kws

With the major source of oil leaks under the car sorted, I needed to repair some collateral damage from the previous leaks. The transmission mounts had turned to jello and weren't doing a lot. Now, first point I will say is don't try to be cheap and buy transmission mounts from random suppliers on eBay. Even though they were listed specifically for an SD1, and have "Rover SD1" on the packaging, they didn't fit without modification. The design of them means they might start to come apart quicker too, but hopefully the center poly bush will slow that down. They were about half the cost of Rimmers, but it wasn't worth it. Just buy them from a reputable supplier like Rimmers and just deal with the cost. This is what I have though. Two main spool mounts, and this little poly bush for the center bolt Whats a sure-fire sign your transmission mounts are poked? When you go over a bump and the transmission tries to launch its self into space through the shifter hole! Every time I would take a large bump in Tess the whole shifter (and thus the transmission) would jump up a good couple of inches. Not really a good thing. Since I had a serious leak under the car it has been coating everything in oil for a long time. Rubber doesn't like oil; or well, it might like it too much. It soaks the oil up and softens the rubber to the point that is has the consistency of jello. Its soft, squishy and doesn't support a large lump of metal too well. The other issue was that the bolt on the far right in the above photo has a bush on it, which I suspect limits any vertical movement of the transmission. This bush had also suffered from the oil contamination. There wasn't much bush left To replace the bushes you must remove the crossmember the bushes are on. First crack off the 1/2" nuts on the bushes (it's easier when the crossmember isn't flopping around) and remove the center large bolt. Be aware there should be a washer that sits between the trans and the nut and will drop off freely. Don't lose it. Then support the transmission on a jack. I purchased a bottle jack for this job, as its compact, can take a lot of weight and has a good height. This was much easier than trying to get my trolley jack in there. I took the weight off the mounts, and then undid the two bolts on either side of the mount. One bolt on each side was already loose too. They are 1/2" but a 13mm ratchet spanner is a life saver here. Completely remove the nuts from the two mounts. One mount of mine actually unscrewed from the transmission instead of the nut coming off. This is fine, just remove it with the crossmember. The other mount was well stuck on the transmission. Don't bother trying to grip it to twist it out, that aint going to work. Get a hammer and chisel, scrape some rubber away until you get a clean shot at the steel disc that is screwed into the transmission, and use the chisel to tap it around until it comes free. Then you can spin the mount out by hand. Old mount vs new. The old ones are seriously swollen This is the one that came out with the crossmember. The crossmember is absolutely thick in grease, dirt and pine needles. The layers of the mount rubber werent attached anymore. It was just a lump of soft jello This is the remains of the center bushing Its meant to look like this I gave the crossmember and bolts a thorough degrease and clean And then you screw the new rubber spool mounts into the transmission. I smothered the stud in copper grease, as well as the mating face, so that it wouldn't corrode to the transmission. Now this is where it went a bit wrong. I needed to chop the stud on these down, or they just wouldn't screw in fully. I think they were bottoming out. I don't think this should be needed on proper mounts. I gave the area of the trans around the mounts a quick clean, and then refit the mounts. The two spool mounts screw into the transmission first, as tight as by hand can be, and then the crossmember goes on. Due to the added height of the new mounts vs the old ones, you may need to raise the transmission a little higher to get the crossmember bolts into place. Remember the plate on each side the bolts go through, and refit them. Once again, the 13mm ratchet spanner was the tool of choice here. The exhaust blocked a ratchet from getting in there. Now, that center bolt. I couldn't quite work how what the deal was until now. Remove the jack from the transmission first. Fit it like this from the underside of crossmember; Bolt - large washer - bushing (large section under crossmember) - nut ~ insert through crossmember but don't screw in. Now slip the other washer on top of the nut, wind the nut down to the bush and screw the bolt into the transmission. I wasn't sure how tight to do this bolt, so I tightened it until there was compression on the bush, pulling the trans down towards the crossmember, and then wound the nut up and tightening it against the transmission. The results are impressive to say the least. On a quick test drive I took it over a large bump in the road that I knew would usually cause a huge jump in the transmission, and this time it stayed solid as a rock. The shifter is even more direct; obviously moving the shifter was moving the whole rear of the transmission too. Huge improvement. I do wish there was an off the shelf poly version of the two spool mounts, but in my travels I never found one. Not even for a TVR, which uses the same transmission. I ended that batch of work by degreasing and water blasting the underside of the car. It's not perfect under there, but its a lot better. I also "accidentally" blasted a lot of the yellow paint off the swaybar and crossmember... leaving a white instead. not sure which is worse tbh. Parts Used CRC454A – Gearbox Mounting Rubber x2 CRC581A - Rubber Buffer, Center of Rear Bracket (this is standard rubber, uprated poly version available via eBay) Please note these parts are specific to my car and may vary. Please check before ordering.

Just make sure its not fake knockoff Chinese shit being sold as real R9 hose. I got caught out a while back buying from a "proper" supplier in the UK, https://www.tasteslikepetrol.net/2017/09/psa-low-quality-sae-j30-r9-fuel-hose/ Problem with braided hoses is that you cant see what is happening to the rubber hose under the braiding. If its braided, make sure its a proper high quality brand. I wouldn't go there personally; if it needed extra protection i would use a good quality rubber hose with a removable fireproof/abrasion proof sleeve. This guy had braided hoses, he suspects from where the fire started that it was the pressurised hose before or after the fuel filter that failed. The hoses looked fine a couple of days before. On that same note, with any older car it is important to check fuel hoses. Even on a carb it doesnt take long to spray a decent mist of fuel around out of a pin hole in a hose. I have replaced the fuel hoses on my old SD1 due to cracks and leaking fuel (thankfully it was leaking after the fuel pressure regulator so was low pressure), and the current SD1 has had the hoses done. My Mini also had cracking fuel hoses in the engine bay, so those got replaced. Hard lines are worth checking at bends or where it could rub. If the car is lowered check that the pipes cant scrape the ground going over curbs, angles etc and wear through.

I actually came here to ask about this. Has anyone used the Supercheap Lyndar paint matching thing? Keen to get a couple of spray cans of matched paint for the Mini, but its not your usual paint colour.

Maybe leaving a 38 year old car outside in some of the heaviest rain we have had wasn't such a good idea. I knew from a previous day of leaving it out in the rain that it would leak, but I originally thought it was through the old door seals and rear side window seals. Apparently I was a little wrong. Bringing Snicket in from the rain, the interior smelt like wet dog. Not pleasant, and I could see the front carpets were soaked. I had jiggled the rear side windows to make them seal a bit better last time, and it looks like that helped a bit, but the seals are beyond stuffed. The door seals weren't the cause of the issue though, the real issue was that the rain was entering the door and leaking out from behind the door card and over the door seal into the car. I needed to pull the door card off to see where the water was coming from. The door cards are easy to remove. Unscrew the door handle, opening lever and window winder. Then there are a series of clips around the bottom and sides of the door card. With the door card off, there was a lot of moisture behind it This was after a couple of days with a dehumidifier in the car too. My doors have plastic membranes behind the door card. Designed to stop moisture coming through, but in this case they were actually trapping moisture against the door card. There were massive holes in the door panel, by design. The water is meant to go out the three drain holes in the bottom of the door, but obviously its finding the easiest way out, through the gaping holes I removed the membrane, and had a nosy at the door. The inside of the door is in reasonable shape, with minimal rust. There was some surface rust in places. The drain holes, as you can see in the photos are clear. I vacuumed out the inside of the doors to remove the dead spiders and dirt Whilst in the door I wanted to check the window mechanism as they just weren't operating as smooth as I would hope (and the drivers side makes a horrible noise when lowered). Lowering the window right down I could see why. Completely dry rails The rollers were a bit out of round, but after a thorough smearing of grease the window rolls up and down a lot smoother. It's hard to get along the whole rail, but I greased as much as possible and just wound the window up and down to even it out along the rail The other thing I needed to do with the door was to treat the surface rust. I basically covered the whole inside lower quarter of the door with rust converter, until it was running out the drain holes and then left it to cure. And then I sealed up the holes in the door with duct tape And then back on the membrane went. I reused the existing butyl sealant on the door, and some more duct tape to help secure it in place I repeated the work on the driver's side door too, with similar results. I left the door cards off for a couple of days so they could dry out, but they aren't in good shape and will need replacing at some point. In the mean time I removed the soggy carpet and underlay to expose a soggy and ugly sound deadening. This whole lot stank, so its out of the car airing out, but the sound deadening was glued to the bulkhead and was trapping water. I used some brute force and ripped it all out, and into the bin it went. The carpet is well stuffed and the underlay isn't much better, but both will be reused in the mean time as I cant afford a new set The floor had some surface rust, so I ground it back and used rust converter to kill it. No serious rust though, just solid metal. So I had basically stopped water getting through the door, but now how do I stop water getting into the door in the first place? Well, there is a rubber seal that pushes against the window. This was brittle and broken on my Mini, with large sections missing, so I ordered a pair of replacements and clips Unlike the SD1 where you replace just the rubber section, the whole rubber and chrome comes together. Removal isn't hard, with some gentle levering at the back of the door to pop it up far enough that you can just grab it and pull it free. You slip the new clips into place first. I purchased mine as a kit, which comes with the "recommended" 4 clips per side, but my old trim had 5 clips per side. Not sure if they had been refitted at some point with an extra clip. I went with the four, evenly spaced new clips rather than re-use an old clip. The flat side goes on the outside of the door. And the grippy, spiky bits on the inside The new trim just pushes onto the clips I am a little annoyed though, as I went with the newer plastic capped chrome strip from the later cars (as that's what was available at the time), and it seems it's slightly shorter than the old chrome ended strip. Doesn't look or fit require as nicely at the front. The rear of the trim is OK You can see the rubber pushes up against the glass nicely with the window closed. This should make a difference in how much water actually gets into the door in the first place The next task to stop water ingress was to replace the horribly buggered rear side window seals. These were literally falling apart, with the seal section coming free from the U channel section in multiple places The seal appears to have also shrunk and has been "fixed" with a glob of sealant None of this was good and the windows bucketed water in unless you carefully placed the seal whilst shutting the window. To remove the seal you need to remove the window. This is held in place with two screws on the catch, and two screws at the front on the "hinges" It's a solid bit of glass, so take care not to drop it. The seal then just pulls off the body and goes into the bin Someone had used what I presume was butyl sealant around the seal. This wasn't stuck to the seal at all, but was a pain to remove from the body. I ended up using a plastic scraper, and then brake clean to wipe it away This did reveal two things. One, someone has previously used a sharp knife around the whole of the window, leaving cut marks in the paint. Two, there was rust under the "glob" of sealant at the bottom, and on the B pillar This rust was the same on both sides, so I wire brushed it back, and treated it. The car will eventually need paint, so I'm not too worried as long as the rust wont get worse. It was mainly surface with some minor pitting. No deep rust or holes. Refitting the seals was a crappy job because of the way the seals are folded for packaging. They are twisted so they can be easily folded to halve their size in the bag, but because of this they don't want to easily untwist to how you need them to. With some gentle persuasion, I managed it though. I used a rubber mallet to help gently tap the seal into place. I did not use any sealant under the seal, as the design of the seal is such that it should keep water out of the join. As a side note, having the windows out gives really good access to clean and inspect your companion boxes. Mine had some rubbish in them, lots of dirt, but only surface rust. Phew. This is after a good vacuum Refitting the window is really a two person job, just so you don't drop it, but It can be done alone. I used Gummi Pflege to treat the seal, and once that was absorbed I used some silicone spray on the front quarter of the seal (where the hinges are) to help the window slip over the seal into place. I sat on the back seat, fed the window out of the car through the hole, and fitted the hinges and lined it up that way. Once the hinges are over the seal you can hold the catch to support the glass. It'll take some wiggling and jiggling to get the hinge holes to line up nicely But the new seal butts up nicely against the window all around With those seals replaced, hopefully now I will have sorted 90% of my water leaks into the car. I'm suspicious of the front windscreen seal, but haven't actually seen any water come in around that. The door seals are stuffed too, and will need replacing, but I think they will hold out water well enough for now. A the moment I'm waiting for some bits from Minispares, such as front subframe shims (none were fitted when the subframe was refitted, so the front valance has been pulled in), and clips for the four seam trims, so I can fit them. I purchased new seam trims locally, which I'll need to paint soon to match the car, but was a bit disappointed to find the rear "primed" trims I got were completely bare metal inside, no coating. I quickly gave them a coating of Zinc paint on the inside, so that should protect them for a bit. The front trims were primed inside and out. I also sorted the Statutory Declaration I needed to get signed by a Justice of the Peace to say that I'm the legal, entitled owner of the car, so now I have all the paperwork ready to go and get the car re-registered. Just need to find some time and money to actually the inspection done. Parts Used MSSK2103 - Mini 1980 on. Window weather seals set & clips. (www.classiccarparts.co.nz) EAM7724 - Mini seal for opening 1/4 window. x2 Please note these parts are specific to my car and may vary. Please check before ordering.

Ok, so have finally been able to get to the JP to sign the declaration. She was happy with what I had on it, so that should be the paperwork side done. Now to actually get the car to VTNZ. I will be taking with me, The signed Statutory Declaration Printed email from NZTA regarding reusing my black plates The generic Sale & Purchase agreement the seller signed when i purchased the car A Printout of the Trademe listing A Printout of Carjam showing it as NOT stolen (and also showing Rego and chassis numbers) Hopefully that should suffice. I have attached a template made from the Stat Declaration that I used. I cant be certain this will be suitable for everyone, but should give an idea of what could be on it. The JP was happy, but yet to see if VTNZ will be happy with it. Use at own risk. Also note that for some reason when opened in Chrome all the spaces in the text are missing. Seems to work fine when downloaded on my Mac. It is an editable PDF. https://www.tasteslikepetrol.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Statutory-declaration-final-1.pdf

Gosh i kinda want. My bloody deeply rooted CHCH bogan showing through Should also try swapping distributor rotor as they can do weird shit when failing. You sure its not just running out of fuel? Filter/tank sock blockage?

Taking it easy doesn't mean not playing with cars, so since Tess was up on jacks I wanted to remove the front bumper and headlight to fix it. There were a couple of reasons for this. First, the RH side headlight lens has only been held on by hopes and dreams for a while (completely loose at the bottom, flapping about, and barely stuck at the top), and since it's in good shape and not stone chipped, I'd hate for it to drop off and smash one day. Another reason was that the RH headlight, for some reason, was sitting very low and was recessed. It should sit more of less flush with the corner light and bonnet, but this was way out, with gaps around it. It's always bothered me when looking at the front of the car, like a lazy eye, and I shuddered to know what horrors were causing it. Rust? Crash Damage? Bodges?! Removal of the front bumper is easy, as long as the front spoiler is already off. If it isn't, the spoiler needs to come off first. You don't need to remove the under tray. The bumper is secured with four bolts, two on either side which can be accessed from the underside. They are a 17mm nut/bolt through the front panel. The two longer ones go through the jacking point on each side, as per the right hole below. If you had headlight washers that were connected too, you would have to unhook the hose for that, but since I do not, it wasn't an issue. With the bolts all removed, the bumper is still held in with sliders on the sides. These, like the rear bumper, just slide out when gently pulled. Be aware the bumper isn't that light, and will try to spin upside down when removed. You also need to remove the "grille" trim that runs the width of the front. There are four screws along its length, and then it just comes free. With the bumper off, you can see the other reason I wanted to remove it. I haven't removed it since I got the car, and I knew that since it spent some extra time in its life over in the land of rust, and I had previously had to grind back surface rust and treat/paint it lower on the front panel, there would be rust here too. I was right. Thankfully its all just ugly flakey surface rust, nothing serious, but still needs to be dealt with. You can also see the notorious headlight brackets below the lights. These were barely coated by BL when fitted new, and rusted straight off the assembly line. Removal of a headlight is a bit of a faff, but not too hard. Mainly a pain because you have to keep moving/opening/closing the bonnet to workaround the front hinging design. The two nuts under the headlight need to come off (be VERY careful as these are known to seize and break off if looked at wrong), and there are two long studs that go through the panel behind the light; the nut also needs to come off them Unplug the headlight cables, and the light can be withdrawn. This leaves me with just the bracket to remove, which is held in with four screws This bracket is actually in very good shape, with only surface rust. I wire brushed it down and coated it in rust converter. Once dry, I covered in Zinc paint. Looks much better. I should have masked up the studs, but oh well. With that sorted it was time to look at the headlight. I completely removed the lens, and cleaned the dirt out that had built up in the housing. There are two types of housing, one where the lens is just stuck on, and the other that uses clips to hold the lens on and keep it sealed. My original lights don't have the clips, so I pinched a couple of clips from a spare light. Even the early lights like these have the areas for the clips to be fitted (three along the top, one on each side and three along the bottom), guess it was just cost cutting that meant they weren't fitted Now, this is where it gets weird. This is the bracket under the light that bolts to the bracket that I painted above. First, the black bracket has had the holes either badly slotted or rusted out. This allows for rearwards "adjustment" of the light. And between the bracket riveted to the bottom of the light, and that above black bracket... was a stack of washers So that pushes the light back even further. But WHY?! I replaced the black bracket and fit to the light sans washers. I fit the light back to the car and already the fitment was better. You can also see I brushed back, treated and painted the surface rust on the front panel. It does need adjustment though. I aimed to have it similar to the other light, which had the bottom front edge of the lens in line with the lower chrome of the side light, and the front of the lens level with the front of the side light. To adjust the light there are four adjustment points. To adjust the vertical alignment, there are two nuts under the light. The bracket is slotted Once you have that aligned, the two nuts on the back of the light that were removed to take the light out, are actually on the rear adjusters. These two studs also have a nut on the light side of the front panel, so the inside and outside nuts sandwich the panel between them. The outer nut is just a lock nut, the nut closest to the light is the adjustment. Wind it back or forward to set the forward distance of the top of the light. The bottom distance is already fixed in place by the lower bracket. Be aware these are NOT the light output adjusters to adjust the beam, they are the black knobs on the back of the light. It took a bit of fiddling about to get those adjustments right, but so far I'm happy with how it's sitting. It's MUCH better than it was. It now sits flush with the corner light, and has minimal gaps. The bonnet isn't fully shut in the photos Refit the grille strip, and then that bumper and away you go. The only reason I can think of why the light was bodged like that was maybe the internal adjuster didn't work so they were just bodged into place to get it to line up. I inspected the adjusters when the light was off and they looked OK. One of the pivots was a bit loose so I tightened it up with a zip tie, but no obvious failures there (I have a spare where all the adjusters have been broken off and stuck together with blu-tack). I'll need to try aligning the beam soon, as with the light so drastically re-aligned, the beam is likely to be way out now.

Thats cool. Love that hitch mounted engine crane too. Brilliant.

The same happens with the Vitesse. Almost everything dwarfs it but it's meant to be a "large" car. They just don't make cars like they used to, with all their fancy life saving rubbish now.

2 parts spirit, one ATF.

BTW a good and fairly cheap cleaning solution for manual boxes is a 2:1 ratio of white spirit and ATF. Used it in my Vitesse gearbox and the amount of crap that came out was horrific. Fill it up, start it up on stands and run through the gears a few times. Let it idle in gear for 5 mins. Drain, and refill with more of the fresh mixture, and let it idle in gear for 10 mins. Drain and refill with oil of your choice (unless second drain was also horrific, in which case do it a 3rd time)

I feel you on the facelift, but the back looks so much more swish than the pre-facelift. Shame there isnt a crossover with FL exterior and PFL interior For something so "RARE!" there are a heck of a lot of manual ones on TM at the moment. All of them crazy money though. I do want this one, but there is no way its worth that much. https://www.trademe.co.nz/motors/used-cars/jaguar/auction-1706246079.htm?rsqid=63692acff9274d92b20f725eb42e1cce

I still pine for a facelift V12 or manual I6 one, to go with the Vitesse. Super cool cars.

Interesting. Maybe theyre busy or something? I still havent got around to taking the Mini in. Main problem is getting to a JP to sign the declaration thing, and actually booking the car in. Apparently despite it basically being a WOF, they want the car for the day, and that means getting it to lower hutt, from upper hutt, and leaving it there. Fark you upper hutt vtnz for not doing it.

Its not much more to get a brand new QuickJack. https://mytools.co.nz/products/quickjack-2-268kg-capacity-quickjack-longer-model-bl5000slx I love my quickjack. Also good for dropping gearbag or diff

I couldn't handle it anymore, the amount of oil that was leaking from the sump was getting out of hand. I needed to replace the gasket. In the constant battle against bodges that have been done in the past, the sump gasket was one of the few left. I had been ignoring it since I got the car. A nice coating of oil on the whole underside of the car, and the need for a drip tray under where ever it parks. I did check where it was leaking from a while ago, and narrowed it down to the sump gasket, which someone had made a complete and utter mess of by over tightening the sump during refitting. When a cork gasket is over tightened it doesn't just compress like a rubber gasket, but it actually flattens and squashes out. Obviously this is no good for sealing So when I had the car up on the QuickJacks the other day doing the hand brake, I also decided to remove the sump and deal to it. I got a replacement gasket from Rimmers ages ago, but just needed time to do it. I started by draining the sump, and then cracking off and loosening all the sump bolts (some of which weren't more than finger tight anyway). Most of them are straight forward, other than the two right in the back near the bell housing, which are hidden by the sump reinforcement plate, and the one on each side of the sump above the steering rack. With this done, it was time to lift the engine. The manual calls for lifting it with a jack on the crank pulley, and undoing one engine mount. This is what I did, but in hindsight I would use an engine support bar from above the engine, and undo both engine mounts. The reason for this, is that in my case, with my jack I needed a good stack of blocks on the jack to even touch the crank pulley, which made for some hairy moments. I used some blocks of wood and two of my spare low QuickJack rubber blocks. This was with my QuickJacks lowered to their first stop. At full height I had no hope. And I disconnected the RH engine mount (the manual calls for the LH side but I'm not sure what difference it makes. I had more space to undo the mount on the RH side due to where the car is in the garage) The other issues this caused for me, was that the engine could only be lifted so high, because the other engine mount was still connected, and the engine tilts over to that side. You couldn't undo both with just the jack under the engine, it would likely slip off the jack and it would be game over. I also had issues with the jack getting in the way of me rolling around under the car. It's not the end of the world, but I wouldn't do it this way again. So with the engine lifted, slide under the car and remove all the bolts. Don't forget the two big bolts on the bell housing for the reinforcement plate. With all of them out, the sump should be able to be freed from the engine. Mine wasn't really stuck with anything so almost freed its self. Now with some wiggling and jiggling, the sump can be slid out from the back of the crossmember and down. The remains of the sealant and gasket. Thankfully the inside of the engine looks really nice, just a fine golden coating on everything. I did notice this crud stuck to the pickup through. Not sure what it was; not bearing/metal, maybe old sealant. I cleaned the pickup anyway. With the pan on the bench you start to see what a state its in. Covered in oil, sludge and gross. It was hard to get a photo, but there was some sludge in the bottom of the sump too. This is what sits in the pan even after the oil is drained. Remains of gasket/goo, and some pine needles that caught a ride from my old house The sump its self is actually in decent shape over all, considering how low the car was and the damage its done to the rest of the underside, but there are only minimal dents and scrapes on the sump. Looks nice and black doesn't it? Well, guess what, that wasn't paint. After a thorough de-grease and clean It had almost no paint left on it! It did have a lot of surface rust though, so I gave it a quick scuff and coated it in rust converter Whilst that cured I cleaned and degreased the bolts, and then threw them into the ultrasonic with some Simple Green Of course I wasn't just going to leave the sump purple with rust converter, but first I needed to address a serious issue I had Because some muppet had went full ugga dugga on the sump bolts, it had massacred the poor little flange. There were serious gaps between the bolt holes, where it should be flat Not only that, but the flange was twisted downwards, away from the sump. It's hard to get a photo of, with my technical straight edge, but you can see it slopes away from the RH side of the wood. It should be flat against it. It was like this the whole way around. No wonder it pissed oil out I first used a hammer and block to flatten down the bolt holes, so they were no longer raised above the rest of the flange. Normally you would use a large socket or the likes to fit around the hole, and bash it flat onto the socket so you don't flatten out the indents in the middle of the flange, but mine were almost flat anyway, so I proceeded with plank. You can see bashed bolt hole on the left of plank, and raised on the right. With the holes flattened, I now had to bring the flange back up again. This was done with a rag and vice grips. Using many small little upwards tweaks along the flange, working in sections, I eventually managed to pull it back up and almost flat again It's a lot better than it was With the flange kind of usable again, the whole pan got a couple of coats of black Zinc paint Now I must say, this work had happened over the course of a few days. I removed the sump on Monday with plans to refit it Tuesday morning. Unfortunately health issues have left me barely able to leave the couch the past few days, so it wasn't until Wednesday that I could even get around to painting the pan, and that took all available energy to do. Anyone familiar with Rover V8 engines will now be experiencing the same concern I did, how long can the engine sit without a sump on until the oil pump drains and oil pressure is lost? I left the oil filter on, and didn't touch it, because it's not very old and removing it would be a 100% sure-fire way to drain the oil pump, but there are many stories of people draining the sump, leaving it an undefined period of time, and upon refilling finding they have no oil pressure and either damaging the engine, or having to prime the pump (which is a job in its self). I couldn't leave it much longer, so today, Friday, I HAD to get the sump back on and filled with oil. Even after 3-4 days I was concerned about the oil pump. So I downed a big bowl of Weet-bix, smashed half a bottle of water, took some pain killers and down into the garage I went. There aren't many photos because it was hard enough to do the job its self, but I'll give you what I can. First was to clean all the mating surfaces and get them nice and clean. I used a wire brush on the pan, and a scraper and rags on the engine block. Then I laid a bead of sealant on the pan, smoothed it out with my finger and laid the gasket onto the pan, using bolts to keep the gasket in place. Sealant was smeared on the top of the gasket also I then made sure the engine was as high as possible (remember, it had been sitting on my jack, raised, since Monday), and I slid under the car with the sump. Refitting was a prick. Part of it was not being able to get enough clearance to the power steering hoses/crossmember, so lifting the engine from the top with no engine mounts connected would help this. It was a very mess job trying to get the gasket and pan into place without the gasket getting stuck and tearing, or falling into the pan. Eventually I got it into place, and popped a couple of bolts in to hold it in place. The easiest I found to do were the two big ones for the reinforcement plate at the rear, and a couple of small ones at the front. This is where I lowered the engine down and reinstalled the engine mount bolts, so I could get the jack out of the way and give me better access with the engine secure. With some fiddling (and having to fish the back of the gasket out of the pan and back onto the flange), I got all the bolts back in. Make sure you can see the gasket all the way around the pan, so you don't end up pinching it or missing a section. The torque spec for this is 14NM, so I tightened the bolts up finger tight first, in a diagonal pattern, and then using a torque wrench I nipped them up to 14NM, still in a diagonal pattern. This feels like a lot of torque, and I'd hate to think how tight they had been to do the damage to the pan and gasket they had previously! Finally the pan was on, sealed and tightened. The gasket had pushed out around the bolts a little, but nowhere near as bad as it had been. I did need to remove the clutch slave cylinder to gain access to the bolts on the RH side rear of the sump. Unfortunately this indicated to me that mine is leaking brake fluid, and missing a bolt, so it's stuffed. Will need to order a new one. With the pan on, I dropped just over 4L of oil into the pan, checked the level, and we were good to test the oil pump. With everything crossed, I disconnected the coil, and injector resistor pack (so the engine wouldn't start), reconnected the battery and turned the key. I cranked for about 20 seconds, and although the pressure light didn't go out (I wouldn't expect it to with my slow starter), I could see the pressure gauge raise slightly. Now for the moment of truth. I opened the garage door, reconnected the coil and injectors, and turned the key.... And the sweet sounds of my people filled my garage, oh and the oil pressure gauge shot up and the light went out. Thank fark, the oil pump is still primed! So that's where I am now. I still need to replace the transmission mounts which have turned to jello from oil contamination, and back the car out for a thorough water blasting and degreasing, but unfortunately that will have to wait. The good thing is though, worry, stress and concern is no good for recovery, but now that I know Tess is OK, i don't have to worry about that and she can just chill down there with her bad self. Oh, and it gives me time to source a new clutch slave cylinder, at considerable cost. Buying parts for the Mini has spoilt me, with ease of availability and low prices. Rover parts have neither of those.

Thanks, but i think im happy with leaving it as is for now. I like parking my wiper vertically

I know I have covered replacing the hand brake cable on Effie before, but having done it again on Tess this time, I have some new insights to share. One thing that had been getting worse and worse on Tess was the hand brake. Since the WOF is due for renewing, I needed to fix it, or it wouldn't pass. I tried adjusting the cable in a previous post, but no mater what I did I just couldn't get the brakes to hold. I suspect the cable was stretched, so I ordered a replacement cable from Rimmers. It was time to get Tess up on the QuickJacks, and do some work. Speaking of QuickJacks, one of the party tricks is that once its up and on its locks, you can completely disconnect and remove the hydraulic hoses. Means you can have free access front and rear. First step, disconnect the cable from both rear brakes. Remove the split pin, and pull the steel pin out. Snip the zip ties holding the cable to the diff and torque tube Use a spanner and ratchet to remove the nut and bolt that holds the compensator to the diff. The nut is hidden behind the bracket Now move to the middle of the car/front of the cable and completely back off the locking nuts to adjust the cable. That square plate at the front of the mount will drop out, so keep it somewhere safe when it comes out. To remove the cable from this mount, you need to pull it towards the rear of the car so that the inner cable can pass through the slot in the mount. You may need to push a little rubber boot (at top of photo) on the cable out of the way to allow this. The next part is a pain; removing the rubber boot over the lever clevis. Some careful brute force will free this up and then there is another split pin and steel pin to remove. The cable should be free to remove from the car now. With the cable out of the car, this is what you have. The rubber boot and clevis The adjuster section, showing the exposed inner cable section to pass through the mount Rear section. The narrow cable looping around is for the left side wheel Compensator The new cable is complete other than two items. The compensator, and large rubber lever boot, both of which need to be transferred over. The rubber boot pulls off the cable, and the clevis pulls through the bellows section. This was after a very thorough clean and degrease The compensator needs to be disassembled to transfer over. There is a 10mm nut/bolt that goes through it, which will allow you to split the two halves The old bushes were looking a tad flogged out and it didn't help someone had pinched the bushing and crushed it The 10mm on mine was VERY seized and needed some hefty ugga duggas to free it up, along with some WD40 Once off the two halves can be split. You may need to employ some brute force or percussive persuasion here, as they can be rusted together. The fulcrum pin was looking worse for wear too. Luckily I always order a spare Of course I couldn't refit those ugly, rusty parts to the car. So out came the twisted wire cup ALWAYS gear up. You don't want a piece of wire in your eye The parts are stuck in the vice and hit with the brush. It quickly stripped off any chunky bits, and brought it back to mostly bare metal. There was a lot of pitting and ingrained rust, so I used some rust converter to treat it I let this cure/dry, and then painted with some black Zinc paint. I only painted what would be the outside of the parts. Once it was dry, I used a small file to clean up the inside of the holes, and smothered the whole inside of one half with copper grease, and where the cable would pivot on both These are the parts you want to buy, as a minimum, when replacing the cable (as well as a cable, obviously) I would also recommend a new large lever boot, as they seem to perish. Effie's was OK, but the one on Tess is perished and cracked. I have used superglue to hold it together and seal the cracks, but it'll need redoing in a couple of years Now to reassemble the compensator on the new cable. Place both halves on the cable, and refit the 10mm nut/bolt with some copper grease on it. Make sure the compensator pivots freely on the cable. If it doesn't, you may need to tweak the bracket slightly to ensure both halves are parallel where it pivots on the cable as they can bend easily. The new bushes get fitted with some rubber grease Smother the fulcrum pin and washer in copper grease, and slide it through the bushes, making sure the back one doesn't pop out Now the boot needs to go back on. With an old boot like mine, this sucks. You need to feed the cable through the bellow section clevis first, until the bellows can be slid onto this little rubber bush. Use some grease to help side the clevis in. Now its a case of refitting. Lay the cable under the car, and start by attaching the compensator. It's the reverse of disassembly. Hook up the LEFT side cable to the brake lever. It's crucial that this cable end is adjusted so that the compensator is at a 30 degree from vertical, to the left. Now connect the RIGHT cable to the brake lever. Slides the pins through, but don't fit the split pins yet as both may need some more tweaking. Move up the front, and attach the cable into the mount, and to the hand brake lever. Refit the bastard boot, with lots of wiggling, jiggling and stretching to get it over the lip and into place. Fit two zip ties, one on the RH side of the diff, and one on the torque tube, to secure the cable into place. There are rubber sleeves that need to be under the zip ties on the cable to protect the outer sleeve. Now it's time to adjust the cable This sums up what to do. You need to back off the two locking nuts as far as possible, so that you have the freedom to pull the outer cable towards the rear of the car. Pull the cable back until you see the RIGHT brake lever moving and then snug the bottom nut in the photo up the mount (remembering to fit the square plate). Finger tighten the first lock nut up to the mount too. Now get out from under the car, and test the brakes. Pull the hand brake lever up one click. The rear wheels should still turn, but some dragging should be noticeable. Now pull the lever to a total of three clicks. The rear wheels should be locked solid now. If the wheels are locked before three clicks, you need to back off the lower nut in the above photo, to move the cable forward, towards the front of the car. If the wheels are still able to turn on three clicks, or the handle pulls further than three clicks, back off the top lock nut, and tighten the lower nut a few turns. Nip the lock nut up again and try again. In my case it took a couple of tweaks of the adjustment to get the setting right, but now I have it so that it takes a firm pull to get onto three clicks, and the rear wheels lock solid. One click has noticeable binding but the wheels still turn. Now slip the washer and split pin through each side brake lever, and you're done. The cable will eventually stretch over time and need more adjustment, just follow the directions above to tighten the cable when the times comes, and you should be good for another few years. I'm now two for two for my recent SD1s needing hand brake cables. My first SD1 also needed hand brake work (failed a WOF), but being young and having no garage, I outsourced that at considerable expense.

This darn car. There is always something that makes me shake my fist in frustration. I'll cut to the chase. I ruined the throttle cable. It sucks, another new one is on the way. I confirmed it by unbolting the bottom of the accelerator pedal and pulling the cable by hand (still attached to the top of the accelerator pedal), sure enough, the binding was there. How did I ruin it? Grounds. The car had chosen to use the throttle cable as a ground for the engine electrical system. Obviously with such a small metal inner cable, this didn't go well and it has damaged the outer lining. But I had a ground from the engine to subframe, what happened? At a quick glance, yes, I had a ground. But wait, what?! That's not good The ground IS attached to the bolt, but the bolt is no longer attached to the engine. Looking back through the photos of when I drilled the sump plug, you can see the crack in the plate. You can also see its broken before Could this be due to the very tired old stabiliser mounts I recently replaced? It's a solid piece of steel, it must take a lot of force to break it. If the engine was rocking back and forth from having bad mounts this could have finished it off. I unbolted the ground strap and stuck it straight onto the mounting stud for the plate, on the gearbox. I don't know if this broke before or after I fitted the extra ground cable, but I suspect before due to the throttle cable damage. Since hooking the ground back up, there has been a noticeable difference in the amount of flickering the headlights do when idling. I have a replacement plate now, so I'll need to get around to fitting that. It's not a hard or big job, just need the time and motivation to do it. I'll be taking some time off working on the Mini to focus on fixing Tess and getting her ready for her WOF inspection which is due.

Worn bushes are no fun, and these bushes get a hard time in normal use. My Tie Rod bushes were stuffed and needed replacing. I replaced the actual rods when I first got the car because the original ones were badly bent. At the time I didn't have replacement bushes, they were still in transit, but they arrived shortly after the arms went in. I knew the bushes were bad, so they needed changing. Removal of the rods is pretty simple. Two nuts and a bolt per rod. The main nut is in the front of the car behind the valance, and the small nut and bolt is attached to the lower arm. This little one is a bit of a pain, as there isn't much space with the brake pipe and CV boot to get the bolt in and out, but it can be done with some patience and care. I used a screwdriver through the bottom of the rod to line the hole up whilst pushing down on the bolt through the top. With the rod removed, this is the state of my bushes Just a bit flat This is what the bushes should look like. This is the Minispares uprated kit, with a standard rubber bush on the inside and hardened poly bush on the outside. This makes the handling more predictable under acceleration, whilst still allowing the arm to move slightly under braking, which apparently stops weaving under braking. Refitting is easy (other than fitting the bolt), just remember to get the bushes in the right order. I also waited to tighten the large nut at the front until there was weight on the front wheels, so that the bushes would be compressed in the state they would normally be in during use. In terms of results, there is a bit more road feel and vibration through the front, but it feels a lot more stable just driving around now. I haven't tested in anger yet, but I suspect it will help handling. Mine must have let the wheel flop around all over the place before. It's a simple and quick job to do, even if it's just to replace old bushes with standard replacements (but the uprated kit is cheap enough I would recommend it).

That's right, I have finally hit maximum working-ness! Obviously if you have been following this project, having everything finally working is quite a large achievement, considering that almost nothing worked when I got the car. The last thing I needed to get working was the reverse lights. Obviously they didn't have bulbs originally, so that situation was easily fixed, but even with bulbs they were a no go. I found the two wires on the firewall a while back, but they went nowhere. I then found the disconnected wires that should lead down under the car sitting on the floor under the carpet. I connected them to the wires on the firewall, plugged a new reverse light switch into them to test, and BAM, reverse lights. Ok, so why was there no switch on the remote housing under the car? I fed the wires and grommet through the floor and then went under the car to investigate Well that hole doesn't look like it should I undid the two nuts on the inside of the car so I could drop the housing down Well I guess that might be why someone tried to bodge a weird setup with microswitches and random wires run front to back and twisted around the reverse light wires in the back... the old switch was broken off in the housing This is the sort of situation that a screw extractor is perfect for. I grabbed my smallest one, wound it into the switch remains by hand And then wound it out with a small spanner. Easy. The extractor has a reverse thread, so as you turn it to screw it in more, it bites hard and actually starts to undo the item its being screwed into. Simple but useful. I wound the new switch into place, and refit the housing to the car. I plugged the switch in, and with the ignition on and the car in reverse gear, I used a spanner from inside the car to slowly wind the switch in until the lights turned on. I adjusted the switch so that the lights would reliably come on and off as the shifter was moved, and then wound in the lock nut to keep it in place. Lights! I found the remains of the old switch in the tub of rubbish/old bits that came with the car It literally took less time to extract the broken off part of the switch and fit the replacement, than it would have done to do the bodge that was in the car when I got it (that didn't work anyway, it wasn't connected to anything!). C'mon people, just do things properly. This was a huge milestone. Now everything electric works. All lights, switches, wipers, washer jets, uhhh... what else is electric in a Mini? Not much, but it all works!

No easy diagnostic software hookup on it? That blue is amazeballs btw. I wish my photo skillz were half as good as yours.

Brrm Brrm, my tachometer arrived from China today, so I quickly wired it in so I can see how close to valve bouncing I am. Before I get to the tacho, first I have to mention my throttle issues. The last few times I have driven the Mini I have noticed the throttle sticking when pressing down on the pedal. It sticks so you need to apply more pressure to push it passed that point. The point is completely variable, it can happen at the bottom of the pedal or half way up. Thankfully it doesn't stick the throttle open, it just makes accelerating a bit jerky. I had heard that if the engine ground isn't good that the car can end up using the throttle cable as the main ground, and because the throttle cable is very thin it heats up a lot and melts the inside of the throttle cable liner. I had suffered a very similar issue with Effie a while back when the ground point was corroded, and the throttle cable did indeed start to smoke and get damn hot, but the cable survived that. My Mini only has one engine ground strap, which goes from the gearbox to the subframe. Only issues there is that the front subframe in the MK4 Mini is mounted to the car via rubber insulated mounts. This is meant to make the car less harsh than the older ones, with less vibration, but I doubt anyone would ever consider a Mini soft anyway. As most of you will well know, rubber is a terrible conductor of current, so relying on that to ground the engine isn't really good. I had some bits sitting around, so I whipped up a quick additional ground from the gearbox to the grounding point on the body. I was going to use some wire I had from a cheap subwoofer kit I had, but when I looked at the 8GA wire it came with I found that the whole wire, insulation and all, was thin enough to fit in the terminal. The actual copper in the insulation was about half of what my decent 8GA wire was. The proper 8GA wire, the copper its self is as thick as the whole insulated Chinese wire. Proper wire, back from when Dick Smith actually sold decent stuff I crimped a terminal on each and, cleaned up the bolts and fitted it It doesn't appear to have actually done anything, but I see no harm in it being there. The later injected Minis have another ground strap that goes along the top engine stabiliser to the body, likely as the injection system requires far better grounds. To see if the average grounds had damaged the throttle cable I disconnected and removed it from the car. Thankfully the cable slides freely in its sleeve, even when looped or gently bent. So the cable wasn't the fault. I also checked the carb, this operates freely and smoothly, so that wasn't the fault either. The next option was the throttle pedal assembly. I removed it from the car and had a look. This photo is from after I had lubed the pivot point up, but you'll get the idea. I found a lot of corrosion on the pivot point, where the pedal arm pivots on the firewall mount. It turned out the washer (green arrow) was corroded to the mount (orange arrow) and stuck to it. This meant that when the arm pivoted, the washer was binding on the little tab (red arrow) that stops the whole lot sliding over. The washer needs to spin freely, so that even if it gets pushed against the tab it wont cause any resistance to the arm turning in the mount A quick dose of percussive persuasion quickly freed the washer up, but it had caused some damage to the arm, and the mount due to corrosion and wear. I thoroughly lubricated everything with WD40, and then smothered it in copper grease to help keep further corrosion away, and keep it free. This has reduced the binding in the throttle a lot, but it still doesn't operate completely smoothly. I suspect this is due to the corrosion it suffered. I'm amazed there is no bushing or anything in the mount, it's just metal on metal. I'll see how we go with it as it is, but in the future I may need to buy a replacement (which is thankfully available new) Whilst I was sorting the throttle, the courier arrived and left me a nice little package from China. It was my tacho. These old Minis don't have one standard, and just for my own interests I wanted to add one, but make it completely reversible (so no drilling holes etc). Installation was a piece of cake. I took power from the top fuse, which had a free spade terminal. This is switched power, and I used it for both main power and backlight, so the backlight is on whenever the ignition is on. Ground I got from the washer pump spare screw (it's a spare now, as the outlet hose becomes friends with the airbox if its installed straight) The only other wire was the signal from the negative on the coil. I was hoping to just pop it on a spare spade terminal like the positive has, but either it didn't come with one or someone had broken the extra spade terminal off the negative, so I used a much hated splice connector. These are kinda cool because you use a spade terminal to join the second wire into the connector, so it can be disconnected easily. I wasn't sure where to mount the gauge, but knew I wanted it kinda in front of me, but not in the way of anything. I didn't want to drill holes anywhere, so it had to be mounted on something solid so I could use trim tape to stick it on. The top dash rail worked, although my tape didn't stick very well to it, so it may have to move again. It also gets a bit of glare from the side window. Now, before you ask, yes, I did mount the gauge on the piss on purpose. I don't care much for the lower RPM range, so I arranged it so that at the 12 o'clock position the needle will be at about where I should let off the throttle. The little A Series engine is apparently only good for 6000RPM or so, so if I see the needle at the top, its time to back off. Because race car. I'm not sold on this gauge, it seems a bit lazy to respond and looks cheap. It was cheap, so let's be honest I didn't expect miracles, but the plan down the line is to make a custom dash and integrate a couple of extra gauges (like tacho), but I wouldn't be reusing this gauge in that. It'll do for now.

Thanks, i enjoy writing about what i have done, im just glad people enjoy reading it too. I think the issue with the photos may have been when i was copy pasta-ing my photos in HTTPS. Dropping the secure connection seems to have fixed them, just means a bit more messing around each post. Glad its fixed on your end now though

Took the Mini for a quick drive. Compared to the last video, it runs solid now. Pulls well in all gears, and revs out to some undetermined RPM (still waiting on my tacho to arrive). I have a sticky throttle though. Its something to do with my new cable, so hopefully that isnt damaged. I did add an additional ground to the engine today. I find it weird that the only engine ground goes from the engine to the subframe, and then the subframe is rubber mounted. Apparently a bad engine ground can fry the throttle cable as it heats up and melts the inner liner. I hope this hasnt happened, but we will see. Ill pull the cable out and see whats up. Sorry for the mad shakes in the video, but the Mini vibrates just a bit. Dont watch too hard if you get motion sickness.