Some of you may have seen my hello topic which introduced my project car a 1960 mk1
I've had a fair bit of help so far from bill on the 1959 mini register who has been fantastic and given me a lot of advice.
Anyway I figured I ought to start a proper rebuild thread so I can track my progress over the coming months. My intention for the car is to build a nice usable car that we can have some fun with. I'm certainly not going concours/show standard just something solid. Once I get through the nasty stuff my 8 year old son is looking forward to helping me get it done. I might see about doing a few period mods and engine wise I'm sticking with the 850 to begin with and then see where we go once it is all running. I am going to fit a rear roll cage though so we can have somewhere strong to mount some seatbelts etc for when my boy and I are out and about as there are no seatbelts at all at the minute and I don't trust the b posts to take the mounts
Hopefully you won't mind all the questions I might ask.
I've decided my first job is to get the engine running then I can see what condition it is in before I pull it from the car.
My first question though is that with the car being quite early is it likely to be a positive earth and how can I check this?
Anyway nothing is happening when attaching a battery so I tried it direct on the starter. This resulted in a fair bit of spinning but it wasn't engaging. On stripping the starter I have cleaned the mechanism with some brake cleaner and have managed to get it working
after bolting it back on I took the plugs out and thankfully it spins the engine really nicely. Am going to see if I can borrow a compression tester to see what we have got. Hopefully it will give good figures.Unfortunately with the car being buried for so long in a barn/stable and finally workshop it appears to have had an attack of rodents as well as the rust worms. It has come with a second hand loom so I'm going to have a bash at replacing the loom with the new one to get some life into it. I haven't got as far as the fuel tank though and figuring how the fuel pump works?
Oh looks like my starter switch on the floor is seized solid as well so need a new/second hand one of those.
Will keep you posted on the progress.
Cheers
Alan
