first one was back in 1979/80 when I was 16/17 I had had a job, part time at a garage down in shalesmoor ,id been going down since I was about 14 after school, mainly helping with mechanical repairs. when the chance came to buy a 66 mini cooper with a rust problem, I used all my savings of £150 to buy it .
It was dead easy to strip down and wasn't long before I had all the rear subrame mounting panel chopped out and crudely made plates screwed in to place.
then it was time to weld it up, unfortunately I had only seen my boss do a little welding with an gas torch and had never really had a go my self
but how hard could it be ???well after a while I managed to tack it all together ,and then started to seam it all together. this is when I learned a little about distortion
.It was obvious I needed some help with it ,but the chap at the garage only knew what his dad had shown him 30 years earlier. so wasn't up to date with (modern bodywork).anyway some help came from my other hobby (boozing) where I was assured that even crap welding could be covered up with a new german product called Shults??. great I thought and the next weekend I finished the welding and started to apply loads of the stuff, only to see it start to slide off most of my work ,even to the point where I could see I hadn't quite finished some of the welding!. well after awhile I thought I would let it all dry and maybe apply some more.
in the mean time I thought I would just reweld the bit I wasn't happy with
next thing the hole of the underside was a massive blue flame as the hole underside burned 
!!...the scares from the dripping shults are still visable 37 years later .well the garage owner had had enough, towed the mess up to my grans drive, where it stayed till I could get rid of it .
I think I got £150 for it... twin tanks an all, |I didn't even have a camara ,so no images ..but remember the last digits where 889D.
this didn't put me off bodywork , but didn't ever want to work on another bloody mini!
I then got a proper job at a ford main dealer (brookshaws) and went to collage ,and learned how to do the job properly.I ended up a foreman their and worked on all aspects of body repairs. then moved on to a main Vauxhall dealer (Charles clark)
jigging cars and saving up to eventually get my own body shop. which I did in 93. I now have a successful business employing 4 operative staff mainly doing insurance work (not classic cars). but have been rebuilding old cars as a hobby all my working life.
so that's why this is my first full rebuild on a 60s mini that I should get finished!
Nick
