My 1979 mini/budget resto.

Looks good mate

top marks

I ve been really enjoying this thread, can,t wait for my nxt installment, wicked job, and has just made me relise what a lazy bum i,ve been with my car lately :?  :cry:    Inspiration indeed sir :wink:

Good luck with the resto, and drop it on those p slots, it will look super good, five door cool! 8)  

Time for another weekly update!

I've decided to drop the front the extra 20mm, so that should be on the cards for next week.

As for this week, I decided to start 'tarting up' the original wheels.  I know I'm not gonna use them, but I'd like to keep them with the car, plus at the moment I'm not running a spare, so need to get at least one sorted ASAP.

For this week's task you'll need;
A friendly tyre fitter
A wire brush (would you expect anything less from me?!)
A can of primer
Some paint.

It seem that all but one of the tyres on the wheels was shagged so I popped down my local tyre fitters and got them all taken off the rims. I binned the three useless ones, and kept the decent one.

Here's an example of what I was left with;


Time to get that wire brush out again and give them a good scrub.  The brush I use is toothbrush sized, so gets in all the gaps, the only downside is it takes so long!  After a good scrubbing, it was on with the primer.  I know I should use silver primer really, but red just looks so good  8) ;



24 hours later, on with a couple of coats of paint.  Then 24 hous after that, back up to get that tyre put back on (as I'm gonna leave this one in the car as the spare);



One down, three to go!

excellent, nothing wrong with the red primer - they've come out really well.

excellent job  :wink:

they look really mint - nice work! 8)

Well life's been crazy lately, hence the Golf took a back seat and went up for sale a little while back.  Didn't sell though so I've kept it and pottered on a bit.

Basically in the last month my daily driver Passat has been smashed up big time (crashing at 70mph not the choice of champions!), and the Ghia and Golf have both seen their MOT's expire, so I've been left without a car!  To top things off the inlet manifold on the Golf also went.

With the Passat in the bodyshop, and the Ghia not being sensible enough to be a daily driver, I decided I'd best pull my finger out and sort the Golf.

First job was to locate another manifold, which turned out to be an absolute nightmare.  Luckily a quick search on Club Polo turned up a 79 Derby engine and box for sale, including an inlet manifold not the same as mine, but that could be easily fitted.  It seems despite having the same part numbers on the manifolds, the last letter (which I presumed to be just a casting letter or something) makes a hell of a difference.

The engine:


The hardest part in the world to find (probably  :mrgreen: );


I'm done with the engine now, so if anyone wants a free engine and box with a genuine 49000 miles on it, and just a couple of little bits missing give me a shout.  I'll also put it up in the for sale section.

With the Golf running again it was time to book it in for an MOT at my friendly station.  The car has done just over 100 miles since the last MOT (don't forget it was off the road for ages), so I was hoping it shouldn't come back too bad.  Luckily I was right - ?5 worth of bulbs and hosing and we have a fresh MOT w00t w00t!

Next up I decided to try to tidy the car up a bit.  The worst area on the car by far are the front wings and bonnet.  The wings are a bit manky around the bottom fixing points, and tyhe bonnet has a fair bit of rust and a couple of dents in it;

Rust on bonnet;


Dent near slam catch;


Luckily eBay turned up a pair of near mint frong wings for ?13, with all fixing points in A1 condition.  Only problem is they're Mars Red, as can just be seen in one of the photos above, so need to be sprayed to match the car!

Another bit of luck saw Sparkz off here with a couple of Alpine White bonnets for sale, so a quick trip to him saw me come back with a bonnet way better than mine! Cheers bud  

New bonnet after a t-cut;


Underside, not cleaned!;


Fitted;

Plans in the coming weeks include trying to get these to fit;



My wheel obsession continues! If they do then the Polished P's on there at the mo will be up for grabs.

I'd also like to give it a good clean and tidy, as it's been sitting for ages!

I missed your little 'how to' thread jabbo! 8)

Saw it for sale on ebay and thought NOOOO

Nice to have you back and showing us all up for not sorting ours out  8)