Factory jigs?

[Milo]

The way they claim that the cars were rust protected is interesting, as mine seems to have missed out.
The floor area paint,inside and underneath can be scrapped off with my fingernail and there is no evidence of any undercoat or protection under the 1 coat of paint sprayed at a distance.Perhaps I'VE got a Friday car.

[NicholasUpton]

I already have a factory style spotwelder (25 inch reach & 400+ lbs between the tips makes class A spotwelds). The next two big projects are a Wolsey Hornet, and Mini Pickup that both need over 40 panels each. Plan is to build a factory style jig to build the sub assembly's then assemble the complete lower section on a body jig and finally set what is left of the original car on over the top.

[mk1]

This is definitely the best way to proceed if you a) Have the space & b) can expect to do a few. Sadly for most of us garage dwellers the opportunity of building proper fixtures is not an option.

M

[NicholasUpton]

Here is what I have come up with so far. I am using uprights in the front to pick up factory jig holes in the inner fenders. Good thing I have lots of mini shells around to compare measurements on as the factory drawings are incorrect. The front jig is built to accept both twin bolt and single bolt subframes with just a change in spacer. I did find out that the rear subframe points are identical in elevation from a MK1-3 and LWB cars, and the front shock mounts were installed where ever the tech felt like that day (measurements off of 6 cars)

[NicholasUpton]

A little bit of progress. Also need to know the original length of the load-floor front stiffener panel the origional was hack out years ago.

Will have more pictures on my facebook page/ website soon.

http://www.boot2bonnet.com
https://www.facebook.com/Boot2BonnetRestoration

[InimiaD]

Now that's what I call a spot welder.
By the looks of it you're building the pick up from scratch. Nice work.

[NicholasUpton]

I have to admit the spotwelder is quite the luxury, as I spend more time correcting aftermarket panels then welding them together. So far I have been able to reach everything except the handbrake mount

[NicholasUpton]

Pickup is now completed, see my website for a complete photo set of the bodyshell rebuild http://www.boot2bonnet.com

[mk1]

Excellent work!

You could teach Heritage a thing or two about assembling Mini shells.

M

[minicentie]

I wonder when someone will produce proper panels.
After 8 different front wings from the heritage ,i found an old stock which fitted perctly.
The heritage stuff is smashed in the mould and the head ligth rings,are mislined some cm's.
I wonder if there is any quality control??????

[wantafaster1]

That is fantastic.

[mk1]

I wonder if there is any quality control??????

Having seen a lot of heritage panels I can confidently answer this question. . . . NO!

M

[NicholasUpton]

I just did a front end on a customers race car and used an aftermarket front panel, found it fit better then the heritage one. The heritage LH fenders and inner fender suck, but all the RH stuff seems to be spot on, wish they could get there stuff together over there.

[mk1]

wish they could get there stuff together

Don't we all.

Then they wonder why they are thought of as the Rover employees to stupid to get a job with another real car manafacturer when Rover Group closed down.

M

[Dean]

i think they must have a problem with there left hand wings.

mine was not the right shape , too tighter curve around the scuttle and bad fit to the front panel, when clamped down ,it rolled the wing and made the bonnet gap HUGH.

i managed to find a NOS wing in the end.

in the body shop, there is another mk1 in there, they had the same problem, they ended up un stitching the wing around the headlight, re shaping in places, they got to fit right, and spot welled it back together, a lot of work for a wing that should be a good fit.

[IAIN]

I just did a front end on a customers race car and used an aftermarket front panel, found it fit better then the heritage one. The heritage LH fenders and inner fender suck, but all the RH stuff seems to be spot on, wish they could get there stuff together over there.

I have done quite a lot of cars and I will stick up for heritage here. Yes they do have issues but I would still use heritage before any other.
The only problems I have found with the wing fit is trying to fit them to a copy front panel. The folded seam on the front of the wing quite often requires fettled but thats not hard.





There's a left and right, they didn't require any extra work to make them fit or any filler to finish the job. Whats wrong with them ?

[Andrew1967]

I had a Heritage passenger wing for my pick up.

It was a good 1/2" too short at the A-panel end and no amount of pushing or pulling would make it fit.

I gave up in the end and managed to buy an old stock pattern wing off eBay, which fitted perfectly.

The drivers side Heritage wings do seem (or did seem) much better than any of the pattern ones.

NOS is of course best but remember that many of those that went into panel spares stock were ones that did not fit on the production line (or so I am led to believe).

[NicholasUpton]

IAIN, I know the pain on the seam of the heritage fenders, on the pickup I had to split the LH completely apart as there was over an 1/8 inch gap in the panel. Also I see in your pictures you have the late model fenders and they seem better then the mk1/2.

[miniminor]

Pickup is now completed, see my website for a complete photo set of the bodyshell rebuild http://www.boot2bonnet.com

Wow a brand new pickup shell, looks fantastic, love to see the finished painted car.

[Ollie78]

I had my shell on Ian Slarks jig recently and now knowing just how much tolerance there is between factory built cars its no wonder replacement panels fit some cars better than others.
Ian told me he see's totally unrestored mini's that have never been in any accidents and they can vary as much as half an inch either way (in length) from the bulkhead cross member to heel board. My own car although rebuilt, was all ok with the rear subframe mounting, heel board and toe board but it was a bit short between toe board and tower mounts, apparently this is very normal. It must be near impossible to produce panels that fit every mini perfectly when they can differ in dimensions from the factory
I know minis were built on jigs but if you watch the videos of the factory assembly line they aren't exactly hanging around are they. I'd go as far to say it looks like they are running at the car with the panels and the next guy is running around with the spot welder. Also thinking about the sub assembles being the floor assembly and the front end assembly its easy to see how the two might have become slightly miss aligned... on occasion

On a similar vein I was reading in one of the mini books a comment from Roy Haynes about the production of the mini clubman.
"On the subject of incompetent design, the Clubman grill was designed as a one piece stamping, but the body engineer came to me and asked if I would agree to having two separate outboard elements, around the headlamps, as individual stampings, with a central grill section. I said 'Why would we want that?' and he replied 'Well, frankly the trouble is that we cannot control the overall width of the car, so we cant have one stamping'. He was telling me BMC couldn't control the width of the car down to one centimetre..."