I would love to say I am done! but its a classic mini… thats never seems possible. I can say I am done ish though, not many things left and I was able to take it for a spin so to me that qualifies. I now wait because of some broken things.
Before we get to the end lets finish off the remaining pieces and some hurdles I found. Seeing the post office is transporting my brake limiter on the back of a snail I jumped right into mounting the front end. Found something I missed when trimming the front end (this is the first issue). Seems I need to trim the wheel arches to clear my wheels… bummer. Guess I was thinking fiberglass front = race car and race cars have wide wheels I should be good… wrong.
Before I pulled out the grinder I figured I would finish up mounting everything on the front end and getting all the lights wired up. I was excited to see all the lights work correctly.
Before I could put the bumper on I needed to trim the arches. I have some carbon arches I need to put on so I used it as a guide to see how much of my cuts I could cover.
Once that was done I mounted the bumper and put on the hood emblem, I had debated on leaving it off but decided against it.
Finally I pulled the grinder out and started cutting, it wasn’t that bad but it does look goofy without the arches on.
Once that was done I pulled her out and took a test drive. First thing I noticed the brakes were really hard, like the servo wasn’t working. Then it just wasn’t running right engine revs seemed off like it was missing. Once I got back in the garage I immediately noticed it was misfiring at idle, thing sounded like a Subaru. Did some troubleshooting and found cylinders 3 and 4 were not firing at idle (at least thats what the color tune was showing me). After fiddling with the intake manifold and changing plugs nothing changed. Feeling a bit stumped I decided to disconnect the servo and plug the line, at first I was thinking theres no way this would cause only 3 and 4 to run really lean at idle but go figure it did. Once I put my thumb on the line the idle immediately improved. After some ghetto patching and a quick fuel adjustment (seeing I made it way rich while tinkering). I went for a hoodless ride down the road and it felt great.
After my drive I had to do some finally trimming of the arches I think I skipped around a bit here though because my ghetto patch pick doesn’t have a bumper in it… oh well you get the idea. I then pulled it back out of the garage to give a quick wash to get all the dust and dirt off. I was less then thrilled when I found my next problem with the front end. Apparently the driver side door is catching the inside edge of the a panel just enough to take the paint off 😦 (no pic). I have an idea on how to fix it and some excess paint to do a touch up on the door though. I was also not thrilled to find water in the car after washing it, I thought I was good and didn’t use much pressure but I guess it wouldn’t be a mini if it didn’t leak. This car won’t see rain intentionally so I am not super concerned, just slightly bummed about it.
While the car was finishing drying I took the time to clean up the garage now that it was out of the way. Then pulled her back in.
This is where its sits for now while I wait on brake parts. I do need to tweak the ride height and I might try to eye ball the alignment a little cause it seems I might have some toe out on the passenger front wheel. I also need to get my arches mounted.
The Rust chronicles 