Bit of a catch up but here's the last 2 weeks of our lives condensed in to 1 post:
So this year I've been helping my mate who bought Alan Waugh's MINI.
Taking on running it ourselves along with Gerry from PerformanceTek, the first couple of rounds were spent ironing out faults and fixing things that came up. Crapping a gearbox at round 1 wasn't ideal but ESK loaned us a box to get the car back out. Round 2 the car managed to bend a rear strut (must have been the car, driver protests his innocence
)
The damper couldn't be repaired in time for Oulton Park so we missed that round and gave her a fresh paint job and general tidy up
Then it all went a bit wrong on a tracknight at Knockhill...
Although initially the damage didn't look that bad, the car has had a roof replaced following a previous roll. With low weight one of this cars bonuses filling the quarters with cataloy wasn't highly desirable either. So new roof, bonnet, bootlid, rear bumper, doors, osr quarter, nsr quarter would have been the shopping list. Then we spotted the tunnel was kinked. Game over for this shell.
Stage one of the re-shell is well under way, although the cars are limited in modifications there's still a lot of prep work required before it can be rebuilt.
After stripping the entire interior including wiring harness, engine and running gear and all windows from the car, we brought it back to base and got to work on the sound deadening material and superfluous bracketry.
Even though the bulk of the weight is in items like the seats and carpets, there's a good few kilos in the sound deadening and it tends to be everywhere you don't want weight in the car. Additionally, there's bordering on a metric ton of seam sealer liberally splattered all over the inside of the car. Although not a huge weight saving, it looks unsightly if left in place and every kilo helps! Here's a before and after of the tunnel.
With all the sound deadening and sealant removed its almost time to weld the new cage mounts in to the blue shell. Roughly 3kg of seam sealer in total removed [don’t know an exact figure, we blew a load of it out with the airline the first night] in addition to the adhesive goo the roof insulation was stuck on with and the random bits of foam bonded plastic in the rear quarters.
Meanwhile Alicia has been brought back down from race HQ for final stripping and removal of the engine and box.
So seam sealer ground out, we got the chassis legs welded as per the regulations. With the punishment the cars take over the kerbs the legs can start to flex slightly and it only takes a few mm of flex to pop a driveshaft due to the location of the gearbox mounts.
Next up, the cage was offered up the floor plates tack welded in then the cage removed to allow seam welding.
Whilst pulling apart the old car I actually had a proper look at the battery for the first time [never had cause to pull it out the batter box before hand]. It’s a Braille lithium ion unit, powers the car well enough to perform repeated starts yet weighs just 5lb / 2.2kg! That’s a standard 250ml can of RedBull I pictured it next to for a sense of scale…
Cage brackets all welded in so last thing to do inside wise is prep for paint.
After taking some cliched poses on the old shell of course...
After removing the sound deadening you're always left with the residue, nothing for it but some old skool elbow grease.
Sanded, hoovered out and ready for primer
Interior spraying is go!
Immy and Kev at
IA Bodyshop getting the primer on in the spray booth as I type.
Now the interior is painted, it's time to prep the exterior.
First up, boot and bonnet pins:
Also a good opportunity to take care of plugging the holes where the bonnet and boot badges came off, then plug the holes where the original boot spoiler was mounted and try and plug the holes where someone went to town with the self tapping screws trying to mount a number plate:
No escaping it, it's DA sander'o'clock:
In the mean time, Hendy has been sanding down the engine bay where we can't attack with the DA and I've been getting in to the insides of the doors with some scotchbrite.
Either Scarface and Barbie are doing a collaboration, or that's our big bag of neon pink powder coat arrived from the USA...
Kevs been a busy boy again. Engine bay finished up in paint tonight:
Whilst we've been flatting and preparing the bonnet, doors and bootlid tonight, Kev's painted the roof and wing blade.
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