So, Today This Happened.....

It was sitting on those stands, which he leveled out using the lasers in the machine. Made it very easy to reach all the adjusters!

 

Took the Racing Green Mini down to my partners Dan's shop near Tulsa for some repairs - when traveling to Blackhawk Farms last year in the race trailer something fell on the fender and dinged it pretty good, plus there were some other bad spots across the front end and chips in the front of the bonnet and front edges of the arches.

Dan's been beavering away on it since last week and today got the color and clear on it - looking pretty spectacular already! He also peeled the cheezy vinyl stripes off the bonnet and painted new ones on for me.

Of course, as I told him, now the rest of the car will be looking pretty dowdy by comparison! Guess I'll have to break out the Simonize.....

 

Unfortunately he only works on Classic Minis, and he's winding down his business and not taking on any new work. He still has 3 full body paint jobs to do yet, along with his own cars.....so he's busy till well into next year. This is a hobby job for him, he has a "real" full time job too! He squeezed me in as a favor.....

 

Went and got it today, 4 hours down, 4 hours back again but worth it to get such great work done, and done right. Paint match is off a little (not unexpected), so later in the year we'll do the rest of the car to match and replace the side stripes too as they're worn and faded.

 

I didn't post the pic that really shows it!

it's OK, the rest of the car needs it anyhow, we'll do it this fall sometime....



We have a local Brit car show in about 3 weeks, I'll bet no one notices.....

 

My Green Mini spent all the fall and most of this spring at my buddy's shop, his schedule finally opened up enough that he could get started on it. Previously we painted the front end, this time it was the rest of the car's turn. There were a few rust bubbles at the bottoms of the doors to contend with, but mostly it was just a matter of stripping all the parts off of it, sanding it down and giving it a new coat of shiny BRG metallic. It came out great and I was pleased to be able to go get it this past March.

Since then I've been driving it as much as possible, to car shows, car club breakfast meet ups, a local 500 mile round trip club event to Buc EE's in Springfield and as much daily driving as I can. I was glad to get it back - I missed it!

 

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out - it's not show car quality, but it looks good and all the little bumps and rusty spots are fixed with new metal.

However, it's been eating coolant - I can't find anything wet and it's not leaving spots but it's def going thru water. I smell coolant on the left side where the radiator is but can't find any leaks. I may have to pull the damn head - with only three weeks till we leave for South Dakota Ima need to hustle on this. I also have to install the trailer hitch on the Audi tow vehicle and wire it for trailer lights.

 

Well, I found the problem.....no idea why it started leaking as I had the block skimmed and the head surfaced when I rebuilt it 3K miles ago, but it's not too hard a fix. I'm glad I caught it before the trip to South Dakota in a couple of weeks.

First indication - other than having to refill the coolant every time I drove it - two of these plugs are not pretty! The other two look fantastic.



So the next step was to pull the head off, and this is what I found....



That's what happens when water gets in your combustion chambers, it scours the carbon right off!

Here's the gasket - it doesn't look nearly as bad as I thought it would. This is a top quality composite gasket too, same one I use on race motors.



I have all the stuff I need to put it back together, so I'll tackle that this weekend and have about 10 days to drive it around and make sure all is good before we go. I'd hate to go all the way to South Dakota and not be able to run those hills with the rest of the group.

I got the hitch on the Audi, waiting for the "magic box" to wire up the trailer lights for the classic. I wish it wasn't quite so hot out, it's supposed to be 95* the day we leave, but the weather where we're going is forecast to be mis 70's. Should be perfect!

 

So far today has been spent getting the block ready - I pull all the studs out for a couple of reasons, it makes it easier to clean the surface and I run a tap down thru all the threaded holes to make sure they're clean. I also blow some brake clean down into the holes and blow them out. Then once the block, tops of pistons and everything is clean I lock tite in the studs after I've wire brushed and cleaned the threads. I also clean the studs, one of them is always a little corroded from water coming up around the hole - that's why I lock tite them in, it stops anything from coming up thru the threads.



On my old Jag, the studs go all the way down to the bottom of the crankcase, thru the water jacket. To seal those I had to put a dollop of silicone sealer under the washer below the nuts, that seemed to do the trick, otherwise they leaked water like crazy.

So, the block is cleaned, prepped, studs are in and I put the new gasket on.....these gaskets have a sticky surface to help glue it down once it gets up to temp. I guess that's supposed to help with sealing it up, but it didn't seem to work with this one!

Next I'll need to get the head all cleaned up, once that's done I can drop it on and torque it down. I expect to have it running tomorrow - that will give me time to do some longer runs and make sure it's fixed again. Now that the weather is HOT Don wants to do some runs in his Pup and make sure it doesn't overheat too.



I wonder if I have a new heater cable in stock, that one's looking pretty ratty.....

I don't know if you guys know this, but the center stud hole in the front of the head is slightly smaller in diameter than the rest - something to do with locating the head properly I guess. Just another curious thing about these tiny little cars. And for some reason that's the one that corrodes the worst. I usually have to remove that stud before I can get the head off.

I also remove all the intake and exhaust studs as there just isn't room to push the exhaust manifold back far enough for the head to clear and come off. As long as the threads are clean and the studs aren't rusted badly they come out OK, I do have to double nut them, but once broke loose they come out easily enough.

 

Got the head all cleaned up and back on the block, torqued down. Tomorrow I should hear some good noises out of it.

 

Well, it didn't.......exactly.

I spent 4 days trying to get the damn thing to start - which is weird cause it usually just pops right off. I checked everything a number of times and finally today the lightbulb went on and I checked it for spark....nada! So I checked power at the coil and dizzy, checked the rotor, plug leads, plugs and on and on, no issues found. Put it all back together and all of a sudden I have spark.

Put the plugs back in and it popped right off, just like always!

So I added water and drove it around the block where it ran completely normally, just like it always does. Brought it back and drained the radiator and refilled it about 4 times to flush the cooling system. Tomorrow I'll retorque the head and reset the valves, then fill it with antifreeze, then over the next few days I'll do some 40-50 mile local drives. If it's not eating water I'll call it good.

I decided I'll break habits and take a bunch of tools and parts, gaskets etc on the trip cause that way I know I won't have any issues!