black steel rims with dirt cheap tires on them. Back to the bat cave.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0662.jpg

Motor blocked up and aligned with the subframe and body. It was now time to attach the subframe to our crossmember and cage.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0648.jpg

Seen above is the crossmember we installed along the floor between the cage uprights. 2" x 4" with a 3/16" sidewall. It is all tacked in now, and fits beautifully. The tires are 175/65R14, and don't stick out horrendously:
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0655.jpg

One thing we decided was that we would use the rear brake assemblies from the Laser, all it will require is a bracket made up to adjust the bolts width that hold the caliper to the hub. Using the rear brakes will also be very nice since they have the hand brake built in, unlike the original front brakes. Another decision that has been made is our paint scheme. We had decided to use a cheap spray on bedliner for our cage as it is durable, and easy to apply. Seeing the finish and ease of application (read: hard to mess up) we have decided that the entire vehicle will receive this treatment, with a white grille. It is a matte black with a slight texture to it. As seen here:
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0644.jpg

Up next will be the start of the rear end of the frame. You can't imagine the good mood we have been in these weeks. It's actually coming together. Quick note: if you go into our photobucket account you can find many more pictures that didn't make the cut.

[Drinkwater]

This build is coming along really well. Over the past 2 weeks we have been building the rear frame to pick up the engine subframe mounts, motor mounts and the suspension struts.

The first piece we made was a hoop which lies horizontally and goes from the roll bar to the rear, following the body right under the level of the rear window. This thing was a real bitch to make because we couldn't do any test fits until it was bent 95% and cut almost to length. All in all I'm very happy with the result.

I don't know if its been mentioned, but the small tube you see bridging the 2 springs is not a budget strut brace, its just a jig to set camber, and stop the springs from flopping around so much. we did some highly precise calculations and set the camber ~2.5 degrees less than the donor car's stock setting. we did this without any real reason other than it 'seemed' to be about right....plus it allowed the springs to clear the body so we wouldn't have to modify the rear panels.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/DSC00074.jpg

and here is the passenger side where it attaches to the roll hoop:

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/DSC00073.jpg

the next step was to make some supports for the engine subframe's rear mounts. as you can sorta-not-really see, we brought down some pipe, and braced it with some 1'' square tube. i'm pretty sure its 4x more than needed, which is the story of anything structural in the car.
if you are wondering, on the end of the pipe we have a washer with a nut welded to the top side. to attach the subframe to the car, you insert a bolt from the bottom, through the subframe and into the washer/nut. we'll just have to remember to put loctite on these so they don't rattle loose.

there are some better pictures further down the page.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/DSC00069.jpg

seen from the top where they meet the back hoop:

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/DSC00068.jpg

its hard to see from the pictures, but the subframe actually has 3 bolts per side in the back. i don't know why they did it that way, probably because engines pulling cars create alot of force or something...whatever. we're only going to mount to two of the three.
the next bracing we added was a short section of pipe with a washer and nut on the end to the second subframe mount.

here you can see it disappearing down to a point which is right below the rear valance. the angles are a bit deceiving in this picture, but believe that it all works out. when we lift the car off the motor I'll get a picture looking back so you can better see how its all connected together.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/DSC00070.jpg

continuing on, the next piece is some pipe which runs forward from the rear subframe to the roll hoop. these will be taking a good chunk of forces generated by the motor during acceleration and braking.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/DSC00072.jpg

this is the passenger side, with the front of the car to the left. the brace bar runs across the bottom.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0675.jpg

this picture shows the entire assembly on the driver's side looking in through the boot:

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/DSC00071.jpg

the final pieces we have made are 2 little stubs which hold onto the body. before we added them the rear had a real nice wiggle, now its solid. they go through one of the holes where the mini rear subframe would mount.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0674.jpg

thats it for now. all that remains is the left and right motor mounts, and the 2 struts. once those are built, we will lift the mini off the engine/subframe assembly and properly weld the frame. we'll also paint it and the back area of the car.

[welshy]

Guys,

I am really enjoying your diary and I am at a similar stage myself.

Just a question, to improve your structural stiffness shouldn't your tubes be tying into common joints to improve the efficiency of transmitting the loads throughout the structure?

I.e. on the picture below the two diagonal tubes should be touching one another where they meet the vertical.

My understanding is at the moment the gap on the vertical between the two diagonals will induce a moment (resulting in deflection) and will not be as structurally stiff if there was no gap. It make profiling the tube a bit of a pain but will be worth it.

I hope this is making sense.

Keep up the good work lads.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0675.jpg

[boy1_]

Hi welshy,

Took a look at your build, looks like it's coming along nicely.

As far as our tubing positioning, we considered joining them as you suggest, but decided that since the one angled piece is more or less just there for stiffening up the back, so hopefully no big loads through it. Also, the distances are relatively small that we're talking about, so we are not too concerned right now. We may reconsider it again, however at this point we think it should work.

[welshy]

Sounds like a logical reason.

Keep up the good work and hopefully i can keep up with your pace but one step behind.

Cheers
Ben

[Drinkwater]

The past 3 weeks have really flown by. Its been midterm season at school, but somehow there's been time to work on the mini. Just don't tell my automatic control prof this is why I didn't do so hot on his midterm.....

We've been working hard at getting the frame finished up. My uncle Joe gave us a huge boost by getting us some 1/4'' plate cut up. It saved us a bunch of time fabricating. The parts were to connect the tops of the shocks to the frame we've built. We also used some to make the motor mounts.

The first job to get the shocks mounted was getting them centered in the car. Before we began making the cage, we got the motor and body leveled, but we never picked a final resting spot for the shocks. After a good 30 minutes of measuring and head scratching we were nowhere. It appears that there's nothing square, consistent or aligned in this car! embracing this concept of wonkiness, we decided that having the shocks 2 fingers in from the body on each side 'looked right'. It felt right too i suppose.... oh dear, some engineers we are! 2 tacks later and the final variable in the design had been fixed.

The next step was to drill the big 1/4'' plates that will attach to the top of the shock. 3 holes and a bit of grinding later, we had the first 2 components done. These plates are attached to the tube frame by....you guessed...more 1/4'' plate. Its difficult to explain, so I'll let the pictures do it for me:

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0708.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0712.jpg

The plate has a tube diameter hole cut in it, then we split the plates across the holes. originally we had wanted to slide these over the tube, but that would require a massive amount of backwards work to take things apart for marginal gains in strength. The tops are tacked in place sloppily so that we don't lose them. We will remove them while doing the final welding so that we can get better access.

These are the plates sitting on the roof awaiting the final install.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0694.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0693.jpg

The next parts were the tubes which brace from the shock to the main roll hoop. The first picture is of a test stub to check that we would clear the shock mounts. We haven't tacked these pieces in because they will get in the way. They'll go in near the end of final welding.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0679.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0714.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0713.jpg

Next on the agenda were motor mounts. These required a bit of forethought because the whole purpose of this rear frame is to allow us to lift the body of of the engine/tranny/suspension subframe assembly. We had to make sure that they wouldn't cause any clearance problems, and that they'd allow the engine to drop straight down.

First up is the driver's side mount. It is 2 pieces of plate mounted to the tube the same way as with the suspension.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0711.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0690.jpg

And the passenger side mount. The one was just out of some 1'' square tube.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0687.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0688.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0709.jpg


HOLY CARP! I think we're done all the major frame fabrication!!

The last thing today was to see if all our 'design' paid off by lifting the body and frame off the motor assembly in preparation for welding next week. It was a little uncanny how easily we were able to lift the body off. We took our time, going especially slow since the entire rear end is just held together with tacks. Even at the slow rate, it only took us about 30 minutes to lift the body and slide the engine out.

Going up!

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0699.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0702.jpg

And out the side! Take note of the custom rolling frame designed especially for this job. Aka the shop creeper.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0703.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0704.jpg

It feels so big and empty back here! Until you start bumping your head on all the jigging and braces that are still in.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0714.jpg

We tried to get some good pictures of the frame, but with all the bracing that still in there, it turned out to be a cluttered mess. Once we do the final weld, we'll post some nice clear pics of what it looks like.

So that's it!! We're effing done the fab!!!!

Tuesday and Wednesday we will be welding, then its time to start wiring, plumbing and doing all the fun stuff to get this sucker running! Its happy days right now.

[Drinkwater]

Its amazing how much time you can find when you essentially skip two days of school. On Monday and Tuesday this week we made a big push to get the frame all welded up. Thanks to Pete for letting us borrow his welder!

Basically nothing has changed except that the back can support its own weight. with the bracing gone you can see alot more clearly what the frame arrangement is.

Driver's side rear corner. The square with a round hole at the top of the picture is where the shock/strut sits into. the two loose ends on the lower left get bolted to the engine subframe. the ends of the pipes are a washer with a nut welded to the top side. The motor mount is on the far right.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0722.jpg

And this is the passenger side.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0723.jpg

These are the same two views but taken from farther back so you get a better idea of how its all tied together.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0719.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0718.jpg

This is through the side window, and its my favorite. I just love how the bars look.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0724.jpg

And here's me looking bored. Yah, whatever, I've seen 200hp, 2L, 16v engines go in the back of 100s of minis. No big deal.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0731.jpg

And here's Colin looking like a goof. He's going to be peeved with me when he sees it here, but that's what you get for 'accidentally' hitting me with bar stock! :twisted: :evil: Smile for the camera!!

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0715.jpg


Now we have to get the motor back in and begin work on the interior. I think we'll be doing the driver's seat, then working out the pedals, steering column, shifter and handbrake. Forward progress continues, it's happy days!

[Carl S]

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0715.jpg


sicko

[Drinkwater]

Just a quick update.

The drier's seat is in and we are working on getting the pedal box installed. The brake MC was going to interfere with the front sub frame. we were forced to take the pedal box apart and bend the pedals. The pads are a bit crooked, but now the MC, steering column and pedals will all work together. we are still getting brackets made to hold it in place, so once that's done we'll post some pics.

[boy1_]

With regards to my goofy picture: grumble, grumble, grumble.

More progress has been made. Over the course of this week we have managed to install the drivers seat, the brake and clutch pedals and the handbrake.

We went on one chase around the city to find some bolts and a few other parts to get the rear steering locked in. Managed to get very few of the parts we wanted. I have however learned that most autoparts stores in this fine city I live in hires people who don't have any mechanical car knowledge beyond knowing what a steering wheel is. Rant aside, we will be more successful next time around.

On to better things. We got the motor mounted back into the car, and it is now sitting on wheels for the first time ever. HURRAH for us. After bouncing it up and down we determined that the front end has something like 200lbs on it. Drinkwater and myself are able to lift it rather easily. (Wheelie potential is high, me thinks.)

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0733.jpg

We decided that the next logical step would be to install the drivers seat. So we did. Not much to note here except that we had to cut off the slider bar that allows the seat to slide forward and back. The front end of the sliders had to be raised using a piece of square tube.

Pedals were decided on as the next piece to install. We have chosen to use the pedalbox out of the Laser. The Laser pedal box contains two parts. The first containing the brake and clutch pedals. And another much smaller piece with the accelerator. The clutch pedal is on the left, however the master cylinder actually mounts far to the right, since there is a spring assist mechanism on it.

After determining that the pedals were going to mount too far towards the passenger side of the vehicle we removed the pedals and bent them towards the drivers side. Problem solved. However the flat mounting points of the pedal box required building sheet metal mounting points as seen.

Here seen without the box, you can see the mounting plates. We mounted the top of the pedal box using some bent pieces of 1/4" flat bar.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0734.jpg

Now seen with the pedalbox installed. Everything should work just fine the way it is seen here. It is solid as a rock, and once we finish boxing in the mounting points it should be even more so.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0736.jpg

Seat and Pedals.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0739.jpg

The next step was to mount the hand brake. This was a quick job. Bent a mount out of sheet, welded it in. Attached hand brake. Done. And being a couple of smart young men, we completely forgot to take a picture of it completed. We do however have pictures of our start at making brake adapters for the rear brakes.

As described earlier we are going to be using the rear brakes from the Laser on the front hubs. The mounting points are 5" on the hubs, but 4" on the calipers. But Colin you say, those are different sizes. But quickly I respond with "And so we shall build an adapter."

Here's the issue:
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0741.jpg

We will be using 1/4" plate to make some brackets to make those work, pictures of the completed plates to come later. This week the plan is to get the rear brakes done, get the shifter installed and get the rear ball joint replaced. That's it for now.

[boy1_]

The last two days have been eventful. Tuesday we attacked the car, and while no big wonderful things were completed we did managed some good progress. We replaced one ball joint on the rear. This required one part fire and one sledgehammer. It was a pain in the rear, but all in all, it got done. While Drinkwater worked on that, I managed to get the two plates to mount the rear brakes made. They got put away before the camera came out, so no pics now. If I remember I will try and get some soon.

Yesterday was a day of noticeable advance. Drinkwater and I divided forces in order to get the shifting assembly mounted. Since it is a cable shifter, we previously determined that by turning the shifter 180 degrees, we would in face still be able to shift normally using the Laser's original shift cables and shifter. Drinkwater designed and made a bracket to hold the cable ends to the transmission, while I worked on a mount for the actual shifter.

Here you can see the shifter assembly. Mounted nice and high so that it will be nicely placed next to the wheel. We were initially concerned about the hand brake handle landing too close to the shifter, however we managed to make it all work. And you don't even bust your knuckles when using the handbrake (WEEEEEEEEEEEE E-brake turns). This item is sturdy as can be. My official test for this was to give it a good kick. The only movement was from the car's suspension. One annoyance is that the whole shifter assembly is on rubber mounts that have more play then it takes to get into the next gear. I do believe the rubber mounts are getting removed and we will either weld it on permanently, or perhaps fab up some hard mounts.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0745.jpg

Here is what Drinkwater masterminded during the day. It shifts very nicely and is incredibly solid. You can see where the top piece of sheet mounts, that is where the cables originally mounted, but aiming in the opposite direction (as the shifter was on the other side of the motor in the Laser of course.) To make these brackets the original was cut up, and then this was fabbed up at an angle as to match the original angle that the cables mounted at. Apparently skateboard bearing will fit to replace the sloppy rubber connectors at the end of the cable. That is a simple future upgrade.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0748.jpg

Here is a picture of the handbrake setup as promised. It sits at an almost perfect place for your hand to reach, and will fit between the seats nicely (we even checked that, aren't we clever!......or more lucky to that we remembered two people have to fit into this contraption)
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0750.jpg

Here is the solid point that connects the car to the brake wires.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0751.jpg

And the same thing from above.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0752.jpg

And one more.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0744.jpg

[boy1_]

Today we decided to tackle the immense...annoying....long......pain in the arse task of getting the steering wheel installed. Initially we thought that installing the radiator might be easier and less strenuous, however we got over that idea and decided to jump in and put the wheel in.

We decided that the stock mini wheel and column just were not going to have the wheel where we wanted it. The column was clumsy and in the way, and then the wheel ends up pointing at the roof like a damned truck. This however takes us to the next issue, the Laser's steering column is designed to span a distance about 32x longer then we required. The ultimate decision was that we would use the mini wheel and top half of column, and connect this to one short leg of the Laser column that contains two U-joints. We will also be using the turn signals and ignition from the Laser.

Step 1: We sat in the mini and figured out exactly where the wheel wanted to be so we could still shift and use the pedals. (Mini's are really small it turns out....I find my family's Volvo V70 wagon small.....this things is micro......itsy bitsy......I give kudos to those people that drive Mini's as their daily driver.)
Step 2. We cut the Mini column down to the length we required, as well as the outer tube of the mini column. At this point we had an issue...there is a plastic bushing to hold the inner column inside the outer column close to the wheel, however by cutting the column short we do not have a bushing at the bottom....problem solving time.

Here is the stock mini bushing we needed to replicate.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0764.jpg

We had some plastic/teflon cutting boards we had used as bearing on an airgun project from years past, so we used a holesaw and cut a piece, then drilled a hole in centre for the column to pass through.

Cutting board, and finished product.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0759.jpg

Now how do u make a perfectly circular hole to fit the column into when your drill index doesn't have a bit big enough....with this....a round file and drill.......and a small prayer asking for you fingers to come out of it alive.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0760.jpg

And everything together. And you will note that we have used the rack connection from the mini steering column (cut off of course) and welded it to the Laser rack, (this is at the bottom of this picture.)
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0763.jpg

The next step is to weld the mini inner column to the top U joint of the Laser column. (Near where our cutting board bearing is.)

And there you have it, a steering column made of two hacked up columns.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0769.jpg

The column is welded on there very well. And is solid like a rock.

As an aside, I forgot how we made the turn signal setup work. If you look at the finished column you will see a blue collar close to the steering wheel. This is the turn signal cancel mechanism. It has three small tabs that sat in corresponding holes of the Laser's steering wheel hub. Thus, when the wheel turned, it did also. In order to make this function work correctly we welded on the washer u see just ahead of the blue collar, (between the blue collar and the steering wheel.) We simply drilled 3 holes that corresponded to the three tabs. Now our signals are set up and will even cancel properly. And to that setup we can bolt the ignition...so we will even have a proper ignition with a key and everything.

Today was a good day, a good day indeed. Next step, seat belts and radiator. And within the next 24-48 hours I believe I will be ordering a fuel cell, fuel pump, brake master cylinder, brake proportioning valve, line lock and possibly a radiator fan...that one is still undecided though.

PS. Here is the way to stop having your car used as a storage area for other peoples junk.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0765.jpg

[Drinkwater]

Well i think its time for a pre-weekend update. Not much happened this week unfortunately. I was busy with school crap tuesday afternoon, so colin was alone. and he managed to screw everything up! just kidding. he got the steering column finished up by sleeving the mini column so that the donor car ignition could clamp to it properly. No pics, but try really hard and you can imagine what turn signals that don't turn on the steering column look like.

wednesday we were kind of stuck. now that the interior is mostly in place, we are quickly running out of installation/fabrication jobs to do. theres a long list of little things like grinding and final fitment, but we aren't quite close enough to the finish to have motivation to deal with them. BUT we did recieve confirmation that an order of goodies had arrived. the company only shipped inside the USA, so we hopped in the car for the 45min drive down to the border. After getting grilled for 5mins about why we wanted to get car parts by the US agent, we were through. literally 100yds from the border station was the reciever, we paid the $5 and now we had 2 boxes of goodies!

heres the list:

8 Gal plastic fuel cell
1'' willwood Brake MC with remote mount reservoirs
adjustable proportioning valve
walbro 255lph fuel pump
line lock (HE HE HE)

Here are the goods:

Fuel Cell - it's going to live up here, probably installed tomorrow.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0782.jpg

Brake MC - We've all seen these before
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0783.jpg

Brake proportioing valve - twist to get up to 57% reduction in line pressure. should be enough to prevent surprise oversteer!
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0785.jpg

Line lock. terrible photo too. picture a heavy metal cylinder with a hole on each end, and 2 wires.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0786.jpg

Walbro 255 fuel pump. Heavy metal cyllinder with 2 holes and 2 wires :lol:
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0784.jpg

this weekend we'll get the brake MC and fuel cell installed. after that, its into wiring and plumbing. we're thinking of doing the fuel system out of soft lines and AN fittings for ease, then do brakes and clutch with hard lines.


Also, a quick update on the poor bastardized donor car. its been pretty thoroughly stripped, and theres nothing left. the wrecker is coming in the next few days for it, but in the meantime, mom needed access to the driveway. so it was dragged out one last time behind the crown vic. we got the jack under the front and towed it backward onto the street. the problem is i don't have hard curbs on my street, and the sides of the road are gravel. the jack got all bogged down in the muck.

Being responsible and resourceful people, we did what first came to mind. Get the jack stands, lay down a sheet of plywood.......
WAIT a sec, that's not us at all!! new plan: jack it up all the way and give 'er a nice firm push. worked like a charm. car is out of the road, and we didn't have to do any real work! only problem is this minor dent in the fender. not my car though! :D

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0778.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0779.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0780.jpg

i can see the dollars flying off the value of the house! lucky for the neighbours none of them are trying to sell their places right now. it'll be all gone in a few days though anyhow.

[boy1_]

Sunday afternoon, and doing a slope stability analysis just isn't putting me in a good mood. That means its time to update our progress.

After getting our goodies Wednesday we had some stuff to work on. Quick sidenote though, John forgot to mention that during our 20 minute trip into Washington state, we managed to get my car searched front to back by two of Canada's border guards. I personally don't think I come across as a terrorist, however John might....6'3" blonde white guy.......anyhow, I guess I should be happy I cleaned all my rifle and shotgun shells out of my car a few weeks ago, and that they only wanted to look in the boot of the car, and not in the boot of me!

But I digress, on to our progress from Saturday. First we attached the master cylinder to the car. This was a royal pain my rear. Getting a hand up behind the pedal box to install the bolts was bad. Trying to get the nuts on these bolts was even worse. One of the nuts is located such that getting to it is just shy of impossible. We welded the end of a coat hanger to the nut in order to maneuver it into place. I dare say the brake master cylinder is fixed in place for all eternity.

In place and stuck forever...I hope. As you can see we cut some of the crossmember away to allow it clearance. Not a ton of thought went into strengthening the cross member since we have taken a few chunks out of it, something to be considered later.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0790.jpg

While I wrestled with the master cylinder, John made up some brackets for our Gerry can, errr......rather, Fuel Cell. (My description of it is "A red gerry can with an AN fitting thrown on") The Tank is held in with two pieces of threaded rod vertically, clamping two frames of angle at the top and bottom.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0788.jpg

This setup is made from the finest shelving units we could find. No, seriously......the angled steel we used is from a set of shelving, but it works perfectly, and is nice and wide to hold the tank edges. And this setup came out being very strong and stable. I do not forsee any problems with it.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0789.jpg

For those interested in seeing the brake adapter brackets I made, here one is. Basically makes the caliper for the rear brakes sit at the right height and allows the holes on the caliper to fit those on the hub. 1/4" plate.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0793.jpg

Next set of tasks for us to complete are as follows:
-mount radiator
-install fuel cell rock guard (aka a piece of sheet steel under the tank)
-purchase fasteners, brake/fuel/clutch/radiator line and fittings
-install brake/fuel/clutch line and fittings
-install and fabricate intake
-install wiring harness
-fill with fluids
-DRIVE IT

We are living in happy days.

[boy1_]

Well, John's father gave us a deadline at the end of February. That being that the donor Laser had to be gone by the end of March, or there would be consequences.......UH OH. Well, since tomorrow is the end of the month of March we decided it would definitely be time to start seeing if the car could be removed some time soon. At first we though the kidney foundation might take it, however they have surprisingly high standards. To take your car they require you to have a motor and 4 wheels......tish tosh i say, wheels and motors are severely over rated. One call to Dirty Bird Scrap Car Removal and we have an appointment for the car to be taken tomorrow. Into the interior we managed to squeeze every piece of metal garbage on the property. This includes the back seat and boot of the mini, the rear subframe of the mini, and a whole bunch of scrap cage tube we never used, and is galvanized so it is awful to weld and deal with.

The results of our tetris like game of jamming stuff into the car.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00084.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00086.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00088.jpg

Full is it not? Tomorrow it goes, and the property value will literally increase by several hundred thousand dollars.

[boy1_]

And Colin said "let there be radiator..........And there wase radiator. And Colin saw the radiator, that it was good". That is to say, today we installed the radiator. In addition we got the rock guard for the fuel cell installed.

Here you see the rock guard installed. And infront of that are the bottom mounts for the radiator. We stole the radiator mounting tabs out of the Laser. The rubber inserts are not there since welding would most likely result in melting.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0796.jpg

Radiator in place. Its nice and secure, should work just fine.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0797.jpg

Clearance under the hood when hood is closed. I guess the speedometer hole has a good use. Showed us how much clearance there was.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0801.jpg

As a side note, we also picked up some new rotors. It looks like they are going to require some jiggering and adjustments to fit right. The front wheels are being replaced with larger ones anyhow, the rears might take some thinking to get them installed.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0681.jpg

Can't deny that we will have ample stopping power now though.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/Mini/IMG_0686.jpg

Tomorrow and Saturday we will do a milk run for parts around the city. Hopefully get the brakes, rad, fuel lines and clutch all done in the near future.

[Drinkwater]

Well this is going to be the last update for about a month. After 3 months of mega progress and huge leaps on the car, our momentum has finally run out. we are completely bogged down in bullshit, and with this term's final exams beginning in a week we decided it would be best to stop and come back to it in May fresh and energized.

But i can't leave here without making a brief rant about how fucking difficult it is to find bloody metric fasteners in this city. It so damn frustrating to go into 5 different places and none of them have a single one. we needed a few bolts so that we could mount our rear brake calipers and finish up the engine mounts. with those bolts we would have another 3 days of work to do, so getting them was important, but there isn't a single place that has them in stock. then we try to switch gears and do the radiator and fuel lines, but the braindead morons in lordco don't know fuck all about cars, and can't sell you something unless you can tell them every last detail about your car. anyhow, needless to say it is not possible to simply buy a generic part. anyhow, its been multiple days of driving all over and not getting anything done. exams are a convenient excuse to step back from the project for a bit and get a bit of perspective.

more to come in may....

PS. the fucking spellchecker really takes the teeth out of a rant! :D :evil:

[NovaNath]

Awesome project folks, and an entertaining write-up! :D

[TurboMini]

Any updates? I like seeing local builds. Also this thread is entertaining and the build is different.

[boy1_]

Unfortunately we have completed very little in the last two months. April was spent attempting to pass all of our exams, which I am glad to report we both managed to accomplish. We soon realized however that neither of us had a penny to our name at the moment. May has been spent trying to refill the coffers by doing landscaping and construction work on a holiday home a few hundred miles outside Vancouver. But do not worry, during this time we have been developing a list of the parts we need to order and once we get those we should be good to finish the car before the end of summer (finish the car in this case means having it make noises and drive up and down the street.) We should be back at work with the mini very soon, (1-2 weeks I imagine.)

[TurboMini]

Excellent. My progress has been a little slow on my B16A powered Travelle"R". However I have made some progress on two other Minis I am building and a motorcycle. Look forward to seeing some progress on your project. Glad to hear that you got through all of your exams.

[Drinkwater]

Okay, we've been really bad this summer. the car was meant to be done by now! But we have fallen off the bandwagon.

It all started (or stopped) a few months ago right before exams. we got stalled out on a few dumb issues. We can't source a few metric fasteners, and that's holding up the final installation of the engine. now its not critical, but it is really annoying. we don't have the right bolts for the engine side mounts, so its being held upright by a ratchet strap wrapped around the tranny.

Like the well trained procrastinators that we are, we have been ignoring the fastener problem until it goes away, and tried to focus on the fuel and brakes. all we need to do is make up fuel lines to go between the cell, pump, filter and fuel rail. Long story short, -AN fittings are the most confusing things out there. I'm very sure in reality they are simple and easy to understand, but there doesn't seem to be a lick of good info about them on the internet, and the local auto parts guys give you the 'stupid face' when you ask. Its a similar story for the brakes and the hard lines.

So basically we've been thinking about it, but haven't done a lick of real work.

Now for the excuse: Its summer and we have unlimited stay at a lakefront cabin. We've been hanging out here for the better part of the last month, and it hasn't exactly motivated us to work on the mini. daily swims and cliff jumps, with plenty of beer and barbecuing are the name of the game!

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/The%20Lake/DSC00093.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/The%20Lake/DSC00105.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/The%20Lake/DSC00111.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/The%20Lake/DSC00122.jpg

That last one is colin posing for the camera. Now i know what you're thinking, but no, he was stone sober when that was taken. I think he was giving me his Sasquatch impersonation, but your guess is as good as mine. The kid's not quite right in the head...

Now before you think all we've been doing for the past 4 weeks is swimming and tanning, we have been working on another project. It is dubbed the 'drinking raft' and its purpose pretty self explanatory. The design constraints are this: it has to hold 2 beach chairs and a cooler. It will serve as primary transport between the house and the jumping cliffs. Construction is pretty simple: a frame of 2x4s and 3 sheets of plywood. buoyancy is coming from 6 30Gal plastic drums.

The platform is built, and we're picking up the drums next week. Pics to come.

and..er..no, it did not take us 3 weeks to build the platform. it took about 2 hours. the other 2 weeks, 6 days and 22 hours have been spent very productively. sun, swim, read, nap, drink, eat. repeat as necessary.

so in all likelihood the mini is going to be neglected for another month or 2. but its not forgotten!

[boy1_]

Well, school is back in for the year (for myself at least, Drinkwater has managed to somehow get himself a degree.) This means only one thing, something new to procrastinate from. Today we made contact with a local shop that seems to have knowledgeable and helpful staff so tomorrow Drinkwater will be running around town buying parts for the brakes, radiator lines, clutch lines and fuel lines. I look forward to getting this beast running within the month.

[Drinkwater]

Summer is over, which means sitting on our asses isn't as pleasant as it used to be. It also means that we will be making a major push to get this thing finished up. We've already been hard at it, so lets just jump right in.

If you can recall as far back as April, we had finished up all the structural work, got the engine and rear running gear in, and had fabbed up a steering and shifter setup. Then we got bogged down in a bunch of BS with fasteners and fuel fittings and nothing happened for a few months.

The goal now is to get the car 'drivable' over the next few weeks. Not necessarily street legal, but have a running motor, brakes, clutch, etc. Next week's goal is to do the brakes, clutch, fuel and coolant lines. After that we'll deal with wiring up the engine and firing it up.

The first step was to get some more information how to plumb these systems. The guys at Mopac auto supply really know their stuff, and unlike the donkeys behind the counter at Lordco, these guys' experience with cars goes beyond just driving them to and from work. I can't say enough about how helpful it was to talk face to face with a real person. We drove out to Mopac and got the basics of brake/clutch and fuel lines explained. All we needed to do was have a general map of the systems and they could spec out all the right parts and fittings.

The following day I went about gathering info about how much hose we need, how long the brake flex lines needed to be, how many fittings we needed to run the fuel line etc etc. Part of my travels included getting under the car and confirming what fitting was needed to plumb in the clutch slave cylinder. I rolled under the car and took off the existing banjo. Then in an act of sheer stupidity I grabbed the slave to see if it would move or not. It's connected to the 2200lb pressure plate, so there's no way it can move right?? WRONG!! It can move very freely in one direction, which is exactly what happened. And out rushed a perfectly aimed stream of brake fluid straight into my left eye. Hot damn does that burn!!!!! I busted out from under the car so fast i could have caught that man-woman track star! I ran straight into the laundry room and forced my head under the tap. Only it wouldn't go under far enough!! Damn, my other eye was in the way and hitting the faucet!! I finally angled in and got soothing relief from the water.

Luckily there was no damage from the brake fluid. It was in my eye for less than 15 sec and I rinsed my eye for a good 10 mins to be sure. Ironically the only lasting damage was done to my right eye where I jammed it into the tap. I had a nice big lump there for the rest of the day. I suppose i am thankful I didn't bend over 1/2" more and jab myself right in the eye. This is how it looks a few days later:

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00134.jpg

There is a lesson in all this, but i think it is sufficient to say, 'don't be a freaking retard and you'll be alright'.

Anyways, the next day I went back to Mopac and got everything we needed for brakes, clutch and fuel lines. I also made a stop by Lordco and picked up some generic odds and ends that weren't available at Mopac. It was an expensive, but productive day, here's the loot:

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00130.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00131.jpg

Coming up next: what we did with our bounty!

[TurboMini]

I look forward to some more pics, I'm glad you're back at it.

[boy1_]

This weekend was a good one. Friday was a day to drive around finding the last few parts of the vehicle. We had tried out our flaring tool for the brake and clutch hard lines. However the machining on the two sides of the tool were very poor and mismatched, so we tried to return it but were told thats how it's meant to be. The only exciting thing that occurred was that I managed to get a $109 ticket from a local cop for not having my front license plate attached. Karma for having said "It would be rather embarassing to get pulled over by the paddy-wagon" and literally two seconds later being pulled over while in a fast food parking lot by said paddy wagon. :pissedoff:

Saturday was the first day of real work. I picked up the last few parts and got a new flaring tool in exchange for the old one since it was so poorly made it would not work. Step one was to tackle the clutch lines. After bending up the small line from the slave cylinder to the attachment of the soft line we tried our hand at flaring. After about 20 failed attempts we decided that the internet might have a suggestion. As it turns out the instructions with our flaring tool were incorrect for the size of tube we were using. Using our own way, we got it to work first try, nice beautiful flares like made in the factory.

Here is the result of our initial flaring trials:

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00133.jpg

And here is the result of us getting all the hard lines bent and installed for the clutch:

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00140.jpg
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00138.jpg


Sunday may be the Lord's day of rest, but it's our day of brake work. For Sunday we tackled the front brakes. This included installing a line lock, and a residual pressure valve, a T-fitting and the lines to the wheels. After installing the lines we decided to bleed the brakes, however just after starting I recalled reading about a fitting inside the master cylinder that has to be removed if you are running disc brakes (its a residual pressure valve for drum brake setups.) So we had to remove the lines into the master cylinder, remove the pressure valves, reassemble lines into master cylinder and restart the bleeding process. End result being.......WE HAVE FRONT BRAKES!
(A joyous time for us.)

Here is a picture of the master cylinder going into the brass/steel unit which is the line lock, onto the blue residual pressure valve and onto the T:
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00135.jpg
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00137.jpg
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00140.jpg

And here is the setup as it goes into the wheel well:
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00141.jpg

And the other wheel well:
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00143.jpg

This coming week will be time to finish the brake setup, install the fuel system (we have ordered a fuel pressure regulator and some AN fittings for the fuel rail), the radiator lines, and finally the basic harness to get the motor to RUN!!

[boy1_]

TurboMini: It looks like your build is coming along quite nicely as well. If you want to see more pictures there are more on our photobucket account then we post in the diary, go to This Link (http://s83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/) and you should be able to look through the albums. (Most are in the mini album, but some are elsewhere, but what fun is something simple and organized.)

[Drinkwater]

Monday is a work day...Mini work day that is! We've been hard at it again, here's the latest.

I spent the morning running around picking up a few more things. I bought the bends to make our coolant hard lines as well as some adapters and more tube nuts for the brake system. I also picked up tranny fluid and motor oil. It's not official, but we may be running sometime next week. Maybe.

The coolant hard lines are going to be hidden in the mini's exhaust tunnel. At the rear of the car they will pop up just ahead of the cross member we added. Flex lines will go to the motor from there. At the front the lines split, heading to the left and right to connect with the radiator outlets. We are using 1-1/2" exhaust and bends. Its welded together and we'll probably butter our welds in JB-weld or similar to eliminate the risk of pinhole(and larger....) leaks.

Our rusty welding skills put to use.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00144.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00145.jpg

This is the finished product. In the car, the 2 ends at the left will be coming straight up right behind the seats. The ends at the right angle up slightly into the mini's engine bay, and will be connected to the radiator with flex sections. We're not installing the hard lines yet as we still have to run fuel and brake lines in the tunnel first, but the coolant lines need to be built first since they have first dibs on space.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00147.jpg

We're waiting for some fuel related parts on order, but thought we'd get started on the fuel lines anyhow. The first step was figuring out how to make the AN- connections. We are using the barbed AN- style which doesn't require the 2 piece compression fitting and braided line. It also doesn't require as much $$. The line size is AN-6.

These things are a royal PITA to put together. The line is TIGHT on the barbs. We first tried putting them together with a drop of oil and some muscle. That failed. We had to cut the failed partial connection off the barb and start over. Next we tried first soaking the end of the hose in hot water. That helped, and with great effort we got it mostly connected. Since the first connection is low pressure between the tank and pump, it should be sufficient. On the third attempt (and with the help of some internet research) we slathered both the fitting and the hose in oil. Voila! connection complete with minimal pain (but still some pain).

We also mounted the pump and filter assembly to the right hand inner wing. We drilled 2 pairs of holes in the wing and used hose clamps to hold the pump body. A piece of bicycle inner tube was slid over the pump body to protect it. The pictures show the tank-filter run, and the beginning of the long run from the pump back to the engine. We can't go any farther than this until the rest of the parts come in.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00155.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00154.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00152.jpg

Having more time than Colin was able to spare, I soldiered on for awhile longer. The main task was to get the rear brake circuit started. The first line in this run goes from the master cylinder to a bias adjuster mounted just ahead of the shifter. Bending these hard lines is a total leap of faith. There's no way to check your work until the line is 90% bent. And the last 10% takes as long as the first 90 because of all the tweaking necessary to get things just right. The ever-expanding hole in the firewall is testament to all the tweaking and fine tuning I had to do. With good planning and a lot of head scratching I was eventually able to get the line bent up. I threw the bias adjuster on the end of the line for show. Its not mounted yet due to a lack of fasteners.

The rear circuit is the middle line which disappears behind the brass cylinder (line lock). For our own special reasons, the front brake circuit comes off the back of the MC and the rear circuit from the front. It just worked out that way...

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00150.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00151.jpg

This is looking backward at the bias adjuster.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00156.jpg

And this is the bias adjuster from the driver's perspective. No steering wheel installed at the moment.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00157.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00158.jpg

One last one showing the routing of the line in the car. We'll need to make a cover of some sort to protect it from foot-related damage.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00148.jpg


And just a note on Colin's previous post. You won't believe how hard the brakes are! Rock solid. Almost more surprising is that they work! I never truly believed we'd ever get this far in the project, and I've been saying that since last fall when we first got the donor car.

[strudel]

You fellows need to get yourself one of these kits. They work like a charm on those hoses. JS

http://www.koultools.com/

http://www.frontlinegraphics.com/koultools/images/inst1016.jpg

[Drinkwater]

Koultools look look pretty handy. Unfortunately for the -AN system we are using they aren't any help. In a few days when we do the rest of the fuel system I'll post closeups of our fittings.

Today's project was fixing our rear-steer issue. Since we used the suspension setup from the donor car, and since our rear wheels were the front wheels on the donor car, they are capable of LOTS of toe adjustment. But since doing the crab-walk was never a goal for this build, we had to find a way to lock the rear wheels from turning. We considered just leaving the old steering rack in there and welding it up, but this was not an elegant solution, plus the rack weighed about 25lbs (power steering).

A long time ago we purchased a pair of 1/2" heim joints (rod ends). The idea was to attach them to the end of the steering tie rod, then have a permanent mount on the subframe. The first step was to cut the tie rods off of the rack. Next I tried tapping the end of the rack with a 1/2UNF tap. Unfortunately the rod is metric and a little too undersized. One side of the rod had well formed threads, but the other was barely scratched.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00162.jpg

On to plan B. I drilled out the rod ends to the steering rod diameter (14mm), put the ends over the rod and welded it up. I've been using preheat on this thicker stuff to help out the welder.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00159.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00160.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00164.jpg

Next up I made a bracket which will get welded to the subframe. I used some 1"x 1/8" wall square tube and some 1"x1/4" flat bar. Cut and grind the tube to fit in the subframe, and make 2 tabs from the flat bar for bolting to the rod-end. Cut, drill, grind, test, grind, test etc until it all fits nicely. Hose it down with the propane torch until its nice and hot, then weld it up.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00165.jpg

The assembly as it will sit in the car:

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00166.jpg

The next, and somewhat trickier step was to weld the bar with tabs into the subframe. First, the steering tie rod end is set to the middle of its adjustment range and bolted to the hub. Next I wedged a piece of angle iron flush again the wheel hub and aligned it straight with the body of the car. this gets me pretty close on my toe adjustment. Any deviation can be fixed with the TRE. Once it was tacked in place, I could work on positioning the bracket within the subframe without losing alignment.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00168.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00167.jpg

When I was happy with the positioning of the bar within the subframe I tacked it in place, disassembled the steering rod, heated everything up and welded it.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00170.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00171.jpg

The procedure was the same for the left side. Now we have rock solid wheels that won't have us doing the crab walk!

Finished product for left and right sides respectively:

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00174.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00172.jpg

We're very quickly running out of things to do on the car, I think next I will attach the engine wiring loom and see about possibly wiring up the fuel pump.

[boy1_]

Drinkwater got the steering arms done, big whoop. Let's get onto what really matters, making some noise.

Friday started with some disappointment, since all the parts we were hoping would come in to complete had not shown up during the afternoon. We assumed the weekend would be a bust and we started doing menial little projects that were more to waste time then complete anything. However a phone call at around dinner time from my home announced that UPS had delivered a "small package" that my family "hoped isn't a bomb." So to the house I raced, and much to my surprise it was not in fact a bomb, but our fuel rail parts. We mocked things up, decided what parts needed to be mounted where and what extra parts we needed on Saturday.

On to Saturday. Drinkwater is off sailing during the day, so it is up to me to run around town for parts. 3 hours of driving, a lot of frustration with the horrid drivers that plague Vancouver's roads, and I had all the parts we needed to get the car running. Correctly sized radiator hoses, correct sized rear wheel spacers, and a bunch of fuel line fittings. Good, I started to set up everything for installation. Drinkwater shows up in the evening, a pizza is ordered and the real work begins. Fuel lines are completed, radiator lines are installed and temporarily held in place, final hookup of the electrical harness begins....and ends. We got quite tired at around 11pm and decided that we would only continue on into the night if what we had done so far worked....it did not. No power to any part of the harness except the relay boxes wired directly to the battery.......home to bed.


SUNDAY - capitals for its significance. Drinkwater out on the boat again (silly seaman.) My privileged to determine why the electrical isn't working, not something I look forward to. Step 1 is to refer to one of the 100000 pictures taken of our dismantling of the donor car (this number may be a slight exaggeration.) I quickly found a photo showing something attached to the battery that we assumed need not, I threw it on the battery and suddenly we have power!!! So quickly I throw the intake and intercooler into the car, and attach the last of the harness to the airbox. Que Drinkwater to get home. We fill the radiator with water, fill the fuel tank with....gas...er....petrol. (English to English translation just for me to be cheeky.) 2 or 3 cycles of starting to get some fuel into the lines and VROOOOM!!!!!!!! 3 years of work and it started NO PROBLEM. Que us doing our white-man happy-dance. (not something anybody needs to see.) Picture time..


Temporary location of wiring harness.....looks good I think....?
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00183.jpg

The dash is hooked up, but basically only tells us that we are low on coolant. This week we need to figure out why the tach is not operating as it should.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00186.jpg

Fuel Pressure Regulator
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00189.jpg

Under hood (bonnet...cheeky)
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00191.jpg

And a quick video so that you don't think I'm lying...
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/th_MOV00192.jpg (http://s83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/?action=view&current=MOV00192.flv)

Just need to say, I never thought we'd get to this point, so I am quite happy. I don't comment on a lot of the threads here, but this site provided that inspiration to a lot of our design and kept us motivated.

This coming week: pick up and install all the fasteners we still need, make and install accelerator pedal and throttle cable, drive it on the ground for the first time.

[Drinkwater]

I just thought I would add my 2c on this too. One year and 4 days ago we had a mini with only a tacked together front frame/rollcage and half a front suspension. We had also just bought our donor car, a 1991 Plymouth Laser for about $2000. Over the proceeding 369 days we gutted the donor car, completed the entire frame/cage, rear suspension, motor mounts, seat, steering, fuel, brakes, clutch and a dozen other things I can't even remember now. And its culminated in the mini breathing life for the first time! I'm not a particularly sentimental or emotional person, but for all of you out there working on your first build, keep at it! This is freaking awesome!

PS We rock!! :p:D:cool::mrgreen:

[Drinkwater]

Today was great. And most of it was spent chasing our tails too. To make a long story short, the car wouldn't start. I had been charging the battery, it it looked like somehow I had managed to fry the ECU. Don't ask me how either. We checked every electrical do-dad we could find, hoping some little widget was fried, and easily replaced. Not so, everything was working fine.

Eventually we checked the engine temp sensor. If it is reading wrong the computer will totally mess up its fueling. the sensor checked out ok, but when we checked the signal from the ecu, it would start at 4.9v (good) but quickly drop to about 2.2v (bad). we traced the wires to the ECU and tested them for continuity. they were good, no sign of a short. then we had to face it, and test the output from the ECU itself. 4.7v solid. WTF, if the wires are good, the sensor is good and the ECU signal is good whats going on? We plugged the ECU back together and retested the voltage at the sensor. Now it read 4.7v solid. Inexplicable. so for the 50th time we tried to start the car. And it caught right away and ran perfectly!

I don't have a clue what made it act this way. maybe fiddling around reset the ECU and cleared some fault, or maybe there is a break in the wires to the sensor, and my moving things we fixed it....or maybe a mystical had came down from the sky and pulled our chains just for amusement. In the end, it doesn't matter because what happened next was awesome. We drove the car for the first time ever! despite the engine being held on with a cargo ratchet strap and only 2 of 4 mounts, and despite the left driveshaft not being bolted to the block, and despite not having a gas pedal or any way of controlling the throttle, we drove it. Mind you, all we did was slip the clutch and idle up the driveway 6' and coast back down. But it was the best drive I've ever had. The best part is we have some grainy video of the event! Once again we are thrilled, this is so much fun!

I know the video is totally lame, but its a huge milestone for us! As we continue to wrap things up we'll post longer and better videos.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/th_MOV00193.jpg (http://s83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/?action=view&current=MOV00193.flv)

[Drinkwater]

Here's another quicky update with more grainy video. Today I fabbed up a throttle using the brake cable for a tandem bicycle and some bulk housing, also from the bike store. In total its 3.5m long (12'). Unfortunately the long run in the housing makes it fairly stiff, so I think I'm going to have to have the cable uncovered for the straight bits, or find a better way of routing it with fewer turns. I forgot to take a picture of the cable, or the gold star pedal i made, but I'll get some tomorrow.

The real fun was going for our first drive up the block and back. We still don't have any fasteners yet, so we're still just idling around, but just to be driving the car is a huge thrill.

In the video you might notice the tentative driving style. That is actually due to the fact that the front alignment is totally buggered, and the wheels are rubbing with more any than about 3/4 of a turn past straight. We also appear to have plenty of rear negative camber.

Sorry about the grainy photos, the camera was having trouble in the light and I had to boost the brightness after the fact.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00196.jpg

The left wheel is especially wonky

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00197.jpg

Tiny fun car, pig daily driver

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00204.jpg

Exciting video!

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/th_MOV00200.jpg (http://s83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/?action=view&current=MOV00200.flv)

[TurboMini]

I saw the Crown Vic and thought the local authorities paid you a visit. Is that an Interceptor model? You probably have some stories if you drive a car like that. Must be annoying when everybody slows down when they see you coming.

[boy1_]

Yes, that's an Interceptor. I quite like it, it takes a beating and doesn't seem to mind. People slowing down is actually not too big a problem. The best feature in Vancouver is the fact that people don't pull stupid moves like cutting you off or tailgating which around here is saying a lot.

[Drinkwater]

Still no fasteners!! And its absolutely killing me. All I want to do is give this thing a bit of gas, but without engine mounts and a properly attached driveshaft I can't do more than idle around. And now we have an odd electrical problem. The coolant warning light lights up after the car is turned off. As well, the boost gauge pins itself to max. This is with the key out, car completely off. The good news is that it may just be due to poor grounding, so hopefully it will resolve itself when things get put in more permanently.

Without fasteners I am stuck in a bit of a holding pattern, so I've just been killing time with odd jobs. Yesterday I got the front alignment close. The adjustable tie rods were both about an inch short, which was the main cause of rubbing. One of the lower arms was also wayy off giving the wheel ridiculous camber. Its nowhere near perfect, but things have stopped rubbing and binding for the most part. It doesn't 'look' bad anymore.

Today I decided to have a go at painting the car. We've decided that for the purpose of getting it on the road, we'll just spray-bomb it. Its going to be an ugly $100 paint job, but it honestly looks like an ugly $300 paint job. So its pretty ugly, but but not terrible? My standards in this regard are low, so you may disagree and tell me its the worst paint job ever. It's ok, I can take it! :D:o

The exterior is black satin (semigloss), and the interior is done with black truck bedliner. Essentially its a matte black paint job inside and out. Black cause we like it, and matte to hide some of the ugliness in the body.

Here are my weapons of choice:

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00144-1.jpg

The Krylon cans have a very nice spray head (relatively speaking of course). The bedliner is much simpler, you pretty much hose everything you can see with it.

Today I started with the bonnet, then when I was convinced it wouldn't look like total crap, I did the boot lid, rear of the body and outside of the driver's door. You can especially see in the bootlid pic that the finish is imperfect. 95% of the imperfections come from the paint job underneath, its pretty beat up and I am not set up (and didnt want to bother) sanding it down. I'd say its a 5' to 10' job. The flat finish really hides things, so unless its very bright, or you are up close, it will look decent.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00126.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00128.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00131-1.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00130-1.jpg

Here is the interior. Basically I hosed everything in sight with the bedliner. I left it smooth in most places except the footwells, where after applying the base coat, I sprayed from a long distance (~2') to give a more textured finish. It seems to have worked well, although the pics might not show that level of detail.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00132-1.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00133-1.jpg

And finally a quick explanation on the hack-job throttle cable. Its fairly simple, the short version is that I rigged it up with the brake cable for a tandem bicycle. The trick was making mounts for the ends of the cable housing so that the cable could pull effectively. I used the OEM throttle cable end as inspiration.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00138-1.jpg

Using the same design, I made a bracket which attaches to the intake manifold. Where the cable housing runs, I bent a rough U shape. I mixed up some epoxy and filled the U, then I placed the cable in, and essentially rivited it in by closing the U using a cold chisel. The cable is clamped in rock solid, but not tight enough to damage the housing or cause friction.

My cable end:

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00136-1.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00137-1.jpg

I made a similar, though slightly smaller piece for at the pedal. It is tacked to the pedal box.

I clamped the cable to the pedal by drilling 2 holes very close in the tube, then made a matching washer from some sheet. The cable runs between the bolts and is clamped between the washer and the pedal.

The pedal is just a piece of light square tube that was kicking around.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00134-1.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00135-1.jpg

Unfortunately the initial results are poor. The main problem is that the throttle cable has to run through 11' of housing, which makes for a lot of friction. The other (fixable) problem is that the hole drilled in the pedal is slightly too big, so the pedal wiggles on its pivot. The pedal is functional and safe. We won't have the throttle jam half open, but it just isn't very nice. We need to find a better permanent solution.

[Drinkwater]

Just a quick update, and sorry, no pics or vids this time. We've done lots on the car in the past week, and I'll post a full report in a day or 2. In the mean time I just had to mention what happened on today's test drive.

The engine is finally in properly. Which means ALL FOUR motor mounts! And no more cargo ratchet strap holding it in either! This means that for the first time we can use the throttle without fear of braking something! Joy. So tonight in the evening, and with the light fading, we had a quick go in the car. Colin got to go first, and went down the block. He made it into second for the first time too. At the bottom of the block he hit the brakes with the car still idling in second and locked up the front wheels! The car is so light, and the engine powerful enough at idle to make the wheels skid along while idling in second. This is both hilarious and a little scary! Hopefully we find some front traction when we do a proper alignment and replace the bald tires.

On my run I just went up the block and back. While doing a U-turn, I had trouble getting back into 1st. (the transmission grinds, and I have a feeling the clutch isn't releasing all the way too) by the time I had it in first I was almost stopped, but I shifted like I was still rolling. (my stick shift coordination is low) I had the engine at maybe 1200rpm. well a quick release of the clutch at that speed was enough to spin the wheels! My poor driving skills allow me to claim the first burnout! :cool:

Colin and I both agree we have never driven a car with this kind of throttle response. Idling in second, if you blip the throttle maybe 1/8 the way down, you get tossed back into the seat. What happens at about 2000rpm when the turbo spools up is yet to be seen, but I can only imagine its going to be scary!!!:p:D

The purpose of this post was pretty much to brag (even if we don't have much to brag about). Every time we take it out, the car works a bit better and we get to do something more. We had a goal of getting day insurance for this weekend, but I don't know if we can get everything finished that we need to be road legal(ish). The weather is going to be nice both days, so maybe we'll get to go for the first real drive on sunday.

[Drinkwater]

OK, I got a bit lazy with the posts, so here's an update for the past week's work.

My long awaited order of fasteners finally arrived. I quickly got to work, only to find that the order was completely wrong. I had ordered everything in grade 10.9. Well half was 8.8. One of the bolts was coarse thread pitch. The 12mm nuts were actually 1/2". Some of the bolts were too long(better than too short i guess....). The most annoying part is that every baggie was labeled correctly! It must have been the bozo picking the order that screwed up. Anyhow, with some creative lowering of standards, I think I've managed to work with what I have. But I am not happy, and won't bother doing business with the unnamed company again.

First up was getting the driveshaft bolted in. This car has an available equal-length halfshaft upgrade, which we got. The donor car was FWD and suffers badly from torque steer, so this is a popular upgrade. I don't know if rwd cars suffer in the same way but we figured that having this on our build won't hurt anything.

No more clunk-clunk-clunk of the shaft as we roll around!

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00007.jpg

Next up was fitting the rear brake calipers. Wayyy back, we made adapter plates from 1/4" steel so that we could use the donor car's rear calipers on the front hubs. Surprisingly they didn't require any adjusting, and bolted up quickly. The hardest part was jimmying a C-clamp into the caliper to force the piston back. I gave the rotors a quick scrub on the wirewheel to get rid of most of the crap and rust that had accumulated on them.

All bolted up and ready to go!

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00002.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00003.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00001.jpg

Next on the agenda: wiring! I had been avoiding this, but its time to do it now. Once I got my bearings, the factory service manual diagrams are actually very easy to interpret, and I quickly found the wires for the tail lights, turn signals, brake, and reverse light. Wiring this part of the car only took one evening, including finding the correct wires in the pile!

Not so easy were the headlights. The donor car had pop-up headlights, so my first mistake was trying to figure out why the voltages were all screwed up, when in fact I was testing the connector for the pop-up motor. Once I found the actual headlight wires I couldn't make them behave right. It was then that I learned the donor car switches ground instead of hot to control the lights. I thought for sure I had it now, but no! It seemed now like it was the switch on the column was misbehaving, so I took it apart, cleaned the contacts, then did a continuity test. Everything checked out, sorta. It was then that I realized the wire colours in the car didn't match the ones in the diagram. Now, 3 days after first looking into the problem, I discovered that the car in fact DOES have daytime running lights, and that I'd been looking at the wrong diagram the whole time! DUHHHH... Suddenly things were making a bit more sense. And on the correct diagram there was a whole other portion of the circuit that I never knew even existed! I went back at things with my multimeter and finally found that the 2 DRL relays weren't grounded, and thus never activating. More poring over diagrams, and poking with the multimeter and I found the 2 black wires that had been cut and never grounded. Oops! Crimp on a ring terminal, screw it to the car and voila! Working headlights!

Everything is wired up, but I'm leaving the final assembly until we have some paint on the car.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00011.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00012.jpg

And seeing as I am on a bit of a safety binge, I thought it would be good to have a seatbelt. We are using the hardware from the donor car. It was a bit of an annoyance to find out that the retracter locks if it is tilted anything more than about 5* off vertical in any way. I had planned on mounting it diagonally on one of the braces in the rear frame, but that was not possible. I finally settled on wedging it between the seat bolster and the door frame. I bent a pair of J shaped pieces of 16GA sheet which cup the lower bar of the cage. They are welded to the cage tube and there's a hole drilled in the top for the mounting bolt to go through. The shoulder guide is in the stock mini location.

I was lazy with the camera, so not many pictures, just the finished product.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00004.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00006.jpg

One final note. We were having trouble with the dash. The coolant light would stay on, and none of the gauges were working right. A few other lights were on at only half-power. The boost gauge was totally wonky and doing its own thing. Well, as it turns out the only symmetrical connector on the entire car, is the one which goes into the back of the dash! Lo and behold when I flipped it around everything suddenly worked just as it should! I do like it when a potentially big problem such as that turns out to be nothing at all!

Next up is more painting, rear brake lines, rear fenders, and hopefully some good weather so we can make more videos of us driving around!

[TurboMini]

Now that you have figured out how much spacing you need for your calliper with those washers, how are you going to space them out permanently?
I remember the first time I did a wiring harness swap and I was confused by the switched ground. Good times!

[Drinkwater]

Hehehe, Turbomini, you speak as if we would consider leaving the brakes in that configuration! :eek: Which of course we would never do! :wink:

The truth is we were a bit stumped on how to best deal with it, and since at this point we are just going up and down the street, we felt the washers are ok. They WILL NOT be ok for road driving, and we'll fix it before ever going for a real drive.

Our thinking is to buy some fairly big solid rod (~1" diam) and drill it out. What we can't decide on is whether to weld it to the plate. I'm against it because i think that the risk of warping the plate is more than any benefit the welding offers. Plus, our welder doesn't have the guts to make a meaningful weld in this thicker material anyhow. Colin isn't convinced, and still wants to give welding a shot. Either way, the final form of the spacer will be more than a stack of 9 flat washers! :o

PS we haven't seen any updats on TravelleR lately, hows that build coming along?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For today's project, Colin and I broke away from the mechanical and electrical jobs, and tackled painting the body. Once again we're using the Krylon spray-bombs.

We accept that the car has a pretty ugly body, but our first step was taking a bit of bondo to the worst of the ugliness on the front end. there were 2 metal patches made by the previous owner, as well as several deep chips and scratches in the paint. We don't want a work of art, but the 90mins we spent made a big improvement. (which, when you see that car in person tells you just how bad it must have been, cause its still nothing to look at!!)

For the rest of the car where we weren't using bondo, we scuffed the old finish with 220. Once we were done with the filler and sanding the car was wiped with thinner to remove the dust, grease and other crap that had accumulated over the past 3 years. Then we donned masks and hosed it down with a couple coats of primer and paint!

I'm afraid we didn't take any 'during' photos. I didn't think the camera would appreciate the dust and overspray! Here's the final product:

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00013.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00014.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00016.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00015.jpg

No more green! Unfortunately some green shows up still in the interior, but that is mostly from the camera flash. Its not nearly so obvious in real life. Eventually we will get the interior sprayed too.

We weren't done there. Seeing as I had worked so diligently over the past week sorting out the electrical issues, we just had to get the headlights installed! All we have to do is pick the right wired for Lo and Hi, and crimp things up. Then it's just a matter of bolting things up.

I have been using the multimeter's built-in continuity tester. Its really handy because you just need to touch the probes to your wires, ground, etc. and it beeps if it is a closed circuit. This is particularly handy working alone when it is too difficult to read the resistance off the DMM while at the same time doing a contortionist act getting the probes on the right wires. That said, the feature has its limits.

I used the DMM on the first headlight to figure out which of the wires I ran were for HI and Lo beams. When I did the same test on the second light, it told me Both were Lo and Both were Hi at the same time! WTF, how did I screw up the wiring that badly?? It didn't make any sense at all. I went around, checked some things, then came back, and now it told me that both wires were not grounded at all no matter what position the switch was in.

It turns out that there is about 1.5V loss in the headlight ground line (since the first light is installed at this point, the circuit is loaded), and that this was enough to trick the DMM. The first time, I had the Polarity of the headlight circuit and multimeter matched, so in both cases, it 'saw' little to no voltage drop and thought it was a closed circuit, thus it beeped for both wires. In the second test, I had the polarity of the DMM switched and the 1.5V in the line was enough to trick the DMM into thinking that the wire didn't go to ground (The 1.5V was enough push against the signal from the DMM). I rechecked using the voltage setting, and everything checked out.

It is unlikely to come up in most situations, but for a circuit with a big load like the lights, the voltage drop in the wires may be enough to cause funny results. It's one of those little gotchas to be aware of before blowing your brains out over a problem that doesn't actually exist.

After sorting things out, the second light went in easily, and now we have fully functioning headlights! Enjoy some more repetitive pictures.

Off

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00018.jpg

And on!

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00017.jpg

I know headlights aren't very interesting, but its sure is satisfying to do all the troubleshooting before hand, then plug things in and have them just work!

Ok, I promise no more pictures of the car unless it is something specific!

The weather looks great this weekend, so we will be sure to take some more driving videos. If you have any specific requests or suggestions for what makes a good video, give us a shout and we'll see what we can do. Keep in mind we're still limited to going up and down the side street in front of the house right now.

[TurboMini]

I was pretty sure you wouldn't leave the washers. I just wanted to know your plan. My brake set up on the Travelle"R" is going to be a little different than I did on my Suzuki Powered Mini (TurboOrangie). I think I will have to do some spacing of the caliper this time.
I haven't done much work on the Travelle"R" in the last couple weeks because I had to do some work on my other Traveller so I could move it out of my portable garage. And before I will put the Travelle"R" back in my garage I've put another Mini shell I have in there so I can weld some panels into it so I can get it ready to trade to a friend for some body work and paint in the future on some of my Mini projects.
Today I cut out the driver side front floor, welded in a temporary brace to keep the door frame the right shape, cut out the door that was temporarily welded in so I could get the door frame in the right shape in the first place, I removed and replaced the upper left sill, and removed and replaced the left lower sill.
Hopefully I can finish repairing this shell quickly so I can get back to work on the Travelle"R".

[Drinkwater]

A little bit of work, a little bit of play...

Saturday, Colin and I worked on getting the rear brakes plumbed in. What would have taken me 2 days on my own (due to the tight quarters) took us only the afternoon. It seemed like half our time was spent threading the tube through the tangle of wires pipes and tubes.

Here is the only interesting part of the lines. Its where it switches from hard to flex line at the wheel. There's something satisfying about bending the hard line.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00007-1.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/DSC00008-1.jpg

We got everything done, and then we tried to bleed the system. And tried, and tried and tried. No matter what combination of pumping and bleeding etc etc we tried, we couldn't get the fluid to go into the line. All we ended up doing was covering everything within sight of the master cylinder in brake fluid. Finally after about 15 minutes of pumping we heard a funny gurgle from the back of the car. Turns out we missed tightening one of the flare connections, and instead of sucking fluid into the system, it was sucking air at the joint. Suddenly after tightening the joint up the lines bled perfectly.

Until it came to the calipers. The bleeders are rusted up solid, so to bleed the system we had to completely remove the bleeder, and put a finger over the hole to work like a check valve. That proved quite effective, and we got the brakes bled.

Unfortunately while checking the system for leaks, we found that the bias adjuster was leaking from one of the fittings. No way to fix that without removing the whole thing. Out it came, and it turns out the fitting was only finger tight and had no thread tape on! Oops, thats my bad! :rolleyes: We fixed the leak sunday morning, and other than a tiny bubble of air at the calipers (because of the bleeders) the system is ship-shape.

All that hard work deserves a reward! So we went for a Sunday drive up the block and back. The videos we have here include finest in scripted dialogue, and steadiest of camera work. Our observational commentary will surely get us nominated for an award. *cough*

For our first video, we have a quick clip with me looking like a total jackass. Let it be known to all, that one must clutch-in or be in neutral in order to start... I feel compelled to show this only because I know that my statue-like physique and superhuman skill may make me look immortal. But I am in fact mortal, just like you.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/th_MOV00001.jpg (http://s83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/?action=view&current=MOV00001.flv)

This is round two, where I successfully start the car, and manage to get up the block and back without screwing up badly!

PS. Colin! I may have been up the block in the noisy car, but I heard what you said about me!!

PPS. The clutch isn't fully disengaging and its causing the tranny to grind badly. My 'almost stall' was more like me trying to get it back into first without leaving a pound of metal in the gearbox sump.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/th_MOV00002.jpg (http://s83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/?action=view&current=MOV00002.flv)

Colin gave it a drive too, with much the same results. There are more videos on the photobucket page, but I won't clutter things up here with the same videos over and over.

If we can get handbrake, fenders and the firewall done this week, (along with a few other small jobs) we'll be able to go for our first real drive next weekend.

[TurboMini]

Any updates?

[boy1_]

Unfortunately we have not really touched the car since September. A complete and crippling lack of money combined with school has severely limited what we can do at the moment.

We did manage to get the rest of the car put together and painted, seatbelts in etc. and we took it for a spin around a quiet area of the neighbourhood. It drives decently, however we put our temporary fender flares on too low and were rubbing the tires on big bumps. In addition we discovered that we have a crazy amount of negative camber. Also, it would seem that a little black mini with dually style hips running around a quiet neighbourhood followed by my Interceptor gets a good number of looks and gaping stares.

Future plans (aka. when the bank account is at least back up to $0) we will sort out the camber issue, I figure we can just make up an adapter plate to go on the strut mount. In addition we need to button up some loose ends, make the wiring a bit nicer and make a permanent firewall.

One small issue coming to face us rather quickly is also the fact that I have taken a job 12 hours north of here, and Drinkwater is equally likely to take work away from our tools and shop. However, we tend not to dwell on this issue, that's future Colin and John's problem. We also have decided that if not this mini, then the next will be going to Targa Newfoundland and then onto Targa New Zealand (as you can see, we're reasonable people with small and easily achieved goals.)

[MattG]

any progress guys ? missed this project updates :)

Matt

[boy1_]

Hey Matt,

Not a ton of progress lately. Life seems to have caught up to us in a hard way. That is to say neither of us are lolly gagging students who drink too much and skip out on classes to work on the car any more. (Not entirely true, I think we both still drink our fair share.) That being said, I have moved 1200km north of Vancouver to work, while Drinkwater is still in the city, but work on the car has stalled for the time being.

Do not fear though, since we both have decent paying jobs now there will be a Mini V2.0 in the future (when in the future is yet to be determined.) The idea's going back and forth include AWD, mid-engine and all brand new components with a professional brought in for welding tube chassis etc.

My current project is a little bit larger. Working up north and in a town with literally two paved roads means a car was a wee bit impractical. So currently I am playing with my daily driver 1-ton GMC.

Pics if anybody is interested.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/small_shot1.jpg


http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/poondiggity/IMG_0685_small.jpg

[minidream94]

so your a loggy now then? looks a good build though mate :) needs to go lower on the suspension though looks really high

[boy1_]

Nope, no logging. I'm in the mining industry, open pit metallurgical coal mining to be precise. The whole area I live in is fairly remote (over 100km to the next town) and we have few paved roads and a foot of snow in a night is not uncommon (unfortunately the only way to get the day off work because of snow is if the snow is higher than the truck). Within the next week or two the front end is getting HIGHER, and new wheels and bigger tires...........kind of the exact opposite way Europeans do it.