kws

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.

Took a week to the day. Emailed a photo of each plate, and a photo of the chassis plate, all in the original email. Didnt need to send anything else, apparently that was enough.

Right, so clearly that was a lot of work done in short space of time. This post will bring me up to date now. I have been trying to split the previous posts out to make it easier to read and follow, since if I combined them all together it would be one huge MEGA-POST, and no one has the time to read that. This post is more of a brain dump of the other things I have done with the Mini that don't fit a particular category or are too small to be their own post. First up, is yes, the second replacement oil drain plug I fitted a few posts ago (with the thread tape and Rover crush washer) has successfully stopped the oil leak. I finally have oil only where it should be! Praise MOWOG the fickle god of British cars. Secondly this arrived the other day. One monster of an Imperial socket "Whats that beast for?" I hear you ask. Well, when I was in the engine bay the other day I randomly noted that the main subframe tower bolts were... loose. Not just loose, but barely even in their threads loose. 1-5/16" is the size of those bolts, so I got the socket to correctly torque them up. I don't know if they just forgot to tighten them? They obviously had a socket that worked, because they had to remove them in the first place. Oh well. The car feels a bit more planted in the front now, but I'm actually amazed how little you could tell when they weren't tight. I guess it puts a lot of strain on the other mounts though. Another item that arrived is my utterly gorgeous new rocker cover. You have likely seen it in some other photos, but just look at it. MMMM. Unfortunately being the idiot I am, I didn't notice the part that said "when you order this you will need longer bolts to hold it on". Well, I didn't get those bolts, but I did manage to make mine work by trimming down the new bushes. Its tight, but I got it torqued down correctly, and with no leaks! A couple of other little items I had been waiting to fit were some washer jets (the old ones were WELL buggered) And a new hazard relay, so now I have on demand hazard lights. Check out that lovely heatshrink. I secured these two up onto the wiper motor to stop them rattling about, next to my new washer bottle Speaking of washer bottles, the caps are proving bloody hard to get. No one does new ones, but thankfully I managed to source a good used one that will work. Once I had run new hose to and from the washer pump, I found out that the original pump that came with the car, despite making the right noises, didn't actually move any water. I guess that is why it was removed... The replacement pump in the above photo is the pump that originally came fitted to Effie when I first got her. It works perfectly, and now I have two pathetic jets of water that kind of shoot onto the windscreen. Water drops as proof. The last couple of items that also got changed out were the starter solenoid, and battery negative lead. The starter solenoid was absolutely coated in oil. I don't know how, but it was all over it and up in all the terminals. I tried to clean it, but gave up and sourced a replacement. It had also previously overheated the wires, causing some damage to the insulation, that was taped up. This is the trigger wire once I removed the tape. Lots of bare copper and a melted terminal cover I cut the terminal off, crimped a new one on and covered the lot with heatshrink I did the same to the other bare wire; the constant feed I removed the old solenoid from the guard, and fit the replacement in its place. I used copper grease on all the terminals, to help keep corrosion away. The car now starts much nicer. Previously it would be very slow and lumpy to crank, almost like the battery was almost flat, despite having a fully charged battery. Now it just whirrs over, and fires up. I doubt the battery ground lead made any difference to that, but it got replaced anyway. The old one, despite being a replacement already, had frayed badly where it met the terminal on the boot floor. I also wanted to fit a battery terminal with a wing nut for quick disconnection. So that's where we are now. Once I have the rear light bulbs sorted, and the battery secured, we will finally be ready to go for the re-registration inspection. Exciting!

This isn't a job I was looking forward to, but one that needed to be done. I had to replace the split outer CV boot. The boot was split and spewing grease everywhere. I probably could have tried to get through the inspection with it cleaned up a bit, but figured it was best just to change it out. Step one, as always, is loosen the wheel nuts with the car on the ground. Also do what I failed to do, and remove the split pin and crack the main axle nut before you lift the wheel. It isn't torqued high, but you cant do it with a spinning wheel. Jack the corner up and lower it onto a stand. Whip the axle nut and washer off Next I loosened the nuts for the top ball joint and steering rod end. I gave the metal that the ball joints go through a good whack with a hammer but got nowhere, so I resorted to some WD40, winding the nut to the top of the thread and hitting the top of the nut. This broke both free without issue. I think I need a dead blow hammer. Interestingly I found another grease point I didn't know about, on the underside of the steering rod end. Will need to get some grease in that nipple. I left the lower ball joint and tie rod attached (later removed, to flip the bolt around, but it doesn't need to be removed) to the lower arm, and lowered the hub/drum complete. There was enough movement and slack in the brake hose to not strain it, but take care. You can see the axle just slipped out of the hub, and with some wiggling out it came completely Now, I tried to be lazy, and leave the axle in the pot joint and remove the CV, but don't be lazy, it's a waste of time. Remove the large CV clamp on the gearbox pot joint, on the other end of the axle, and the whole lot will just pull out and be removed from the car. Be careful that the balls in the pot joint don't fall out when you remove it. With the whole axle out, it's very easy to split the CV off. Just hold the axle CV downwards, put something soft under it to cushion the drop, and hit the CV with a mallet. It should just pop straight off. Everything is full of grease; this is a very messy job. I have heard of people putting the pot joint into a plastic bag to limit the greasy mess, but I just stuck the joint into a box the CV boot came in. Seemed to work OK. Remove old boot Slip the new boot on and make sure the small end seats into one of the grooves in the axle Refit the CV (I wont say how to do this as it varies. The Haynes manual gives some detailed instructions) And then get really angry at the stupid flat metal clamps they supplied, and the fact you didn't think to get the proper tool for them. No, pliers don't work properly. The boot I got from Supercheap (listed as for "front drums" as I know the ones for the discs are different) seems to be a bit short on the CV end and doesn't sit completely in the groove. It seems to clip in though and doesn't just pop off at maximum angle, so hopefully its OK. Teaches me to not buy it from a Mini parts supplier. I ended up using zip ties to secure the boot, but I have ordered the correct tools, and more proper bands. If/when this boot fails me, I'll probably just get a universal stretchy boot and use that instead. Apparently the stretchy boots are quite common to use on the Mini as its quick and easy. Torque the nut up to the required torque (which is quite low on the standard cars, 81NM), fit a new split pin and away you go Looking good after a quick spin (catch tray to catch the overflow from topping up the radiator) Ok ok, I know it's a lot of posts, but I'm almost up to date now. Clearly I have done way too much work in a short space of time.

One tool I forgot to mention in my last post about tuning, was the Gunson Colortune. In a world where everything is digital, with sensors and readouts, it's fun to be learning how it was all done back before all this. The Gunson Colortune was basically an analogue, visual, Air to Fuel Ratio display. These days you would use a Lambda, or O2 sensor to detect the AFR, but they didn't have them back then (or if they did, they must have been crazy dollars). The Colortune is, for lack of a more technical description, a see-through spark plug. This allows you to see into the cylinder, and see what the combustion flame looks like. You screw it into the cylinder in place of the normal 14mm spark plug, connect an extension and connect the ignition lead to that. The kit also has a periscope sort of mirror device to make it easier to see in awkward spaces If the cylinder is burning lean, the flame will be a pale blue/white. Like this (oops) Perfect is a dark blue And rich is orange I picked up a Colortune from an awesome member of a forum I'm on (thanks @Steelies), and set it up when I was changing the jet adjustment on the carb. I started with a very light blue since the mixture was very lean, and now I'm on the edge of dark blue and orange. If I lean the mixture out a little it'll be a solid dark blue. There is a lot that can be learned from looking at how the flame reacts to different situations. This is the instructions for the Colortune that identify what could be causing different issues It's a pretty cool little tool, and I will continue to use it when playing with old cars. I may even try it on Tess at some point.

The rear carpet is in OK shape, but the front is a write off. The drivers footwell has a rubber mat glued over a large hole in the carpet, and the passengers side looks like a bored tiger had fun with it.

Now that everything seemed to be running OK, we had oil only where oil should be, and coolant was mostly where it should be, it was time to do some old school tuning. The main things you can tune on an older car like this is the fuel mixture, the timing and the idle speed. These are all the things I needed to check and set. Obviously before you can even considering tuning the engine up, you need to know everything else is in good shape. I had just gone over the ignition system and replaced the cap, rotor, points and leads. The spark plugs although old, once gapped correctly were OK. The fuel was recent, the pump worked, the carb was clean and I had no vacuum leaks. Step one was to use the knowledge of where the timing marks are (as mentioned in a my previous post about them), and using a timing light try to see where the timing is. I don't have many photos of this, because you need about 4 hands to actually check the timing (one to hold the timing light, one to hold the mirror, one to turn the distributor, and one to stop the cables getting in the way). My timing light is an old Optilux unit that I purchased many moons ago. It only gets brought out occasionally, but I'm always happy to have it. A good timing light is one of those things that if you buy a good one to start with, it'll last many years of occasional use. Mine has no adjustment, no readout, and no tach. Just a simple light. A timing light needs four things. Power, Ground, Signal and something to point at. With no battery in the engine bay (or even a "jumping" point like modern cars) you need to source 12V from somewhere. I chose to grab it from the starter solenoid feed, where the big brown wire (constant power) connects to the solenoid. The Ground was taken from the bolt above the starter solenoid The inductive signal clip goes on ignition lead number 1, with the arrow pointing towards the spark plug. Cylinder 1 is the closest to the fan I found it quite hard to hold in the button on the light, whilst holding it, and the mirror, so I used a zip tie to keep the button pressed. I found setting the mirror up so you can see where the marks would be, and then pointing the light at the mirror (instead of trying to point it into the hole) so the mirror reflects the flashing light onto the flywheel worked best. With the engine running (at the lowest idle I could get without it stumbling, which I guess would be about 1100rpm), warm, and the vacuum advance disconnected and blocked at the carb, using this method I tried to find the timing marks, only to find that they weren't visible at all. I tried using the fine adjustment on the distributor to get the marks to come into view. The fine adjustment is the two bolts on either side of the distributor mount. The holes these bolts go through are slotted, so you can turn the distributor and make small adjustments. One bolt is circled, and the other should be where the arrow is pointing (mine is missing that one) I went full retard on the slot, and nothing, no marks. The distributor was already at full advance when I got it. The next step was to tighten those bolts back up, and loosen off the main clamp, for maximum adjustment freedom. This circled nut tightens the clamp, and loosening it off allows full freedom of turning the distributor. I turned it a further 20 or so degrees and BAM, I saw the marks finally come into view. I set the timing to the 10 degree mark. It's a little more advanced than the 7 degrees Haynes says it should be, but it'll be fine. I'll run 95 or 98 octane in the car in the future anyway. I locked down the distributor, check the timing again, and we were firmly on 10 degrees. Don't forget to reconnect the vacuum advance, which is blocked off by the black cap in the below photo With the timing in the correct place, the engine was running smoother, and would allow me to lower the idle, but I still had a stumble. Looking at the spark plugs I was running very lean. I had a very white spark plug with only minor traces of brown. The engine also stumbled, and stalled when the piston lifting pin was pressed. This is a clear sign that the mixture is too weak, and I needed to enrichen it. To enrich the mixture you use the jet adjusting nut hanging under the carb. This nut raises and lowers the jet assembly, allowing more or less fuel into the carb. The nut is circled here Its pretty hard to see, and harder to get to. You cannot get a normal spanner on it easily, so I found it easiest to turn it with my fingers. One hand on each side of the carb, using both of my index fingers to turn it. To enrich the mixture you want to lower the nut, turning it down, away from the carb body. If you were looking down at the top of the carb, you want to turn the nut clockwise to enrichen, and counter-clockwise to lean the mixture. In my case I had to turn the screw a hell of a long way, the mixture was very lean. Having come from my last tuning experience being the Speeduino, where everything is basically handed to you on a screen, with figures, gauges and logging to work from, this was far more... personal. This kind of tuning is all done by feel and ear. When I was turning the nut, I could tell I was getting close as the idle speed started to rise, and the engine smoothed out. If you turn the nut too far and the mixture gets too rich, the idle speed will start to drop off again. You want to stop at the peak of the idle speed. When you start to get to the point where you think you are near, after each adjustment give the throttle a couple of good blips and wait for the idle to settle again. Happy? Tweak and blip again. Sometimes you may need to rev and hold the engine at a higher RPM for a little to clear any excess fuel in the inlet, and then continue. The piston lifting pin also comes in really handy here too. With the VERY lean mixture I had, as soon as you looked at the pin the engine would stumble, the rpm would drop and it would stall. This pin was invaluable to identifying where the mixture was. If your carb doesn't have the pin you can do the same thing by sticking your finger in the carb inlet and lifting the piston with you finger a couple of mm. What you want with the piston lifting, is for the idle speed to either stay the same, or in my case since I left it a little on the rich side, the idle to jump up a tiny bit and then settle again. I still have a little tweaking to do to lean the mixture, as I left it on the safe/rich side, but its happy for now. The idle is now a lot smoother, the engine is more responsive and its happy for me to drop the idle speed down for a nice tick over. The idle speed is adjusted by the screw inside this recess at the front of the carb. I use a narrow flat blade screwdriver to turn it. What it's actually doing, is it's just a long threaded pin that just pushes on the throttle linkage (that the cable pulls on) under the carb. Not technical, but works. I took the car for a quick hoon around the block and it feels a lot more lively now. Its faster, and doesn't bog down or hesitate. No signs of a misfire anymore either. One thing that makes me happy is the fact that it starts so easily. With the engine warm, it starts immediately, with no other inputs. So with the timing set right, the mixture set close enough, and the idle nice low and smooth, it's actually a nice little car. Cant wait to get it legal and see what it can really do.

Having repaired the Drivers seat, I needed to carry out some more work to get it back into the car again. The first issue I had to fix was the hand brake mounts. These had been torn out of the floor by some muppet, so I needed to get my weld on and stick some metal glue on it. Now, I warn you, I have never welded with electricity before, and although I am enrolled in a welding course, that doesn't start until next month. I couldn't wait that long to get this little zap of a repair done, so I cracked on anyway. The first issue I had to deal with was using the dreaded flux core wire. I didn't want to get a gas bottle yet, so chose this for the task. I know its frowned upon by many, but it seems to have worked (just) for this task. Another issue was that despite having watched many YouTube videos I didn't initially get the welder settings right, so I think I didn't give it enough power right off the bat. This meant I got some nice blobby rubbish that didn't really stick too well. I did crank some power into it to make it actually stick, but by then I had already made the mess. I'm not kidding myself here, I doubt I got good penetration in the metal, so it probably wont stand up to time, but it doesn't really matter. As long as it holds up long enough to get through the inspection I can weld it properly once I know what I'm doing. The final result is this. I gave it a blast of zinc paint to cover the bare metal, and I wont give a close up photo It works though. I have the handle adjusted to three clicks, and it can hold the car on my steep driveway with no issue. With that done, the carpet went down again It's a good feeling finally putting it back together. The next thing to go in was the gauge cluster. Before this could go in though I had to replace the oil feed hose to oil pressure gauge. The old one was removed because it was damaged and leaking. The new nylon cable is VERY long, so I couldn't route it the normal way (to the left from the fitting, over the clutch housing and up to the gauge). I don't know why its this long, surely it could have been made the correct length before having the ends fitted? I routed it around the valve cover, next to the thermostat (it's the white pipe in the photo) Of course nothing is easy though, so I couldn't just screw the hose into the block. The old hose fitting used a tapered fitting to seal The new hose requires a flat face with a fibre washer. I didn't know this at the time so had to scramble to get an adaptor. Thankfully they are available from local Mini part suppliers, so out went the old fitting, and in went the new one with the washer If everything goes to plan I'll likely fit a tee there anyway to fit an oil temp gauge too, but that's down the track. The new hose went on easily with the right fittings I still needed to have a loop in behind the gauges I refitted the speedo cable, and fit the new hose to the oil pressure gauge and fit the binnacle. And like magic, everything works. In went the repaired drivers seat. The passengers one is still to be fixed The carpet vacuums up well, but it's completely buggered so will need replacing. It'll stay for now though as carpet sets aren't cheap.

It is fun. Its so easy to work on, parts are cheap and I get to take it for hoons to "test"

Yay When I got the car, it had this weird heater valve on it that didn't work, oh and it leaked. That was no good. I haven't quite worked out what this heater valve was from, but I suspect it pre-dated the car by a while. It didn't line up with the cable, and there was a steady leak from the top of the housing I got a replacement standard style valve from Minispares with my last order. Like an idiot though, I somehow forgot to buy a gasket. Oops. I smeared some sealant on the face of the valve and used that to transfer onto the gasket paper, so I could cut out a new gasket Of course it wouldn't be one of my cars, or British if it didn't do this Thankfully that particular spill was planned, unlike a couple of later ones. I removed the two nuts that held the old valve on, and removed the hose clamp. The old valve came off easy enough, as did the gasket (yes, woah, an actual gasket?!) I thoroughly cleaned the mounting face, smeared some sealant on the gasket and on went the new valve. Shiny. Now, you can see one thing I did wrong in the above photo. A: the heater cable is bent at the end so doesn't push in further, and B: that metal part in the clamp shouldn't be there.... but I didn't realise this was wrong until I fit the replacement heater cable. This is what the cable should look like. It takes some fiddling when fitting to get the correct amount of travel. The heater valve now works from the pull lever inside the car now. One other coolant related issue I had noticed with the car was that there always seemed to be some coolant on the block below the thermostat. I finally traced this down to a weeping thermostat housing gasket. It's hard to see in the photo, but obvious in person I thought to myself, "oh, this will be a quick job. Just pop the housing off, make a new gasket and away we go". It didn't go like that. The first warning should've been when I took the top hose off and saw the damage to the end of the thermostat housing and how brown it was in there. I took off the three nuts on the thermostat housing, and the two on the radiator, removed the bracket and then tried to remove the thermostat housing. It wouldn't budge. After MUCH abuse with many tools, it finally started to shift. It turns out the front stud was corroded into the housing Unfortunately the stud didn't survive the job, so I had to source a replacement. Once I saw the thermostat I was a bit suspicious of that, and a quick test showed that it was very sluggish to open. A new one of those, a gasket and a new thermostat housing were sourced. The new housing shows how much was missing from the old one I used the double-nut method to wind the new stud into the block, with a generous coating of copper grease on the threads. I also greased the actual studs, in the hopes they wont corrode to the housing again. The other two studs were OK to reuse. On went the new gasket The new housing looks much nicer. I topped the coolant up, but I'll need to actually run a flush through I think. There is a fair bit of brown crud in the system. I probably need to try a CLR-water mix flush to try to remove some of that corrosion in the block, but that's another job for another day.

Page 2?

This is just a quick little post regarding the timing marks on older Minis There isn't a lot of information on exactly how to read the timing marks on these older engines, as unlike the newer engines they didn't have timing marks on the crank pulley or even a pointer at that end. So how do you read the timing marks then? The flywheel. On the clutch cover, or Wok as it's called, there is a little plate that when loosened swivels on one of the two bolts to reveal a hole in the Wok This hole is for reading the timing marks on the flywheel. Inside the hole at the top there is a timing pointer. The marks can only be read using a mirror and light. I turned the engine over by hand so I could find the marks, just so I knew what I was looking for. The 0 degree mark is actually identified by the 1|4 mark on the flywheel. I'm not sure why. The other marks are standard, 5, 10, and 15 degrees (maybe 20? didn't check that high). My flywheel has a coating of surface rust on it, so I needed to use a small piece of sandpaper to clean up around the numbers to make them more obvious. You can see in the above photo I also used a dab of white paint on the 10 mark to make it more obvious. The 5 mark already had an old white paint mark. So that is how you read the timing marks. Sure, the normal crank pulley marks are a lot easier, but where is the fun in easy?

As part of the recommissioning process, I chose to replace the bushes for the engine steadies with uprated poly bushes. The Mini runs three steady rods, that run from either the subframe or the body to the engine. These restrict the rocking movement of the engine, and are fairly important to keep in good condition. When I was under the car a while back I noted that one of the lower steadies had badly perished bushes. They run rubber bushes standard, which obviously doesn't play nice with oil leaks and time, both of which this car has had in bucket loads. I ordered some uprated, harder poly bushes from Minispares, which arrived the other day. Removal of the steadies is generally simple as anything, just a spanner and ratchet to remove them, remembering which steady went where (although they are different angles so couldn't be swapped anyway). I chose to only do two of the steadies and they seem to be the main ones people focus on, the top steady, and the lower LH steady. The lower steady was first to get sorted. The bushes obviously weren't in the greatest shape I don't know if its standard or these had been replaced, but they were a two piece bush. I pushed the center pin out with a screwdriver, and then the two halves of the bush just popped out with some leverage. The new Minispares poly bushes are two piece too, so very easy to fit. No press needed. I used some rubber grease on the bushes to help slip them into the rod, and to in theory, help reduce any squeaking they might make during use. And refitted to the car. Easy. The upper mount has a couple more things to remove to get it free. The engine side has a mounting plate to remove, and the bolts for that were rather tight. I have heard of them shearing off, so take care, but otherwise it's easy to remove. The bushes on this were showing signs of softening and tearing These too were two piece bushes, so just popped out and the replacements slipped back into their place Refitting was a bit more of a pain though, as the engine was leaning slightly backwards (the soft old bushes obviously took this into account) and getting the body side bolt in was a juggling act. First I loosely assembled the engine side of the mount, and then whilst pulling forward on the rocker cover, I slipped the bolt through the body mount. Tightened it all up, and now it should be mint. I'm expecting I will probably see some increase in vibration from the harder mounts, but heck, the Mini is hardly refined as it is. This should make the engine more responsive since it wont be flopping around when you come on and off the throttle. A nice little upgrade for little cost and an hour or so.

No one likes either a saggy unsupportive seat, or one where you literally sit on wood. The Mini had both, and it was time to fix it. The first, obvious step, is to remove the seats from the car. In a Mini this is super easy, with just two bolts at the front to remove. Once out, I took the driver's seat into the house and began pulling it apart. This is what I started with. A very hard, unsupportive seat that was bodged with wood. The diaphragm is the large black rubber part with the holes in it in the above photo. This is used kinda like a big sprung net that allows some support and spring for your bum when the seat is sat in, making the seat comfortable. To replace the diaphragm you need to strip the whole base down. This isn't too hard to do, as long as you're careful. First you need to remove the vinyl cover. This is held to the frame with the black metal clips. These have two little tangs on the top side of them (the side you can't see) that dig into the material and hold them in place. I used a flat blade screwdriver to carefully pop them off. Some were a bit harder to remove, so I used needle nose pliers to gently wiggle the clips free of the material I found this froggy rag stuffed inside the cover of the seat. Not sure if it was added to help bolster it, or just randomly stuffed in. Should make a good rag in the garage. With the clips removed, gently peel the cover back. Take care that it might be slightly stuck to the pinky-red material wrapped around the base, so carefully peel the cover free If the original diaphragm is as stuffed as mine, and no longer attached to the frame, the foam and diaphragm can be pulled out. If your diaphragm is still attached to the frame you will need to unhook the metal hooks from the frame. My diaphragm was stuck to the foam. I'm not sure if its meant to be stuck to the foam or not, but it was a pain to pull away without damaging the foam. A random chunk of hard rubber was stuffed into the back of the cover. More bodged "fixes". With the foam off the seat you have access to the top of the frame. This allows you to hook in your new diaphragm hooks or springs. In my case I'm using a newer style diaphragm with springs, and not the rubber. This should hopefully last another 38 years. This came with instructions which were good to show how to attach the springs, which although isn't hard to do can be a pain the first couple of times. You don't want to get it wrong as the springs are fairly strong. They also have a different type of hook on each end of the spring, the less curved hook goes in the frame. The new diaphragm fitted. One issue I noted was that the front and rear springs are too long for this seat and aren't under tension. They stay in place OK because of the foam, but they can fall out until the foam is in place properly (and it looks like one even fell out before this photo) One thing I stuffed up first time, and it isn't mentioned in the instructions, is that I didn't slip the loop of vinyl through a spring before fitting to the diaphragm. This loop is at the back of the seat base I had to strip the foam out again, and remove the two rear springs and slip them through the loop before reattaching. And the completed diaphragm, with the clips reattached. Unfortunately one of the clips broke in half during assembly, so I'm short one. The seat isn't back in the car yet, but already its 120% more comfortable. Like a good Mini seat, it has that slight suspension spring when you sit in it. I'll do the passenger's seat tomorrow. That one has no wood in it, so it was almost like sitting on the floor when you fall through the frame.

Only one has a carb though. EFI fo lyf.

2/3 of my cars have pushrods. Aww yeah.