I've never done a build thread so here goes...

This thread is to chronicle the time spent with the latest vehicle acquisition. I found this 1987 Mini City E at a Cars n Coffee event a few weeks ago. Showed the photo to my wife and she was adamant we had to have it. Still unconvinced myself but we went and drove it and looked it over. Overall it was what I expected. A solid driver but rusty all over like I'm sure every old mini is. I wasn't convinced (I've owned rusty old cars before) but the wife was smitten so we made an offer and made an agreement to purchase the car once the title paperwork was finished processing by the VA DMV.

This was when we went to go look at the car and agreed to buy it...


The car was imported into the states recently by a guy who lived in the UK for a few years. He bought it as a back and forth car to get to the train station for his daily commute. He brought the car back with him to the states with the intention of fixing it up and keeping it. Once back in the US the reality of maintaining a 27 year old british car caught up with him and he decided to sell it.

When the title paperwork was finished processing and he had a paper title we went and picked up the car and drove it home avoiding the highway. Fortunately the car was fairly local so it was only about an hour drive home.

Now that we've put some miles on it I've got a few orders in to Mini Mania to fix things that are bugging me. I keep my cars in excellent mechanical condition and this one will be no exception. At the moment the only thing that doesn't seem to work properly is the horn and the heater doesn't seem to always blow hot air. Mostly it seems to just suck in outside air and blow it around the cabin. Will have to take out the blower unit and figure out what is going on there. We have 4 other cars so unfortunately the mini won't always be at the top of the list for getting worked on. The good thing is I'm not relying on this car to get me around

Eventually (sometime in 2015) the car will get torn down to pieces and the shell will get media blasted, all the rust repaired, and painted. Then I have a nice clean shell to work on. I've done rust repair in the past and although it always turned out fine I hated it. I'm going to try and avoid it at all possible. We didn't spend a huge amount on the car so I'm not too worried about spending some money to have someone else do the body work and do it all up right. This will be a long-term ownership and I don't have any expectations of coming out of this financially ahead.

The intention isn't to return the car to showroom condition as a 100% restoration but at least get all the body work done and then I can work on upgrading everything else as I have time/money. The wife and I are racers at heart so I'm sure there will be much upgraded suspension and a stouter motor in the car's future.

At the moment I've got a bunch of parts on order. When the wife and I get back from vacation I'll have some time to start on it. It'll be interesting working on a car that uses standard size bolts. Everything I normally work on is metric:

• Coolant hoses
• Spark plugs
• Thermostat
• Oil change stuff
• Motor mounts and stabilizer bushings
• Air filter
• All the exhaust mounts (old ones snapped last weekend )
• All the shifter bushings
• Shift rod selector seal (think that's what it's called)

One more shot of the mini a friend took last weekend. This poor car needs some love!


And a picture of the first mini we owned and the one we currently race.

 

Congrats on your new Mini! I, too, ordered from Mini Mania when I first got my '75, but they tend to be a bit pricey. If you have a big order you might try Mini Spares in the UK. You'll pay more for shipping, but the parts price is better. In the US I use Seven Enterprises, GB Carparts, and Heritage Garage. Best of luck with the new ride...

 

in VA a car running 'antique' plates is not required to have a front plate if 'there is no provision' for one ....


I got pulled over for no front plate in VA and handed the officer a copy of the VA regs on 'classic plates' and after 20 minutes he came to the car and apologized for stopping me ... I played a grey zone ... no accommodation for a US plate versus a UK plate . . .


this is how I ran at the time . . .



and still today, but I now live in FL and there is NO FRONT PLATE required

 

I had heard of 7 enterprises and heritage garage. Thanks for the suggestions! I never considered MiniSpares since I figured the shipping and GBP to USD exchange rate would be pricey.


Interesting. I'll probably run the front plate for now since its on there but after the planned paint/bodywork I'll have to look into running without it.

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a nice little project you have......as regards the gear selector seal.....a little tip remove old one then fit 2 new seals this will solve the oil seepage from here .....also replace copper washer on oil drain plug (bolt) when doilg oil change..

 

I bought a seal kit which comes with an aluminum bushing and an o-ring that goes in behind the regular seal. Hopefully that will keep things from leaking.

I also have new crush washers for the oil drain plug. Crush washers always get replaced whenever I work on any of my cars.

Thanks for the tips!

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do not use that it still leaks trust me I have already replaced the ally and O ring item the 2 seals is better

 

Well crap I can't believe it's been a month since I've updated this thread. Unfortunately not a whole lot has been happening. Hopefully updating this thread will give me some incentive to get out into the garage and spend some time on it.

Over the past month there has been some progress though. I've been spending a lot of time waiting for various parts orders to come in. Now I have a bunch of "maintenance" stuff sitting in the garage that needs to go on the mini.

• New coolant hoses, thermostat, heater valve, associated gaskets
• Engine mounts and stabilizer bushings
• All the bushings for the shifter housing and selector rod seals
• All the exhaust mounts
• All new ignition stuff (cap, rotor, points, condenser, plugs, plug wires)
• oil/filter for an oil change

The car already runs mostly fine but I'm sure all the maintenance will make it a much happier mini and it'll make me feel a lot better about driving it once I've had some time to give it a once over. Hopefully most of this will happen this weekend when I have some free time. Winter time means racing season is over so my weekends free up a little bit. The downside is my garage isn't insulated so it's pretty much whatever temp inside the garage as it is outside. A little space heater helps provide localized heat but it's still tough to find motivation to go wrench on a cold car in a cold garage with cold tools. Did I mention I lived my whole life in Florida up until 4 years ago?

Of course what fun is having a cool old car if you can't buy cool parts for it right?
Enter the minivation hinges. For those of you who don't know the hoods on these cars don't open very far. Coupled with the fact that I'm 6'2" it's a real pain to work on the car. Minivation makes hinges that allow you to open the hood like regular but then also open the hood further so that the hood stands pretty much straight up at 90 degrees. It makes engine bay access soooo much easier and eliminates the need to constantly take the hood off every time you're working on the car for an extended period of time. The only down side is price. I try not to think about how much I just spent on hood hinges

Here are the hinges how they ship from the UK. Well packaged with all necessary hardware (or so they say!) and pretty good instructions. It's really not a complicated install so the instructions don't have to be really detailed. However, as with all car modifications there are always snags and you have to be ready to do a little problem solving.


I'll go ahead and say it. Getting the old hinges off really sucked. Access sucked and the bolts were kind of crusty and didn't want to come off. Thank god for ratcheting wrenches. But I got the old hinges off and ran into my first snag. The passenger side of the car has a ballast resistor bolted to the support panel. I'm guessing it's here by the radiator so that it gets air blown across it to help cool down. Notice how it is finned for heat dissipation.


The ballast resistor wasn't the real problem though. The real problem was the nut welded to the backside of the support panel. Minivation wants you to just run a nut/bolt though the panel to mount the hood strut bracket. Well their hardware (which was metric) doesn't thread into the standard thread nut that is welded to the panel. A little head scratching and some measuring and a trip to Lowes and all was right again in the world. I'm not sure if the hood strut mounting bracket being spaced away from the support panel will cause any issues long term but it hasn't been an issue so far.


All tightened up and looking pretty.


Of course the drivers side (right side since this is a RHD car) had a similar issue but with grounds instead.


I install the hinges to both sides and fortunately the new hinges went in easier than the old ones came out. I go to press down on the passenger side to check clearance and run into my second issue during the install. The hood strut hits the wiper motor. Well crap.


So I unbolt and move the wiper motor to cut out some foam from underneath the one end. I don't want to remove foam from under the whole thing because it might start rattling on the metal panel and this car has enough rattles. It doesn't need any help.


Of course now I have to space out the bracket since the wiper motor sits "lower". Fortunately I had some extra rubber laying around.


Kind of an awkward picture but it now just barely clears the wiper motor.


Of course. This makes all that work totally worth it. Now I can start working on stuff that's actually wrong with the car


It took a little tweaking to get everything to line up properly but the hood fits exactly the same now as it did when I started. I figure when it goes to the body shop they'll have the front end apart anyways to replace panels so I'm not going to sweat perfect panel gaps too much.

 

those hinges are nice


but for access ease, I can get to this in 5 minutes!

 

I like the idea of those hinges, but the price was *yikes* a little too much for me.....but having the hood stand up like that really helps, it also allows a whole lot more light under the hood, and saves you from hitting the back of your head on the safety catch!


Motor on! :-)


Are you driving it now? Cause the worst thing for any old car is to leave it sit - cars were meant to be driven and used.


One of the things I like the best about my scissor lift is the ability to bring the car up to me rather than me ruining my back reaching down to it....and I'm only 5'9"!

 

Well you certainly have me beat for engine bay access

Yeah they were kind of expensive after the exchange rate, shipping, taxes, etc. I'd like to say I've made car/part purchases that were harder to justify in the past but I just can't think of one right now. Although, this is a "fun" car. We're not relying on it for anything. So realistically anything that makes it easier to work on means I'm more likely to spend time on it. One of the reasons I have so many tools. If it's a tough job I'll just avoid it and drive another car.

I haven't driven it much since the exhaust fell off. However, we have 5 cars and a 1 car garage so stuff is constantly getting shuffled around. The mini usually lives in the garage but I have to move it out to work on other stuff. That's what I've been spending most of the last month doing is getting the other cars up to snuff for winter and tearing down the 2010 that we race so the suspension can get rebuilt over the winter. We try and only drive 2 of the cars during winter so I had to get them in 100% shape before winter rolled in. The other 3 (1987 mini, 2010 mini, and s2k) usually get parked for the winter. Whenever I do have it I try and start it and let it get up to temp (or as best it can since I'm pretty sure the thermostat is stuck open) and take it for a spin around the neighborhood. After this round of repairs it should be good for a while and we can put some more miles on it. I've been around boats most of my life so I'm well aware of not letting stuff sit.

 

I've been having temperature issues with mine too, I have a new 180* thermostat and around town it's right on temp, but when I get on the highway it cools down to 160-165 and I can't get it to hold 180 - I've never had a car that wouldn't run up to temp......


My 2009 MINI is my winter car!

 

Not a whole lot more progress on the car but I have been working on it as time allows. This weekend I started taking stuff apart to finally start replacing all the parts I'd been collecting. Pretty much everything came apart without too much hassle. The only thing that really gave me fits was driving out the two pins that hold the clutch slave to the arm and the arm to the clutch cover. The pin from the slave to arm wasn't too bad. A short soak with some penetrant and a big pair of pliers and it popped right out. The one pinning the clutch arm to the clutch cover on the other hand was much more difficult. After failing to get it out with pliers I took more drastic measures. First I cut the head off the pin thinking I'd just drive it out. Not much space to get a hammer and punch in the engine bay so that wasn't really successful. Then I was thinking I'd drill through the center some hopefully releasing some of the pressure. That just resulted in snapping a drill bit tip off in the pin. As a last resort I went and bought a 36" long steel rod about the diameter of the pin. Sharpened the end and that long punch gave me space to swing the hammer. After some hard hits it finally budged and grudgingly came free. There wasn't really any reason for me to remove the pin but when I found out both of them were kind of seized in place I figured I'd rather go ahead and get them out now while stuff is unbolted and out of the way.

Also, on Saturday I collected up a bunch of parts I'd taken off the car and headed over to a friend's shop that has a blast cabinet. A few minutes in the blast cabinet with some glass bead media and the parts were stripped down and looking super shiny and clean. Took them home and degreased them and hit them with some flat black rustoleum. Should keep them looking at least a little better for a while.



Last night I got the passenger side motor mount back in and made another trip to Lowes for more hardware. I also spent some time on Monday re-doing the whole ignition system (points, condenser, rotor, cap, plugs, wires). I have no clue what I'm doing when it comes to points ignition so I'll be surprised if the car ever starts agan I'll be home most of the holidays so I'm hoping to knock a bunch more out while I have some free time.

If anyone is curious... my upper radiator bracket had two bushings in it that were absolutely destroyed. Apparently it's a somewhat common size as Lowes had a rubber grommet that worked perfectly in the radiator bracket.

 

ditch the points and condenser and go PERTRONIX


http://www.pertronix.com/prod/ig/ignitor/default.aspx


If not the best thing I ever changed on my 79, definitely in the top 5: easier to install than a set of points .... needs no adjustment initially or ever after ... and car runs WAY better (but that may be attributed to points that needed to be changed)



a source but you can find it for less
http://www.minimania.com/part/LU142-...onversion-Kits


Yes it costs around $100 which is a lot more than points and a condenser ... but points and condenser need to be replaced regularly (and the gap set) .... with this you never need to look again. (I've had people tell me this is an unreliable product ... I've had mine for about 4 years now and it works great)




Unlike older upgrades of the type, this gizmo fits completely under the dizzy cap ...


IMO this is a no brainer . . .


you should still change the cap, wires, rotor and plugs as recommended

 

I recognize that JCW! I met you guys at autocross. Your wife took me around the course and I nearly wet my pants!!! So fun!!!
I too have a '10 JCW, but mine is stock.

Good luck with this lil Mini, I'll be following along!

 

I'm pretty sure I'll be going with one of the 123 Distributors here before too long. I still need to do some more research to figure out what I want to do about the ignition setup. This points/condenser was just to get the car going again. I don't expect I'll stay with the points ignition setup long term.

haha yeah the wife isn't slow. Are you coming out to any events in 2015? We should be at most of the CDC/AI/SCCA events.

On another note. I had an hour or so last night to fiddle with the car so I pulled the drivers side motor mount. What a pain. The clutch cover had to come off. Some of those bolts are a real pain to get to. I'm going to have some time over the next few days so I'm going to pull the whole shifter assembly and take whatever I want to media blast (clutch cover plus shifter parts) over to a friend's shop to clean them up. Still lots more to do...

 

Everything you've done so far looks great, which makes everything you haven't done look kinda shoddy, doesn't it?


You better watch it, once you start the project creep it never stops! Ask me how I know! :-)


I see a greasy dirty subframe in there, might as well drop it and clean and paint it too. And while you're in there, replace all the suspension bushings....oh and check the upper control arm roller bearings, most people never grease them and they get dry and fail...

And.....


And......


And......


See what I mean? :-)

 

Yeah I'm having trouble with this now. It's sort of compounded by the fact that I hate hate hate doing something halfway. I keep telling myself this is only temporary until I take the car down to bare shell to fix the rust. It helps keep the scope creep at bay

 

I had some time over the holiday break to spend some more time wrenching on the car. I think I'm finally at the point where I'm putting everything back together and no longer taking stuff apart.

One of the things I attacked was getting the shifter assembly off the car and refreshing it. I had to knock out the pins on the coupler connecting the shift rods to the transmission so that I could replace the seals there so I figured why not remove the whole shift assembly and clean it up. Those pins were a huge PITA to get out as they were quite rusted in place after many years. The good news is my coupler and pins seem to be in pretty good shape. I have some extra pins if one seems to be a little loose. Cleaned them up a little and they'll go right back on the car and shouldn't have any slop in the coupler.

The partially disassembled dirty old rod change box.


Thank god for a shop press. Makes pressing in/out bushings so much easier. I'm not sure if replacing these bushings will make a difference. There isn't much rubber in them to wear out. Of course they got replaced because "while you're in there"...


Glass-beaded the rod change housing and the shift rods and painted them up. Looks much better now. This picture is still missing a few things but it's mostly back together.


The other thing I did was remove the heater assembly to flush out the heater core. I figured part of my no-heat problem could be a clogged heater core so I took the whole assembly out of the car. A bunch of muck came out of the heater core so hopefully it'll do a better job of heating when the car gets up and running again. I also spent some time re-doing the foam on the flapper inside the heater box. This is something I've done in some of my other older cars. The foam on the moving flaps inside the heater boxes deteriorate and fall apart. Without the foam they can't provide a good seal and you lose control over which direction the air is flowing through the heater assembly. A lot of time scraping off the old foam and about $1 of adhesive-backed foam from the craft store and all is well again. The stuff is super cheap and cuts really easily with scissors.




I also spent some more time in front of the media blaster cleaning up a bunch of parts I took off the car. Then painted them with some engine enamel and they look way better. Now time to finally get everything assembled and hope the car starts!

 

How did the core look when you took it out? Mine looked fine while in the box but had developed a tiny leak....this is what it looked like once it came out of the enclosure....you couldn't see this side of it while in the box. Mine was full of crud too, but still made plenty of heat.





Glass bead cleaning is wonderful, I did all my suspension parts while I had the subframe out, it makes aluminum parts look like new, and makes paint stick really well too. Your parts look fantastic.

 

The core was OK. Not fantastic but not terrible. Certainly not bad enough that I was willing to wait around while a new one showed up. It seems like it might have been replaced at some point too. Everything in the engine bay the heater hose connects to along with the heater hose in the car is 1/2" but the outlets on the heater core certainly seem like 5/8". The new hose was a real bear to get on the old heater core. One good thing about the mini is the heater core is pretty trivial to get to. On lots of other cars it requires removing the dash or close to it

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It lives! Last night I spent some time getting the heater assembly back in the car and heater hoses fitted. Then I filled the car with coolant/oil and did a quick adjustment of valve lash. Just quickly fixed the few that were grossly out of spec. I'll go back and do a more fine tune later. Some of them seemed to be a little on the tight side which surprised me since I figured they'd loosen up over time.

Anyways the car starts and sounds fantastic. At least much better than it used to. In the cleaning/replacing stuff in the cooling system the heater works now which will be very welcome during these cold months. There are still a few things to work on but I'm hoping to have it running and driving by Sunday.

• set the gap on the points since that's not quite right
• bolt the clutch slave stuff back to the clutch cover and adjust the clutch
• re-attach the grill and air intake
• machine a new bushing insert for the upper engine stabilizer and install it
• Toss the front carpet back in the car
• Fix the broken exhaust mounts

It seems like a lot when you see it all listed out but none of that stuff will take super long and I have tonight and most of tomorrow to work on it.

 

Then get it out and put some (s)miles on it!