Tiger Tamers 1964 Hillman Minx Project

[Tiger Tamer]

I did put the bumper and trim on etc but have decided I can't live with the grainy finish so I have bought some more paint to redo it. Shouldn't take much to sand smooth and respray.

I have also painted the door panels with a dark charcoal vinyl paint which turned out nice. I still need to remove and paint the rear panels and the back set as well. The base of the back seat needs some mods to the frame for it to fit over the trailing arm covers for the 4 link. I have done one side which seems to have worked quite well. Less work than I thought. 

[Tiger Tamer]

I gave the rear seats and door panels a good scrub today and managed to get the paint on. Dries real fast so I didn't have to wait really before putting it back together. Anyway a few pic's.

[Tiger Tamer]

[Tiger Tamer]

I sanded down the repaint I did which was full of crap and resprayed it . It's good enough on the drivers side which I did a small test spray on to make sure the new quick dry enamel didn't react with the enamel I had used. All was well, so away I did. That was on the sunny side of the car and of course what possibly could go wrong on the shady side did go wrong. So I will have to have another go at it tomorrow. 

I decided to turn the car around to get the sun on that side for tomorrow.

Anyway in the process I took a pic. What do you think about the fast back look 

I also have the Sunbeam Tiger in getting dyno-tuned at the moment and he does a lot of work setting up ECU's etc. So Once the Tigers is back home I am taking the Minx in for him to set up the ecu etc and get it going.  

[Tiger Tamer]

Since I have to use a sealed battery box, I bought a Moroso and fitted it today. The only place it would fit is where I put it which meant I had to put some plate partially over the spare tyre well. I don't need a spare so it doesn't matter and I will probably make a cover for the rest at some point. The battery box is not sitting on a flat surface so of instead of just using the large flat washers supplied I used some 3mm plate for the underside of the boot floor. I can also make a lot shorter earth cable now as well.

Anyway, I think I will keep the first attempt box to keep my spare in a can and other bits and pieces. I had to drop the fuel tank to do it, but I have a roll over valve to fit in it, so I had to at some stage.

 

[Tiger Tamer]

Quick up date as it's nearly dinner time. Been working on finishing up and changing a few small things that I wasn't happy with. I did put some petrol in the tank and flushed out the fuel lines. Found a couple that just needed me to tighten my nuts. I will just be doing a few tidy jobs until I can get it into get the final wiring and start up. Anyway I found a little Hillman special vehicle sticker to add. Go figure. 

[Tiger Tamer]

Here I was thinking I had it mostly done then realized I had not done the power steering. I had mounted the Toyota MR2 elec- hyd pump on the passenger side by the radiator so I needed to connect the hydraulic lines and wire it. I managed to get a pressure line from a MR2 which has the correct fitting for the pump and I had the correct fitting to the MX5 rack so I took them into the local hydraulic workshop and they put a swivel fitting in to connect the two systems together. Then it was just the return line and feed lines to do. I also connected a power wire and earth to the pump terminals to check the pump did work. All is well.

Then all I had to do was the wiring and I had a diagram to wire a MR2 pump into another car. So off I went into town with great hopes of finding all I needed to achieve my goal of securing what I needed to sort the wiring. YEAH RIGHT. Plenty of places have manual re-setting circuit breakers but not auto re-setting. And they have resistor type relays but not diode type. So at the moment I have it set up with a 50amp circuit breaker which will work for now but will be replaced with a 80amp when it arrives. The resistor type relay may be ok. A mate of mine who is a stereo tech says as it's only acting as a switch and it would work, and faster than a diode but probably not last as long. But probably should stick to the recommended diode type. Any thoughts welcome.

[Tiger Tamer]

Another job to tick off the list was to replace the new front brake pads with some Winmax. I had purchased some pads from BNT and really didn't take much notice of them until it was to late to return them. They were a softer compound which I thought would help with less pressure needed to make them work. But when I finally opened the box I discovered they had a bevel on them that reduced the contact area but will increase with wear over time. Go figure because it doesn't make sense to me. 

With the Winmax you can get different types of compound depending on their use. These are for performance street-track day pads. so out with the new and in with the newer.