Heres some pictures of my (I say my, it belongs to my dad, but he has washed his hands of it!) S1 Bentley. it was bought to be used as a car at my sisters wedding, and we should have used it and flogged it on. bought cheap, sold cheap.
Instead, for some stupid reason my dad and I decided that as we had no other projects and loads of spare time it would be a shame not to fix a few of the more obvious problems on a well used old wedding hack and possible get a little more money for it. Big mistake. massive. huge.
Once we got the monster onto axle stands (conviently blocking the access to the rest of a larger garage!) and peeled all the self tappered plates that had been screwed between the huge chassis and the outer sills (to hide the lack of inner sills)it became obvious that the previous owner had been a class one bodger, skilled in the way of filler and running a complex post war luxuary car on a shoestring budget.
It was terrible, we made new inner sills, consuming the steel from one roof cut from a xj40 jag and another from a mini. It was about this point that my dad decided that it was class one shit, and he simply ignored it!
After pricing up new wings (about 3000 each), repair panels for the wings (about 500 a side) I made new front parts for the wings from a mini roof. These where a swine as they curve every which way and have a crease in them. Flush with the sucess of the new front parts I also remade the rear part and the inner liners. once I'd filled them so that they looked 'ok' (we accepted that this car is never, ever going to be concours, or have mile deep paint!) my brother found someone local who had a pair of cheap secondhad glass fibre wings! bollocks. double bollocks!!! in hindsight I wish i had bought them and ripped the steel ones off, even after all the work I had done it still would have improved the car.
After the wings, I got so sick of the car we left it and I too chose to ignore it. (i was still racing my mini at this point so had no free time or money)
Fast forward two years (ahem!) post saxo crash and I decided to at least try and spend one weekend a month on the car, just to show willing. I got it going again, fixing a leaking fuel line that had been fitted by the factory before the body was dropped on to the chassis - great fun (but nearly impossible to do - a real bastard of a job), but at least it ran fine at tick over (which it never did before, so the pipe must have been leaking before).
Next we decided to get it onto our four post ramp as we knew the rear chassis leg needed replacing (500 quid)- these cars always rot here as the battery sits on the leg and it just fizzes away. Then I discovered that the brakes had failed - at some time a fool had filled the glass brake resevoirs (they are remote - the jampots are in the engine bay, the masters are in the most inconvienent place - right under the floor) with oil - this had rotted all the rubber in the brakes. rebuilding the brakes was, er, fun (and pricey - another 400 quid in parts)
Brakes done it both started, moved and stopped (though not very well - the mechanical brake servo needs rebuilding still).
so, its finally on the ramp, back axle is off, electrically adjustable shocks are stripped (parts to rebuild them 220 quid PER shocker - arrggg), and I'm in a position to start getting the chassis chopped to put the new leg in and sort the bottom of the rear arches (new lowers arches - 200 a side....)
this is where I currenty am as of this week............
these are the photos that should put a wry smile on the face of anyone doing a mini shell.......
wing marked for cutting
outer wing removed (9 inches up...) showing the inside skin of the double skinned back arch
rear most right hand side body mount - not attached to either the body - or the chassis. new body rubber - 25 quid, new mount lots more....
second right hand side body mount bracket (mount removed) - you can see the sides of the box section its meant to attach too - the bottom has vanished. the new box section part (about 10" long) 132 quid a side......
same mount on left hand side - note the crack that goes around the box section.....
looking up at the boot - tool tray cut out. just the panels to replace the bits that cannot be seen once the bumper is on and the car is on the ground (i,e lower valance, inner valance, boot mud catchers, body mount boxes, battery cradle etc have a guess, go on, guess?????
...no?
....a thousand pounds.........one thousand pounds for some bits of bloody tin.................
needless to say, ive bought some nice card and dragged a mini roof off my junk pile.....
chassis leg with the end cut off - look how many times bits of tin have been wrapped round it and dobbed on for the mot......
I hate this car.
give me a mini shell and the availbilty and prices of panels anyday
next time somebody moans because a heritage wing 'doest fit' I'm just going to punch them and claim mental torment
the only incentive is that once this car is done it a) frees the ramp up, b) can be sold to make a space (rubs hands together!!), and c) allows me to start on other far better, interesting, valuable and rewarding classics.
