I don't know what you're talking about. But this photo was pretty popular on Facebook... Swain Tech White Lightning coating is TASTY
Spent much of the day looking for Teddy's brakes. Still haven't found them, but I will prevail. That's what happens when your garage is packed with parts off three MINIs. Meanwhile, cage dude is at work. We sent a bunch of pics back and forth, mocking up the proper height, width, etc. so he can start bending steel. It will be about an inch shorter than this... which will still be about an inch taller than the old one, and about convertible roof height... He's already cut out a bunch of nasty vestigial sheet metal, including the "humps" that the OEM front shoulder belts attached to. He'll remove the piece adjacent to the tube in this photo, so the main hoop can go all the way out to the yellow tape... The main body harness on both sides of the footwell was going to be too close to where he would be welding the footwell plates for the front pillars. So he had to remove the ENTIRE rear portion of the harness, so he could get it up out of the way. I get to put all this back.... FUN..... But now, no chance that he'll melt any wires while welding things in. Ultimately better. This is a seriously stripped MINI. Also ordered Pure Silver paint for the roll cage and GP trim, and Chili Red paint for the mirror caps today. I'll paint all that stuff myself. I bought a new hood over the phone from my local MINI dealer yesterday, need to go pick that up, maybe tomorrow. I'm going to work hard this weekend to get the wreck stripped. And hopefully will get it rolled out and get the GP back on the lift, to finish it up. I'd like to get both of them out of here before the caged shell comes back., if possible.
That is one nasty ball of wire that I am glad I don't have to put back! Looking good as always Paul, can't wait to see it at the Dragon!
Found Teddy's brakes! They're on the way to Detroit! Stopped by the local MINI parts desk today... And picked up some sheet metal... Need a safe place to keep it damage-free for a few weeks, in the midst of the garage chaos. This'll do, I hope... More work, stripping the wreck. Almost done in the engine bay and underneath. Vacuumed lots of glass out of the interior and got started in there. My passenger seat is jammed in position for some reason (maybe some debris in the track? guessing...). That and a stuck wrench told me it was time to call it a day. Will get back to it tomorrow.
Slow progress, but progress. I'll be glad when the stripping is done... because it sucks, compared to building. Spent a few hours today working on the convertible top. Was attempting to get the whole top off intact. Well, that didn't happen. But I made a valiant effort... Also removed the trailer wiring adapter and some other wiring stuff while back there.. and removed the boot door and all the trim in the back. They don't really design the top (or most of the rear interior trim) to be completely removed without being able to cycle the top up and down at least a bit. Some of the bolts are hard enough to access when everything is working properly... When it's not... and when part of the car is crushed... ugh. Here are three of the critical bolts. Which were hidden behind a crushed and stuck taillight, and a crushed and stuck hydraulic pump. After removing those, they were still arm-deep in a hole like one Indiana Jones would have to feel around inside... Two of these three came out easy with a ratcheting box-end wrench. But the third was wedged against crushed sheet metal. I had to work it out with an open end wrench...about 35 degrees of rotation, flip wrench, another 35 degrees, flip wrench... repeat, blind, by feel, for 45 minutes. But finally got it. Only to find that there were even MORE fasteners I couldn't see and couldn't access. Eventually got things loose enough to shift around and cut out the critical parts I needed... The "sunroof" panel, and the rear tensioner with pivots and latches. Plus some trim and stuff. The "sunroof" panel will be used to build the front seal/latch portion of my "bikini" top. The tensioner assembly will be the rear attachment point for the tonneau cover.
A bit of hurry up and wait, for the past couple of weeks. Cage is DONE. It's not done in the pic... but was close. I'll get more pics when I pick up the car, probably early next week. Spent the last couple of days completing stripping of the wreck and the GP. Blimey/Locutus Mk1... all stripped and ready to scrap. Sad. Moved the wreck out into the rain and covered him up, to make way for the GP. I'm not stripping nearly as much stuff off the GP. A lot of the suspension, subframes, etc. are super rusty and not worth the trouble. I pulled the PS pump and steering rack, to have as spares. Then pulled windows, handles and hardware out of both doors. Everything else was already done. Well, almost everything... Not many people have these, at least not in this form... Supposedly the scrap hauler is coming tomorrow to take away both of these shells. Wife will be MUCH happier...
Sad day. [ame=""]Morpheus' Grief - YouTube[/ame] Farewell, good and faithful friend Blimey Cabrio / Locutus Mk1. And F'd-up GP0769. May your steel find another noble purpose.
Caught this action recently on FB. Missed seeing your efforts here..........(I really must sign on more often). I envy your set up,....and your skillz. I am limited in both, but endeavor to Tune/alter as much as I can. See you around..........
Finally, PROGRESS!!!!! Picked up the shell from the cage fabricator today. The cage is EVERYTHING I had hoped for. Mark Cooper at Performance Motorsports Fabrication outdid himself, as usual. It looks rusty, because it's been raining here for the past two weeks and this raw steel rusts just from being in the humidity, but the oxide wipes right off. Easy to prep and paint. But here's the cage porn, of (AFAIK) the only 6-point caged MINI cabrio in the universe. The big picture view. Six point cage with dual diagonal bracing, harness bar, adjustable seat back brace, overhead halo, gussets, knee bar, and recessed door bars. Knee bar and halo braces are 1.5x.120, door bars are 1.5x.095, everything else is 1.75x.095. The rear brace points are wide and all the way back, for maximum strength and rigidity. The main hoop sweeps outward as far as possible, to maximize the width of the envelope for my noggin. Several inches wider than my old rollbar, as wide as possible to fit within the windows. Important to me, since I managed to hit my head on the pavement in the crash... The reinforcement plates tie into the reinforced seat belt B-pillars. The A-pillars had to bisect the extra wide cabrio door sills. The sills were cut to size with a hole saw, and the pillars are welded to both the reinforcement plates and the sill cutouts to retain the structural integrity of the sills. The knee bar connects the A-pillars, and is perfectly positioned for maximum height while allowing full tilt wheel function. Nests into the natural curvature of the HVAC system, behind where the stereo headunit normally lives. Gussets at the halo/main hoop junctions, and tube braces at the halo/A-pillar junctions, improve overall strength and rigidity. View from the cockpit is almost totally unobstructed. Just a tiny bit of reduced field of view inside the left A-pillar. The most challenging part of the build was the door bars. I wanted to retain the factory door trim panels (this isn't a race car, hence why I don't need double door bars). I wanted to recess the bars into the doors to maximize hiproom. The bars also needed to clear my pretty wide seats. Accomplished with two shallow, perfectly placed bends. It certainly takes a bit more work to get in and out than would be appropriate in a daily driver. But it's way easier than a race car with welded doors. Sitting in it, it's just RIGHT. The sight lines are all as they should be. Nothing is too close to my head for comfort. The open halo overhead maintains the "topless" feel. I intentionally omitted a halo cross brace because this open air experience is part of why I do this. Lots of work to do, to get the cage cleaned up and painted over the next several days. And I need to strip the exterior of the car for painting. I stopped by the paint shop on the way home, so my paint guy could take a look. All good. He's ready to paint, whenever I can get the car there.
Wow that is definitely impressive. And great job on optimizing field of view. Paint it! the weekend will be here before you know it.
Sorry, meant to include that - it's about 90 pounds total weight, a bit less than 60 linear feet of tubing, most of the tubing is about 1.5 pounds per foot. I added that above.
Awesome! Looks like it could take on just about anything, but I wouldn't go trying it out again... Your paint guy is making you prep the sheet metal? WTF! If I was closer, even though I don't have many intentions of spraying full cars in my shop, I would make an exception.
Nah, I mean I'm stripping all the trim off (mirrors, door handles, skirts, everything out of the engine bay, etc.). I have time to do that stuff, might as well not pay the paint shop to do it. But they're doing all the actual paint prep and painting. It's a REALLY good shop that does all the Porsches and Ferraris and Maseratis and stuff around here. Best shop in the region, probably. But that also means their labor rates aren't cheap... so I'll do as much as I can to make the painting bill as low as possible.