1964 850 tc

[guru_1071]

holy mackerals batman!

progress has been made!


too cut a long and involved story short, i made a huge mess of the floor, dodgy measuring, dodgy measurments, and a slighty bent shell all conspired against me.

it took a couple of months to get any enthusiasm back, and a LOT of careful measuring using some very carfully made datum bars showed that the rh floor was just useless.

i decided the best way to progress was to chop the whole mess out and start again, so armed with a m-machine half floor and a full crossmember i set to.







next job


full heelboard, lined up with the datums and the front frame, so i know that its all square.

once thats done, i think i will feel more relaxed about the whole thing.


i so wish that i had just bit the bullet right at the start and bought a full floor, the expense just wouldnt have mattered at this stage




oh, and thank god i have the unwelded, unmessed with body shell that belongs to 'stinky pete' its been invaluable for measuring against!

[JC T ONE]

Woaw - that was a radical decision

No wonder you took your time, to get this done.

Looking good now

[boxofbits]

Nice project! Did it come complete with that coach in the picture? I take It that was the one that hung its arse end over the Alps in some 1969 movie! Can't think what it was called.....

[36inter]

Glad to see the old girl making progress, some things are just not meant to be easy. Glad to hear Stinky Pete came to the rescue. I have a few minis to rebuild and have toyed with the idea of making a master jig but I would have to be sure that the shell I set it up on was original and correct, not an easy task.

Does anyone know if there is a set of dimensions for the main points on a mark 1 mini that would enable a jig to be made?

Pete

[JC T ONE]

Does anyone know if there is a set of dimensions for the main points on a mark 1 mini that would enable a jig to be made?

Pete

In the old days, the bodyshops use to have something called a Cilettebench (dont know if its called that in English?)
these can sometimes be found in the back of old garages, and not a lot of people want them, as they take up a lot of space.

here is a picture of one = http://www.gasgoo.com/auto-images/maint ... 28448.html

These benches had fittings/tools, for Mini shell,s too.

Here in Denmark one of the Mini guys, have one, and help the other guys with their shell,s

[Frogeye61]

JC, might I ask where one of these is in Copenhagen?

[guru_1071]

Glad to see the old girl making progress, some things are just not meant to be easy. Glad to hear Stinky Pete came to the rescue. I have a few minis to rebuild and have toyed with the idea of making a master jig but I would have to be sure that the shell I set it up on was original and correct, not an easy task.

Does anyone know if there is a set of dimensions for the main points on a mark 1 mini that would enable a jig to be made?

Pete

pete, i have a frame that a shell will sit on that is 'jig-like' the trouble is that it gets in the way, so its better in shells like this just to be confident (or stupid) to get into them and tweek away until its right. with the datum drawings in the early manual and the undamaged, untouched other shell i have to throw a tape at its all starting to come right.

ive got a couple of other 'semi-jigs' that attach to various points that i find useful to either use as string points to tape measure holders, but stuff like this is to individual tastes.

the trouble that minis have is the production tolorance from new, so a perfect measure on one car could be 1/8th out on another car, just look at how crisp the sides where on 59-61 (say) shells and how well the doors fit with the perfect gaps, its nearly impossible to get this crispness of gap on later cars because the door apartures are growing as the press tooling wears (which of course is why the mk3 had the seperate a panel and it gave the shell builders on the production line an 'edge' to mess with to get the doors to fit so much better as they only had the back edge to curse at rather than a fixed 'door shape' on the mk1 / mk2 shell pressing

i think the body works jigs are fine for use on crashed cars, where your pulling / cutting a bad shell back to a known shape, but they dont really have a purpose when your swopping half floors etc.

i suppose every one has their own way to do stuff - just look at the thread on here about peoples ideas on the right way to fit a panels and hang doors!!!


my biggest mistake with this shell is a) i should have stripped it and got it on my spit from day one, and b) i nearly let i beat me - the errors i made when my heart wasnt in it really came back and bit me on the arse later on

the best thing i did was to walk away and spend a while on some of my other, er, secret projects - the time away from welding up rotten minis did me good!!

[36inter]

Guru, that break from welding rotten Minis, it was'nt taken up welding rotten Bentleys was it........

Pete

[guru_1071]

Guru, that break from welding rotten Minis, it was'nt taken up welding rotten Bentleys was it........

Pete

in part yes, i did all the crossmember and got all the front suspension back on it, things where looking up, then the monkey on my back decided to play a trick on me.

i decided to get it out the garage and put it under the ramp (so it was easier to work on), the 1930's alvis (which lives under the ramp) is a bastard to start, so its always a 'full occasion' if any work is done on the car

so,


got the alvis started (took an hour & serious sense of humor failure thanks to the bastard double ended su pump that just delights in furiously pumping a small amount of fuel between the two chambers of the actual pump....), dumped it outside, started the bentley (first turn of the key, thank you very much), got the bentley outside, discovered that it was 4" too tall to go under the ramp (rats!) decide that whilst it was outside i would turn it round, so the front was in the daylight and i would wash it. then i could work on getting the huge, heavy rad back into it

bad mistake, massive, huge.

the bastard thing then decided it wouldnt start, and it started to rain. and the screens out of it.

five hours later it limped into to life, (after we had to jury rig a second battery to power the coil, strip all the cold start & thermostatic plenum off it, and struggled, shaking like a shitting dog back onto the ramp. this was a serious waste of a sunday and it nearly ended up on ebay - both me and my old man had just got to the end of our tethers with it

ive since got the rad back in and hosed up and ran it up to to temp, but cannot find the short in the loom that robs the power from the coil - its a nightmare, all the wires are the same colurs and there is no slack in the loom to pull anything out to inspect. arrggg!!! i think im going to have to make a small new loom that runs all the things that work of the 'ignition on' part of the switch thats failed.

happy days!!!

[36inter]

Bloody hell Guru, how are you going to cope when they are all finished and there's nothing to do, I am sure you will explode or start talking to yourself.........

Pete

[JC T ONE]

JC, might I ask where one of these is in Copenhagen?

I dont know ? but I can ask Per, it was his MK III, I heard was in it, after its big shunt

[InimiaD]

Rich, lesser mortals, not unlike myself, would have said "sod this for a game of soldiers" and found the nearest watering hole and got sh*t faced.

It'll all come together one day and you'll wonder what all the fuss was about.

[guru_1071]

Bloody hell Guru, how are you going to cope when they are all finished and there's nothing to do, I am sure you will explode or start talking to yourself.........

Pete

pete


ive got plenty more tucked away, a lifetimes worth you could say!!!

[36inter]

How do you spell 'massakissed'.........

Pete

[guru_1071]

annnndddddd

.....'back in the room'

got the new floor in, and the crossmember, then it was time to look at the heel board.

i had done both ends, but it was a mess and i decided that it would be easier just to bite the financial bullet and buy another full one and fit the whole thing.

so, new heritage heel board bought, looking at it in a critical light it became apparent that they have so much flex in them that its impossible to fit them 100% and know that they are right, so using my spare, good shell i made another 'heel board holder' that locates on all the trunion nuts and through a hole drilled in the middle, this ensures that there is no twist what so ever. once it was in i spent hours measuring and measuring to make sure its perfect, its less than a 1/16th on an inch when i triangulate back from the other six 'hard' datum points ive been using, so im pretty happy its as near as it will ever be.

of course, to get the heel board in, i had to cut all the rear seat pan out and the companion boxes etc





once the heel board was in, i then had the choice of to either by a heritage boot floor and just use the front bit, or be a real man and chop all the stuff id previously done using the secondhand bit and just put the whole thing in. if i did this, i may as well put full arches in etc etc. now that the heel board is 100% right, the back is wrong (as when i originally did it i used the crispy original heel board as a (now i know) incorrect datum point

so, plasma choppy chop



ive left the arches in at the mo, until the floor is in, then they will come out.



all the extra box section was from when i spent an age measuring and pulling the shell straight, i think it was more bent from day one than i realised, which was the start of my problems.

then flushed with succes, i fitted the new front passenger floor as the original was a little too thin.



i should have just fitted a full floor........

[InimiaD]

All that effort will be worth it in the end Rich. Stick at it.

[georgek]

Amazing work your doing, great pictures and good to see you getting the shell back into shape.

[slowboy]

like you said rich, i am at the easy bit now in comparison

[Vegard]

Bin it!!!

[guru_1071]

well, after six months of not doing much, due to feeling like death most week ends ive done a bit

ive lost track of where i was, so

drivers floor, out and swopped



heel board, boot floor and arches in




it took ages to get this done, a lot of tweeking & pulling to get the dimensions right

from front to back and throughout, the dimension of the frames are about+/- 16th", which is acceptable i think


outer a panel and door on and fitting pretty good, again, hours of tweeking - the original door from the car fitted great, better than the red one, but was toast. the minimachine full a panels are great, but do need some work to get the fit right.



inner wing, half fitted, this literally could be thrown from the other side of the garage and would spring into the hole - something must be comming back right with the dimensions (at last!)

sharp eyed viewers may notice a tin front, im 99% sure im going to fit tin wings and front, rather than the plastic front - the money & time ive spent on this so far, i just dont think im going to be happy with the poor fitting front that was fitted after its crash, plus there is all the iva/sva crap



and thats up to date