dodgypete

Then I removed the shitty seats.

The front seats had some pretty dodgy frames under them.....

I took ages building the engine and getting it back in the car. In the meantime I did some work on the interior.

I removed the shitty centre console with gauges you had to lie down to see:

I removed the shitty tread plate parcel tray. Why do people do this??!??

I couldn't even give it away in the end.

Yep, it was all crack tested. Well, except the crank. Helen Keller could see the crack in that.

May be a pinhole through the bore to water jacket?

The corrosion was quite bad. I wondered if it had been left with water in the bore for a while after blowing a head gasket.

Being a complete noob I made a couple of mistakes, but got there in the end.

I wondered if the corrosion mark in the bore was because it had blown a head gasket at some point, and been left with water sitting in it?

It is now 1310cc (had to go up a size to get rid of the corrosion)

It ended up needing a replacement crank - had a huge crack in it.

I got the cam reground to a Kent MD266 profile.

This is what happens when you try to flip the gearbox over by yourself to bolt it onto the block, and drop it on your arm:

I fitted a lightened double row timing chain and checked the cam timing. It was retarded by 7 degrees!

Ended up fitting an offset woodruff to get it right:

I took it into what turned out to be the most expensive engine reconditioner in town. After the price estimates kept getting higher, I told them just to do the machining, and decided to have a go at rebuilding it myself.

This was pretty daunting for me since I hadn't (and still haven't) replaced a wheel bearing or ball joint etc. Might as well start with the hardest job!

The pics I've posted are from about 2 years ago. The mini is already back on the road, heaps more updates to come.

Well, the engine lasted about a week before smoke started pouring out of the rocker cover.

After a compression test it looked like the rings were gone on cylinder no. 2.

I pulled the engine and took it apart to confirm my suspicions. Sure enough, both compression rings were broken, and there was a nasty corrosion mark in the cylinder.

Thanks, Photobucket worked....

I ended up buying this 1980 1275 GT with a 'rebuilt engine and gearbox' among other things.

I've been lurking around here for a while now, so I thought I better start a thread on my Mini.

I've got a heap of photos but they won't load properly. I've uploaded them to iforce.co.nz and followed the instructions in //oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/34643-how-to-add-pictures-to-the-forum/

If I put my image link in between the img tags they keep changing when I click preview and I get this message:

You are not allowed to use that image extension on this community

Help? Someone?

Discussion:

//oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/53286-dodgypetes-1980-mini-1275gt-discussion/

Harewood Vehicle Inspection Centre

580 Wairakei Rd

My Mini flew through its WOF there.

Name: Pete

Location: Chch

Cars you own: 1980 Mini 1275GT, and a slightly less exciting 1996 Toyota Carina GT (4A-GE Blacktop)

Mods to them: Mini - broken piston rings. Engine 'rebuilt' by previous owner.