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You're obviously a skilled 'tinny' - or tinsmith as we used to call them ATM. Can you do the old fashioned lead loading too? Or has modern fillers made it totally redundant. I tried to teach myseld but it was so exasperating that I almost gave up until an old 40's era 'tinny' locally, brought up on MG cars, gave me a few tips. Still not something I'd do again in a hurry but I did it......., after a fashion!

Keep us all up to date with your traveller woes

Thanks for the compliments. Hopefully one day we'll see another Traveller on the road.

Peter - I've never tried lead but plan on it. I've been toying with a few options for a couple of the seams and lead (or the modern equivalent) seems to be the best choice versus seam sealer or body filler. Still have a bit more progress until I'm to that point.

More from the backlog of photos - after the fender, inner window channel, and various other small pieces were in place, it was time to attach the skin. As with the other side a little fitting, a little trimming, and some patience and everything came together.
And last but not least..... On to finishing the remaining portions of the B-pillar and the window frames.....

After a short 2 1/2 year hiatus following a cross country move and a search for a new home, things are starting to progress on the Traveller once again.

The first step was trying to remember where things left off - I finished the B and C pillars back in Jan/Feb of 2018 and recalled the next step to be fitting the door handles and latches to check for fit. I had to trim away a little more of the outer skin to clean up the edge of the remaining parts then make a patch between the original pillar skin and the new side skin (then repeated 3 more times).

Unfortunately during that time in storage, the passenger side door and body sustained a little "hangar rash" that left the finished door and side dented. Step 1 was to work the dent back to its original contour the best I could. I forgot to take a before picture of the side but am pretty happy with the results - was able to push the dent back out and straighten it to 95% of where it was originally. I probably won't do anything with the door skin other than a little filler it since it is very shallow.

With the side relatively straight, I was able to try fitting the latches and handles. I had to do a little adjusting on my door repair pieces but everything went together and the doors seem to latch nicely.

The gaps on the passenger side are pretty close. The driver side is still off by a litte bit. I am guessing it is a combination of loosening the hinge bolts, moving the door a hair, and retightening combined with the window frame possibly being off by a small amount after rewelding. I think I will put the glass in the frame and see if that tells me anything.

Making good progress!

I found on my passenger door for the van, that we had to file out the holes on the skin and a panel slightly to get a better door shut.

Great too see that things are moving on again!

mini_surfari wrote: ↑Tue Jan 05, 2021 9:32 am I found on my passenger door for the van, that we had to file out the holes on the skin and a panel slightly to get a better door shut.

I will probably have to do a little bit of that and a spot on each door will probably need built up with weld and smoothed.

mk1 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 05, 2021 9:44 am Great too see that things are moving on again!

Slow progress is still progress!

Back around the holidays I started making a list of all of the materials and tools I would need to make dies to form profiles for new window frames since no replacement options had existed. I have been putting this off since it was going to be time consuming and I was hoping I'd find a nicer set of frames for sale. I did one last Google search for the frame part number and the first hit was to Minispares. Apparently they released a kit last year - much easier than starting from scratch!

A few days later and the kit was at my door step. I started by using the original rusty frames to mock up where each piece should land on the body, installed the stud plates in the upper and lower profiles, and transferred holes into the body. From what I can tell, studs are the correct hardware for the lower profile but the upper originally had 14A9672 tabs with rivets. I will have to trim the upper studs since they will interfere with the upper window channel once the glass is in.

Next were the forward and rear vertical sections. The kit intended for the same threaded studs to be used in these areas. It looked like they would land in the center of the channel at both pillars but it is nearly impossible to get your hand into the C-pillar to install the nuts. Since they are NLA and not included in the kit, I decided to make a dozen 14A9629 frame brackets using ones from the original frames as a template.

The upper rear corners were left long (presumably to leave a little room for adjusting during assembly). A little trimming and the miter cuts and inner corner supports fit nicely.
I elected to plug weld everything from the outside with the frame pieces attached to the body and grind the welds flush.

I'm calling it a success - on to the roof gutter repairs.

excellent work and fabricating , following with interest

Too many projects, not enough time - the story of this Traveller! As seems to be the trend, back at it for the annual January installment of Traveller time!

The roof gutters are the last major hurdle before the body will be ready for paint prep. My goal is to keep as much of the original sheet metal as possible, not remove the roof skin, and only repair the bad areas. I decided to start with the rear corner since it had less curvature than the front.

After the usual removing of the rusty parts, welding on some replacement gutter sheet metal, and fixing the rusty roof corner, it was time to start reforming the gutter.

I made two different tools using 1/4" diameter rod. The corner tool received a 90 degree bend. When I started forming the gutter, it became clear that my flange repairs were welded too close to the area I was forming and the weld bead fought me the entire way despite having sanded it flush with the sheet metal - lesson learned for next time.

The final result is workable. The radius did not end up perfect in a few spots due to the weld effecting how the metal formed but it is close enough that I can finish it with filler.

I also started disassembling the power unit so the head and block could spend some time at the machine shop. I have done many Sprite engines but this is the first time tearing into a Mini. I found there to be a bit more of a learning curve compared to the Sprite. I think the unique layout of the transmission in the oil pan, several highly torqued pieces of hardware, and BMC having several "special" tools in mind for certain tasks added to the challenge.

Getting the side cover removed and removing the clutch diaphragm was straight forward but things quickly came to a halt since I did not have a 1-1/2" socket in the toolbox. My methods of either using a pry-bar to lock the flywheel or a 1-5/16" socket to lock the pulley also proved inadequate - fine for doing 60 ft-lbs bolts but not very useful on 150 ft-lbs bolts. After running to the store for a socket, spending an hour making a flywheel locking tool, and spending another hour or two modifying my homemade Sprite rear hub puller to work on Mini flywheels, everything was apart. At this point I was greeted to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKjyavInIMA

And I turned off the lights and called it a day.

Knackered thrust washers I expect.

Or if they're Ok, that end float can be reduced by shims either side of the primary gear.

Knackered would have been a significant improvement.

I didn't have to go far to find half of the thrust bearings - they were waiting in the bottom of the transmission case. The substantially thinner remains of the other two were somehow still in place but they managed to machine a deep groove into the crankshaft.
I found a good used crank from eBay rather than trying to have this one welded and reground. There is some damage to where the center cap and adjacent block area contacted the crank but less than 0.010" of material was removed - still capable of holding the bearings in place.

Both the engine and transmission internals have a light coating of rust on pretty much everything that isn't a contact surface. There is also quite a bit of old sludge in the bottom of the transmission. Initially I contemplated leaving the transmission alone but seeing this changed my mind - don't want to ruin a new engine by flushing it with trash.

Up next is to disassemble the transmission to see what lurks below.

Holy...

Ouch!

That's a bit of a nasty turn. Glad to see you have managed to source a crank. The shock of finding all that will be a distant memory one day.

Keep up the good work

The funny part about finding this is that I had the engine running for a few minutes back in 2015. It sounded fine and there was no indication that anything was wrong. I didn't have the hydraulics hooked up so the only thing I didn't try was disengaging the clutch.....

The gearbox was next on the list after the engine. After seeing the amount of black sludge and light corrosion, I decided to also tear it completely apart. I won't go into the play by play details but I will say that it was well worth reproducing a few of the custom BMC tools (and inventing one or two of my own along the way).

First, removing the nuts from the first motion and third motion shafts meant that I needed a method to keep the shafts from rotating. I was able to get the first motion nut loose by placing it in fourth and using two sockets and two breaker bars to get one loosened. I initially tried locking it in first and fourth but didn't feel comfortable proceeding after neither nut wanted to break loose. I decided to sacrifice a pinion gear from a 3 synchro parts transmission I had laying around to hold the shaft so I could get the third motion nut loosened. The tips of the splines had to be modified in the lathe to fit the first motion shaft but after a bit of battling with hardened steel and some welding, I had a nice tool to hold everything I place while the first and third motion shafts were locked together in fourth gear.

Many years ago I made a holding tool from a piece of angle iron and some steel bar. I wish I would have kept track of the number of times it has done the job of keeping drivetrain parts in place while I'm trying to either tighten or loosen something. Fun fact - the bolt spacing I drilled for holding a Sprite diff input flange is the same spacing for Mini drive flanges.

The first motion shaft nut came loose without much effort but the third motion was extremely tight. I suspect someone had been in this transmission and ran the nut on with an impact gun. After sliding a 4' long piece of tube over the breaker bar, I was able to overcome the alleged 150 ft-lbs (I suspect in reality it was 2-3 times that).

Next was removing the first motion shaft from the case. A custom slide hammer adapter made this painless. Internal threading on the lathe is a great exercise in concentration - a little too far and things go south quickly!

GREAT WORK!

There are some really handy tools there.

Particularly like the gearbox locking tool.

Thanks Mark.

One last tool for now - I did my best to duplicate the third motion shaft bearing removal tool. I know Guess-works sells this for a reasonable price but I didn't think to order one ahead of time.

Having everything disassembled meant that I could finally get around to ordering new parts. Aside from needing a good cleaning, the only notable wear or damage was to the layshaft. The bore in the laygear had a few small marks that mostly cleaned up with a scotchbrite pad. I have another laygear but I am debating whether I want to risk having gears with different wear patterns on the teeth. I'm leaning towards reusing the current laygear.

Time to get scrubbing!

Slowly working my way through the gearbox reassembly. I was just about to put the differential back into the case when I noticed quite a bit of play on the planet gears. After a little more disassembly, I found what appears to be quite a bit of wear to the case's mating surface.

I have another case or two on the shelf but am trying to work through what I have and if any of it is any good. Ideally I'd like to make one good diff from what I have (plus new thrust washers). Is there a spec for end float on these gears?

More worn part on left, less worn parts from bin on right: More worn case (there is a burr around the shaft bore): Less worn case:

I'm thinking on my feet here regarding your diff housing and the planet gear thrust washers. I seem to recall that the later thrusts have anti-rotation stops to prevent exactly that happening. Big problem with MGB GT V8's - and seemingly your diff - is that the copper thrusts pick up small fragments of case hardening(?) This embeds itself into the copper which rotates and the embedded steel acts as a lathe tool......., chomping its way round, cutting the crap out of the diff cage!!!

As they are plain copper thrusts, couldn't you just get the later non-rotatable thrusts or punch some new ones. That's what I was doing while I was rebuilding MGB GT V8 axles with ultra rare CW&P ratios as a profitable hobby in the 80's.

MUCH more metallurgy to it than that of course but the principle is the same...... but easier to get to of course!

That is my thought Peter - thinking I can toss the case in the mill and carefully add two slots to catch the tabs. My main concern is how much case wear and end play is too much.

Yes, end float of the planets.. Interesting subject for me. While we were doing the metallurgy tests on the shards of hard material picked up by the planet thrust washers, we established that it was excess end float along the pin that caused the case(?) hardening of the planets against the sun wheels to break away. By bringing the planets closer together with thicker planet thrusts AND new fibre sun wheel shims cured the diff problems. Preventing any further rotation of the planet thrusts also saved the diff cages. Once you have prevented any further rotation of the thrusts, the case wear is stopped there and then

I don't remember the spec of the copper used in the planet thrusts but it was fairly soft because it had to act as a centrifugal shock absorber. Additionally, iit was pliable enough to punch into its concave shape with one pull of the press. Job done