Adoom

Clamp/press a block of copper hard against the back of the join when you are butt welding, especially with the large gaps you have there. The copper absorbs the heat and makes it much harder to blow holes. The weld doesn't stick to the copper. Also real good for welding up small holes. I use a bit of flattened 15mm copper pipe. I think you might also be able to use aluminium, but I have never tried.

After putting an extra scissor jack under the engine so the car doesn't tip forward. I dropped the rear subframe. It has a towbar.... WTF do you tow with an 850 mini? It's still pretty solid, just covered in piles of mud and crap. And it has the handbrake cable guide that was cut off my other one.(apparently because intentions of using a hydraulic handbrake).

Does that mean I'm not allowed to take a thousand years to finish?

nah. I mean like this. Looking along the shaft, do the top two holes line up with the bottom two holes(all red), or are they different(red+blue)? I need to drill holes for the arm on mine and I don't know what angle it should be compared to the fork at the bottom. My plan was to do a best guess, I suspect they will be pretty close to all being in the same line. But since you have the pivot shaft with both sets of holes in it already..... maybe you remember....

Do you recall if the roll pin holes in the shaft for the top lever and the lower fork line up, or are they at a different angle? I haven't had a go at figuring it out yet.... I've just been stripping the parts car so I can get rid of the rusty shell and get some floor space back. Did manage to get the 850 running, it didn't seem to smoke at all! Dad reckons someone has swapped a 1.5" SU from a 1275 onto it, so it'll have even less power than normal. I assume no one is going to want a rusty, oily 850.

My trap was right at the compressor, but it didn't work so well. I think the air needs a chance to cool so the water condenses into droplets large enough for the filter to get them. I'll try it closer to the gun. My pipes do already go up to the roof and down now, since I got one of those self retracting reels.

It will cool down too fast I think. I'm not staying up all night to keep it going. I suppose if I can make a system to automatically light it.... using an arduino and a temperature sensor and one of those piezo lighter I do have an old pot belly, but it's super fucked, the door fell off and the chimney hole broke and it's kinda too small I think. But then.... I could make a steel spacer sleeve to make it much taller. And it would look like a okay garden feature.

I'm thinking of building an outside brick fire because I've got a whole pallet of bricks left over from the house. It's primary use will be the heat source for a water pipe loop that will run along 15m of grape trellis wire, and back to the fire to hopefully radiate enough heat to stave off the late season frosts that keep fucking up the early shoots. I'd want it to have a bunch of thermal mass, so I only want to keep the fire going for a few hours and the residual heat would keep the water thermosyphoning for hours more. It would be a fire with a door. So... can I just use normal cement mixed with builders sand? Or do I need to use refractory cement? If I do, do I need to use it for the whole thing, or just the layer of bricks exposed to the fire.

Do I need to use one of those paint filter things when filling the gun when spraying epotec? I have mixing cups. And I've ordered an iwata gun with 1.3 and 1.8mm nozzle. And 5L of 2k 'normal' thinners. I assume I use the same thinners for cleaning the gun. I've still got to get one of those inline water traps that goes just before the gun. What have I forgotten?

I'm gonna need a picture.

I finally found this. https://sunsetpatios.com.au/beam-deflection-calculator.php If I double up the RHS on the 3.6m side, and call the static load 100kg, I can load it up with 400kg it should bend about 3mm.

Does anyone know stuff and things about how much I can load a beam? So I want to make a mezzanine... erm I mean "A shelf" in the shed. It would be 3.8X2.8M Here is a quick scribble that is not to scale. Red is the existing steel frame posts and walls. I'm thinking that I can just bolt to those existing posts, and maybe bolt some 50X100 framing to the steel posts to give the perimeter of the mezzanine something to sit on. I'd like to have only the one blue post in the corner. I could add an extra post on the short side that's against the wall if it's needed. The 'floor' of the mezzanine would be 150X50 joists at 450 spacing on top of the perimeter frame, then 19mm ply on top of the joists. But I'm not sure about the perimeter frame, especially the two unsupported sides. I initially thought about using 300X50 framing.... then I found out how much it costs. But I do have some 100X50X3mm steel RHS. What if I made the perimeter frame out of that? Would it be strong enough? Do I need to double up the RHS so it's two high? I'll do this if it needs it, but if not, I don't want to 'waste' the steel. How much weight could my "shelf" support? I'm not thinking of putting heavy stuff like engine blocks up there, but lots of light things will add up....

Buried under about 6mm of filler, there was a perfectly good panel to replace my mangled rusty one! You can't get this panel separately, you have to buy a whole wing for about $300. FYI: using a 5mm center drill, meant for the lathe, is great at making a tiny hole just big enough for the guide pin on the little holesaws for removing spot welds! It's really short and stiff so you don't even need to center punch first. It makes using those holesaws so much easier.

I've been using mineral turpentine to remove spray on underseal and old contact adhesive. It's the most effective and cheap solvent I have found that does the job, doesn't evaporate super fast but when it does evaporate, it doesn't seem to leave a residue. Can I paint epotec 408 where I have cleaned up with the turpentine? Or do I need to also use a wax a grease remover?

MK3 has solid mounted front subframe using 4 small bolts in the towers. MK4 is rubber mounted with 2 giant bolts in the top of the tower. They are not interchangeable. Not sure about the rear subframe. I do already have MK4 subframes. MK3 has a single control stalk for indicators/wipers/lights/etc... MK4 has two stalks and larger longer shroud on the column. MK3 has no reverse lights. AFAIK the the MK4/MK3 lights both bolt in the same hole, you just need to sort the wiring. It's the MK1 that has the tiny rear lights. I think the brake pedal has a different pivot ratio. I think those are the major differences. Stuff I need from it is the loom, steering column, wiper assembly, clutch master(unless it's fucked) and all the bits to mount it. Assorted fasteners. Dashboard pads, bonnet hinges. headlights.... I need to cut out the rear seat storage pockets and the front lip of the back seat and weld them into mine because a previous owner removed them to do racecar.... and the interior handles and levers and stuff for the doors....uuuh probably some other stuff.

Finally found mini suitable for parts that was close enough to economically fetch. Had to borrow the older brother's Prado. And hire a trailer that was far larger and heavier than needed. But I could not find a braked trailer that was not enormous. I had to do some expert level tetris to squeeze it in the shed. Starlet is right up to the door, I can just barely get past it. Someone has picked it up using a steel cable through the door holes and crushed the roof gutter. It has some hideous red/brown velour seats from, I think, a honda. It's a MK3 and mine is a MK4, but there is still a lot of stuff there that I need. One thing I found a bit strange, it's a MK3(<1976) but it has the gauges behind the steering wheel, which AFAIK were only in the MK3 clubman, they didn't put them in the round nose mini until the 80's.

I was planning on using a mini master, seemed simpler since it's made to go there. I was crossing my fingers that the bore ratio would work out. I'll be interested to see how it goes for you.

AvE to the rescue.

nah, it's not the alignment. The rollers are still in the same plane but the drive wheel can move up on its mounts so when you try do up the tension, you run out of adjustment before it's tight enough.

If you have not used 0.6 before... maybe you don't know that the roller has a smaller groove on the other side and you must take the roller wheel off to flip it around. Or at least mine does that. Also, may or may not be relevant. On mine, the drive wheel/motor can move if you loosen the mounting screws, after many years of use, the motor had moved enough that you could no longer sufficiently tension the rollers.

Eh? What does "locked in place" actually mean? I've only had drills slipping with larger sizes if they get caught on a dag. But I've never had the ratchet chuck come undone by itself.

Ah, yes, I see what you mean. It's not really an issue for me since I'm really early in the build and I don't yet have a radiator or even started modifying the subframe. Plenty of space to reroute that pipe, either just under the distributor, or go under the slave cylinder.

Yeh, it's so handy that the parts just fit! I hadn't seen anyone else using this solution on the UK micra mini forums. I think I saw one person with a dirty great bracket to use a slave cylinder to push the cable clutch arm. Another with some aftermarket 'pull' slave cylinder that was apparently not so reliable. And on the nissan engined mini FB page, some guy was saying to just convert the mini to cable clutch cause it's "simpler".

And now it's longer! I drilled a 10mm hole 20mm deep in the end, then machined an over sized extension that would press all the way down into that hole. I put a wide groove where the join was then mounted it in the lathe and turned the VFD down to about 3rpm. FULL SLOW captain! It was slow enough that I could just put the earth clamp on the shaft and use a block of wood to stop it spinning and the lathe reeling in the cable. And zap zap goes the MIG. Machine down to final diameter.

The way I read it is... Only the tread on the top half of the tire can't stick out past the guard, but the tread on the bottom half can. So you could have loads of negative camber and be all good.