Clives Bargain Banger Mini

Project Progress

A lot of time had passed since buying the bargain banger in September 1997 and the London to Brighton Run in May 1998, so here's a brief low down on what we had to do to accomplish the goal of getting the Mini to Brighton and back.

Firstly, Brakes.

New brake shoes all round and new wheel cylinders all round gave the Mini some much needed stopping power. Took quite a lot of bleeding and the help of a local garage, (Chesham Autos, Thanks guys) but now the Mini would stop.

Rust!

Not all of the rust on the Mini was as bad as it looked. After rubbing it back and treating it with a bit of jenolite it was OK. Other areas of the car however weren't so good. Out came the welder and new metalwork went into, the floor pans, front wheel arch, boot floor, and sills.

Steering.

Up at the front end of the car new subframe mounts and new engine steady bar bushes helped keep everything in place. That sorted out the steering and made the car really handle a lot better.

Interior.

Inside the car out came the brown seats and carpet. In it's place a set of blue Mini Mayfair seats and door trims and a new black carpet. Far better without all that 1970's brown vinyl stuff.

Exterior.

On the exterior of the car time was against us. It took such a long time to weld up all the rusty metal work that we never had time to do a complete respray. But we did manage to spray the roof white and the front and one side in Tahiti blue, so at least if you looked that the car from the front it looked blue.

Conclusions.

Well we didn't finish the Mini as much as I'd wanted to, but we got it MOT'd and on the London to Brighton Mini Run, so job completed really as the L to B was the main reason for buying the car.

After a while the gearbox started playing up on second gear, and the rust was getting a lot worse. So I decided to look for a new Mini rather than spend more time patching up this one.

So in the end I stripped out any good bits that I'd added and sold the now standard spec car to one of my local Mini and Metro Centres.