92 City, My First Rebuild by big-jay

9 minute(s) of a 358 minute read

Update,

Been out most of the day today so not had too much time to work on the Mini. I got straight to it when I got home though and have built up and fitted the drivers side radius arm and suspension.

Here's a few pictures, radius arm rebuilt -





It was getting quite dark at this point, so I had to rig up a light in the gazebo as it was getting hard to see what I was doing. I had to use the flash on the camera so excuse the picture quality from here on.

Radius arm fitted to the subframe -



Suspension built up -



And fitted to the car along with the shock and brake hose -



That's all the progress for today but I'm going to finish off the front passenger side running gear tomorrow, then I've just got to sort out my wheels and she'll be rolling

11-1-2014

Update,

Another big milestone has been reached today, she's now rolling for the first time in almost a year

I'll start with what I picked up from Minispares yesterday, some genuine Minifins and a couple of other things that were needed to get her rolling -



Keyed the surface of the lower arm pin with a scotch pad and zinc primed it -



Wire brushed the rear wheel studs and zinc primed those -



Give them a coating of gloss black paint -



Fitted the bearings into the other rear hub -





Then fitted the wheel studs into the hub and the hubs to the radius arm -





And fitted my Minifins with a smiffys bits stainless screw, i think they look amazing -





Just got to get some aluminium center caps from Smiffys Bits when his shop re-opens and that will finish that area off nicely. Then it was onto the front, built up the passenger side hub -



And got the running gear built up both sides ready to accept the drive shafts -





I degreased, wire brushed and painted the CV joints -



Packed those full of grease and then fitted them to the drive shafts with new gaitors -





Popped the CV joints into the hub and fitted the disks and drive flanges -





Didn't bother fitting the calipers as I've got to torque everything up tomorrow as I ran out of time today. Anyway I absolutley could not resist getting a couple of split rims out to see how they looked -







There's a nice amount of wheel poke so I'm a happy chappy -



And then down on all fours for real, I've stolen my dads wheels for the time being (excuse the picture as it was getting dark) -

11-2-2014

Update,

Ok guys, we've got the front half of the headlining fitted and glued into place, and have also fitted the windscreen and the top dash rail.

I'll start with the headlining, I must admit I took a bit of a backseat on this job as it's not my strong point, so I left the important fitting to my dad and was on strict tea making dutys ! Glad I did in the end, as he actually fitted them in the minis for a while when he worked on the line in longbridge, so his experience has definitely paid off.

I haven't got many pictures at all of us fitting the front half unfortunatley, somehow I've only managed to take two photos. I'll take some more of the finished front half tomorrow and more detailed ones when we fit the rear half during the week. Anyway here's the two top corners by the windscreen -





No wrinkles and the fit is great, that pretty much set the tone for the rest of the headlining.

Here's my top dash rail going in, got to love the suede covering -



Windscreen rubber on -



Screen in position -



And chrome fillet strip fitted -



Overall shot -





So glad I went with the top tinted screen, wasn't to sure about them but it looks stunning ! Starting to look like a car again now

Shot from inside the car -



Anyway, I'm going to have to send back the 7.5 inch brake conversion I bought from Minisport as one of the calipers hasn't been machined properly and I can't align the holes in the caliper with the holes in the hub to fit it.

Here's a picture of the two calipers, the first one is the one that fits fine and had been machined correctly -



And the other -



You can see that there's a lot more metal above the piston when compared to the above picture, and it's that which is fouling on the hub and not allowing me to fit the calliper.

I could probably fix this myself but would involve me shaving some metal from the hub which I really don't want to do as it would ruin my lovely powdercoating. Plus I've paid good money for the braking kit and I don't see why I should have to correct their mistake !

I'm going to take advantage of this opportunity anyway and put the extra money to get the 4 pot aluminium minisports calliper braking kit, the kit I originally intended to get !