Project Trig - After 18 Months Away, Is Back In Town! by Mini 360

11 minute(s) of a 461 minute read

Another day of decent progress.  Took more parts off the car ready to then scotch flat and repaint.  The scuttle/drivers wing seam split in the impact.  REALLY annoying as now that wing and the entire window surround/scuttle needs repainted!!!  Added expense So window out and bonnet off. Will mask up the bay to prevent any overspray hitting all the shiny. Where we smoothed off the badge holes and flat, the paint had sunk slightly leaving a horrible wrinkle in the paint. Fleep was keen to get this sorted so its been flatted back too, ready for a repaint again. MORE layers of paint so this bonnet will never ever rust And after a load of tweaking and heavy hits with various hammers, the door now aligns perfectly.   It always amazes me how many minis have a poor fitting door as it reaches the sill/rear quarter. Can be up to 1cm of gap here on some! Not so here 

 Offered up the new doorstep.  Like a glove!  Buffed up the faces and cut to length.....  

....add a welder..... 

....and tada!  One new door step. :) 

 The sill also went on (didnt need the whole panel, just the same length as the doorstep) so now its over to final prep before repaint.  The sill will get restone chipped and then hammerited as before.  Another busy day ahead :)

1-22-2014

Day 3 in the big Kirkton house and Trigs almost ready for paaaaaaint. Took the jacking point out of the sill. A big gaping hole in a panel prone to rust anyway is never a good idea and Minis should never be jacked on them.....thats what subframes are for.  

Fleep went back last night to finish off the welding on the sill and then added a few dobs of filler to smooth everything over again.   

Refitted the door to double check we didn't need to change anything. Then smoothed out the a-panel with some stopper I then flatted back the panels getting new paint. Scuttle/window surround, drivers wing/a-panel/side panel. Pretty much half the car....

Totally unrelated but heres how a Mini compares to an old 7 series.  Very cool car in for a full respray Needed to get the door painted separately from the car so smoothed off the skin with the body file to get rid of all the tiny lumps and bumps from fitting the skin.  Its amazing the difference this makes. Then with all the sill prep done we gave it a quick spray of etch primer to stop the bare bits rusting.   Paint ordered and should be applied tomorrow then flatted and polished on Friday ready to refit everything on saturday! Quick turnaround as expected! :)

3-24-2013

Well this thread is LONG overdue an update!  Grab a cuppa, its going to be a long one.... At the last update the car was just awaiting paint.  Then, Dingbro happened...... The car was painted just over 2 year ago in the original Cranberry Red (Code C.O.S.) so we thought there would be no issue at all getting a new batch made up, to the formula, to paint the repaired section.  To ensure there wasn't a chance of a difference, the painter decided to blend in the rear quarter panel and into the front wing/scuttle panel.  Got a great finish off the gun and rolled it out of the booth to see a night and day difference.  The new batch was far too pink.   So without going into too much detail, we got various batches made up, none of which matched the 2yr old paint.  Useless!  So to make sure we got it right, we opted to respray the entire car again.  Not what we had planned to do but the only way we could possibly go.  So i took a couple evenings/days off work to get stuck in and flatted back the entire car ready for more paint.   With that, we got the car painted and lacquered back to a mirror shine.  The whole car got flatted back and polished to get rid of any minor imperfections, as we had done before, which left us with this. Fleep polishing the boot before I took it home.   and my personal favourite...  

I then got some assistance from my dad in an evening, reassembling it all ready to come home again to be finished off.  Got it home Wednesday afternoon.  With the Run on Sunday and me working full time, it wasnt going to be easy! Took a couple more evenings to get it back to its former self again with help from friends and family and it was ready to go on the first run of the year on Sunday just passed. It was a charity run in aid of the Brain Tumor Charity where we raised over £300.  Great for the charity and a good day had by all. Some pics from the run I have stolen from others on Facebook....
Great fun but I felt sorry for my fresh paint as it got absolutely covered in some lovely road salt.  Got it all washed off again tonight ready for its next outing.  Salt got everywhere so the undercarriage got a good soaking too.  Rust paranoia!    So Trig is back and better than ever.  Bring on the 2014 show season! :)

Another pic Ive found from Facebook.  Proof there was snow on the run

4-4-2014

Finally got round to drilling my rear show plate to fit over the LED bolts, rather than plonking it on the deck.  





All ready for its fashion photo shoot tomorrow morning :)

4-5-2014

Photoshoot complete!  Met up with Chris (photographer) and Charlotte (model) at Cove Bay.  Deserted and overcast but just what the brand were after.  Brand's called 'Shack Clothing' and they hand design and produce their products from their base in Germany.   Heres a few shots that I took whilst Chris and Charlotte were earning their keep. :)   Very nice Im sure you will agree and a few of the car on its own once we had the shots we needed.     Was a great chance to get some decent shots after the latest respray.  Driving back home via Union Street on a busy saturday was ace fun.  Lots of smiles and pointing.  Got surrounded by a group of 10-15 Japanese tourists all wanting a photo with it at a set of lights.  Felt bad when I had to move off!  All part of the fun of driving the Mini :)