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For the past 20 odd years my Dad had been hearing on and off about an early Caryford Mini convertible that was being stored in the rafters of a barn somewhere near by but was never able to track down where it actually was.

To our surprise the owner came in to the workshop a few months back asking about what sort of work we did and told us about the car and what it needed. Naturally we were very keen to take a look at it as we enjoy a nice involved restoration.

We arranged to go and see the car by which point it had come down for the rafters and was waiting for us to the a peak.
For it's age it didn't look to be in bad nick and all of the original Crayford boxing along the sills, heel board and A-pillars was still in place.






Once we had got it back to the workshop we removed the boxing prior to blasting to ensure every nook and cranny could be gotten to. Due to the rust we could see creeping in below the boxing and around the sills it was decided that replacing both floor pans front to rear + the cross member was the way to go so these section were left alone.














Despite our pre blasting thoughts the boot floor/seat base has lots of pin holes and some rather larger ones on both sides of the seat back so this may well be replaced with a heritage item modified to '60s spec.




The front panel was the first section to come off post blasting this will most likely donate its round corners and other early features to a new panel.




As could be seen on the picture of the bulkhead from inside both flitches were rather well holed as well so I began the somewhat long process of drilling out all of the spot welds to make way for new items in the new year.

This is the O/S sill/A-pillar boxing section that we had blasted along with the shell of other pieces. It was held in with a rather interesting selection of blots, self tapping screws and stitch welds. This made taking them out rather entertaining and my current task of tidying up and repairing them less so.







Most of the old pieces of cross member came without too much fuss bar the self tapping screw which were quite resilient.







There was a bit of grot on one corner revealed by the blasting so I marked it out and set off cutting.








As with most things the further you dig the more grot you find so I paired it back and treated it before tig welding the repair sections in.

So now back after Christmas and I stared out by doing as little exploratory cutting into the scuttle ends. It's not bad considering the closing panels where none existent but I'll remove the rest of the corner to properly fit the new flitches.




Seen as the remainder if the inner sills weren't doing anything I drilled through all of the spots and popped them off. There's something quite therapeutic about drilling that many holes.









Now to the boot floor, there are too many pin holes to be worth saving so the whole lot's coming out.




It just fell honest.


The bulk of it came out quite quickly then it was onto the trickier parts.




I used a blow torch to burn the seam sealer out of each corner in order to find the spot welds then it was just more drilling and wiggling.









We'll be off up to Mini Spare soon so we can pick up a van load of panels for this and several other cars then we can get some new metal in.

Hi & welcome inhere

Thats some project you have there



Jens Christian

,,,,,,and now for something completely different.
It certainly is an interesting project. Look forward to watching your progress.

Wow, great project - I've always liked these, I think the rear shape of a Mini lends itself quite well to being open.

Looking forward to seeing your progress with it

JC T ONE wrote:Hi & welcome inhere

Thats some project you have there

Jens Christian

Thanks Jens, we like our projects at Mintec.
We're also doing a V6 Capri with Sierra rear suspension, a Promotive Mini and the metal work and roll cage on a Mini for Ben from Carbon Weezel.

InimiaD wrote:,,,,,,and now for something completely different.
It certainly is an interesting project. Look forward to watching your progress.

I hope you did your best John Cleese voice while typing that, I definitely did mine while reading it.


I thought it was probably about time that I did a bit of repair work to the old girl so this afternoon I set about repairing the rather rotten bumper lip. Both corners and the centre were in a rather sorry state but nothing that couldn't be fixed with a little fabrication and welding.






After taking some measurements and folding some steel I used the shrinker/stretcher to curve 3 new pieces that would become the new bumper lip.








With the new section clamped into place I traced the old lip from underneath and then trimmed them down.


Once I was happy with everything I marked and cut out the old sections then butt welded the new steel in.






We also had the boot floor, valance, heel board and closing panels arrive from Mini Spares so that should keep me busy for a little while.

Hi that looks like a nice car to restore lots of hard work swearing and cut fingers is that the original colour or is it a made up colour looks as it could be speedwell blue good luck. Thanks for your comments on my radford it is nearly finnished now just waiting for trimmer to do his bit cheers Brian.

What a great project, thanks for sharing it with us.

Tim

Tupers wrote:
The front panel was the first section to come off post blasting

this will most likely donate its round corners and other early features to a new panel.

Didnt the frontpanel have a body no ? (and a FE no on the innerwing)


Some nice work you are doing there

Jens Christian

Interesting project, great to see the work involved and look forward to further updates

BRI MK1 wrote:Hi that looks like a nice car to restore lots of hard work swearing and cut fingers is that the original colour or is it a made up colour looks as it could be speedwell blue good luck. Thanks for your comments on my radford it is nearly finnished now just waiting for trimmer to do his bit cheers Brian.

Definitely lots of hard to work to come, I've already whacked myself twice while centre punching spot weld although that's a daily occurrence for me. As far as I know the blue is original to the car as I've not found any other hews yet.

Tim wrote:What a great project, thanks for sharing it with us.

Tim

Thanks Tim, I had a feeling this would be right kind of forum for this car.

JC T ONE wrote:Didnt the frontpanel have a body no ? (and a FE no on the innerwing)

Some nice work you are doing there

Yes although those have both been removed and will be reinstated on the new panels.

NotNormal wrote:Interesting project, great to see the work involved and look forward to further updates

Thanks, it's nice to something outside of the normal Mini related jobs now and again.


I started out friday by trimming down the final repair for the rear panel and carefully welding it in.




The lowest section of the quarter panels on each side had rusted through just behind the arch so I cut those out and made a pair of repair sections.




Obviously we need a new battery box for the boot so I set out modifying the tags on a latter one match the original.


After removing and cleaning the original tags I notched the new box and welded them in place.








I also unpacked the new boot floor that arrived on Thursday to give it a look over.


The new floors are the same as those of the last Minis and have a bump in the seat base that obviously wouldn't be there for this age of car.


As such I decided to remove the bump and let in the section I had salvaged from the original floor. After cutting out the bump I laid the old section over the top and used Clecos to hold it in place.






Then I flipped the floor over and marked section of old floor I wanted to keep and cleaned it with a scotch bright pads on the die grinder before tacking it in place.




I needed to get the shell off the pallets so I made a pair of legs to bolt onto the front damper mounts.


We decided to remove the companion bins as they were pretty rotten and will make working the the floor and heel board much quicker.




The last thing I did was to add some more bracing to the body and then started removing the heel board.




That's it until Monday, hopefully the flap wheel I've been waiting on will arrive and I can finish cleaning the hard to reach areas of the rear wheel arches and prep the boot floor and heel board for welding.

That is a lovely project thread. The photos depicting your attention to detail are an inspiration so much so that I am off to the garage to start mine. Nice work. Mark.

lovely project , afaik this car is unknown to the crayford register as well. Especially like that you sort out the modern panels to "old specs". Looking forward to follow this thread.

Cool Project!

May this interest you: http://www.starchak.ca/wallace/restoration.htm

Regards

Looking really good Chris! great to see this cars getting the restoration it deserves.

Tupers wrote:
Yes although those have both been removed and will be reinstated on the new panels.

Nice to see all the nice work love the work around the rear hinge panel

and cool that the plates with body & FE survived .

Keep the pictures coming .

rolesyboy wrote:That is a lovely project thread. The photos depicting your attention to detail are an inspiration so much so that I am off to the garage to start mine. Nice work. Mark.

Very kind words indeed Sir.

norway_triumph wrote:lovely project , afaik this car is unknown to the crayford register as well. Especially like that you sort out the modern panels to "old specs". Looking forward to follow this thread.

Have you got any details you could send me for the Craford register? It'd be nice to try and find out how many of the early type there are about nowadays.
We're doing our best to keep the panels to the original spec. The next panel moding job will the taking the air vent bumps out or Heritage's supposed "MK1" flitches.

Fanfaniracing wrote:Cool Project!

May this interest you: http://www.starchak.ca/wallace/restoration.htm

Regards

Thanks for the link, those reinforcement parts look very nicely made.

Matt_Tupman wrote:Looking really good Chris! great to see this cars getting the restoration it deserves.

Cheers

JC T ONE wrote:Nice to see all the nice work love the work around the rear hinge panel

and cool that the plates with body & FE survived .

Keep the pictures coming .

Will do Jens, the hinge panels repairs took a while to get right but it's well worth it considering the rarity of the car.


First job on the list for Monday morning was to finish welding the seat base up, then linish it down and spray some zinc on.


I also salvaged the spare tyre hold down from the old boot floor and started cleaning it on the wire wheel. It's would appear the car was green before it was blue.


Once it was all clean I sprayed the inside with zinc, welded it to the boot floor and put another coat of zinc on the outside.




Then I got back onto removing the rest of the heel board sills and straggling pieces of floor. The poor old girl's looking a little empty at the moment.

Really inspirational work in this thread.Just wondering how you will line up the rear subframe mounting points without a heel board or boot floor as I have a similar amount of work to do on my MKI and all the info I can gather the better.Keep up the great work by the way.

java gt wrote:Really inspirational work in this thread.Just wondering how you will line up the rear subframe mounting points without a heel board or boot floor as I have a similar amount of work to do on my MKI and all the info I can gather the better.Keep up the great work by the way.

Fortunately we still have the rear most subframe mounting gussets in place on the rear arches and the heel board will be dictate by the remainder of the tunnel and the closing panels at either ends.

I've also got some PDF's of technical drawings with all the drops and distances from centre that everything should be to double check against once it's all clamped up and ready to weld.