Lots of progress today! Started with this: Took a detour for a few hours, to pull the A-panels and cowls off both cars. Then, after a few hours, got back to this: Engine bay reassembled, heat shields and exhaust reinstalled, GP cowl fitted. Driver's side of my cowl got banged up in the tire wall incident. The paint on this one needs refreshing, but it's dent-free. And GP-colored! For those of you who haven't swapped the cowl on a MINI... it's a biotch. Clutch arrived. Guaranteed to fail, or your money back! But I don't expect it to be a long-term solution, and this isn't a daily driver anymore, so it won't see a lot of miles. And, who knows... maybe they've figured out how to make them more reliable, after all the failures a few years back. We'll see. Installed clutch, fitted transmission to engine, and started installing other stuff (rear coolant lines, starter). Drained the rest of the fluids. Ready to install back in the car tomorrow! My buddy Wellzy is driving down from Ohio tonight, to help me get it buttoned up over the next couple of days. I may be driving on Saturday!
I could have told you how much of a pain removing the cowl is! Thats why I will be fixing my scratch (gouge really) in place, and just blending the clear coat in.
Yeah, I know you had mentioned it in the past. You weren't lying. The bonnet was already off the GP, so it was relatively easier there. On Blimey, I figured out that I could close the bonnet with a couple of pieces of cardboard on top of the arms and latches, to keep it from latching and give it a surface to slide on. Then pop the gas lifts off with the bonnet closed, and remove the car-side bonnet hinge bolts on both sides. Then you can shift the bonnet forward enough to get the cowl out and back in, with removing the bonnet. Then realign the bonnet and replace the bolts. Well, that and the other 400 parts you have to remove (wipers, beltline, scuttles, A-pillar covers... )
How many of the little belt line clips that go under the windshield did you break? I had to replace just about all of mine.
I had recently replaced most of mine - so they weren't as brittle this time. I don't think I broke any! But I do have tons of other trim clips to replace.
Plastic dodads like that I buy in 10-packs because I will eventually use them all lol. Some really impressive progress, you are getting lots done!
So my buddy Wellzy drove down from Ohio last night, just to help me. What a man. We ate some awesome Reubens for lunch. Took a while to get the clutch lines run and connected. Then got the engine hung. Took a lonnnnnng time to bleed the clutch. Had a line connection pop loose in the footwell while working on it... what a mess. But eventually got the clutch working as it should, and the shift cables connected.... and I sat in the car, clutched and shifted, and made race car sounds. Bliss. Used Autoenginuity to do an ABS air bleed on all four corners, since I had the DSC out of the car for painting. Things started going pretty fast after that. Installed the manual engine harness. Got all the connections and heat shields done on the rear of the engine, and header installed. New reman axles installed, had to move the pillow block over from the old axles. Wellzy was a huge help with all of this. Started getting the front of the engine buttoned up. Have probably 90 minutes of work tomorrow morning to get pulleys / tensioner / belt on, fluids in, throttle and rest of air ducts on, radiator back on. Jan sent me a base tune file for it today, and I have it on my flash loader, ready to install. Then FIRE IT UP.
Wow. Can't tell you how impressed with your vision, progress, and speed on this. Clearly a very motivated project.
Thanks Nathen, hope to see you at the dragon this year. Very thankful that I am able to come help a buddy with his ride.