Catching up, nice stack of parts, the color is excellent. The shop picture made me think you could have made a dune-buggy pretty quickly. Looking forward to progress pictures, no live feed needed.... Don
Save the extras, then send them to Dick to make something out of them and paint it with a thunder blue theme with red go fast paint mixed in. Like a lamp. Or maybe something totally different. But with no time limit on the finish date. Seriously, that would be cool.
Paint is DONE. Well, body paint is done. I still have mirror caps and bumper trim to paint soon. Nervous drive home.... I could envision bad things happening as I towed it... But none did. Back in the garage, time to get busy. I have to finish up my front door project and attend a funeral for a friend today. Might be tomorrow before I start making progress.
Looks great Paul! Now that its home, you've got 2 weeks to get it done and driving (NOT FLYING AGAIN!!!) or we're gonna have to 86 you.
You were worried about Friday the 13th? At this point... what the hell could jinx this project? I'm gonna say, nothing.
OK, my groovy babies. It has BEGUN. Worked on it 7 hours today. My strategy is to (a) try to do things in a planned order, so I can minimize rework and (b) try to shrink the pile of parts as quickly as practical, to make space to work in the garage and (c) do some pretty stuff first, because I'll be more motivated to do grunge work (like the wiring harness) on a car that already looks pretty good. So, today's accomplishments include: vacuumed crap out of it Cleaned grunge and paint off windshield and windshield header removed rear heat shields and bumper frame Drilled and installed nutserts and bulkhead fittings for meth Installed MiniFini hitch, bumper frame and bumper cover Installed boot handle Installed GP rear trim Installed badges front and rear Installed rear hoop from convertible top and accompanying latch hardware. Determined it's pretty bent, worked on straightening it for a while, gotta play with it some more. Assembled and installed hood grille and scoop. Put turn signals, corner lights, grille and splitter on the new bumper. Installed bumper frame and bumper. Installed new headlight rings and glued in new headlight washer covers. Installed headlights and tail lights and side scuttles. Installed A-pillar covers and most of the beltline. Business end of meth system is installed... Yeah, when you land a flying MINI cabrio on the left rear corner, it bends stuff. this is the rear hoop for the roof, that I'm going to use as the rear frame for my tonneau cover. It's gonna need some work to get back in shape. It's a dang strong, stiff extrusion. My initial efforts to straighten it didn't do much, I'm going to have to get creative. But it can wait a while. Tomorrow: Wiring harness, door handles / hardware, windows, mirrors, door panels. Weather strips. Right hood latch, hood latch cables, parking brake cables, brake and clutch lines, maybe some other stuff.
Yeah, Wellzy keeps reminding me that, if he were here, the car would be together already. Slower day today. Spent 6 hours on non-glamorous stuff. No pretty pics to show for it. Got distracted by the dash, so didn't get all the stuff done that I had planned. Reinstalled weather strip Test fit roof header panel, marked where it needs to be trimmed to clear cage. Reinstalled body harness 90%. A bit to do under the car tomorrow. Test-fit main battery cable inside the car. Reinstalled PDC module and BCM. Removed upper steering column / steering angle sensor Swapped immobilizer module Trimmed dash frame to fit around cage Experimented with swapping toggle panel and head unit. Decided to route the main battery cable as usual under the car, then bring it in the driver's footwell for the cut-off switch. There's not enough room to route it inside with the other cables on the cabrio... the extra sill reinforcement eats all the space. The header panel / sunroof from Blimey's roof should work fine as the front seal for the bikini top. I'll need to trim it down some, but no problem. The dash frame required A LOT of trimming and test fitting to get it to coexist with the roll cage. Used a Dremel with cutoff wheel, made it easy to trim a bit at a time right in the car. Finally got it to fit right. Still will need to trim the parcel shelves, will look at that tomorrow probably. One downside of the roll cage design is that the knee bar eats a couple of inches of depth behind where the stereo headunit lives. And it was pretty tight behind there to start with. So it needs to move somewhere. Even though some folks have SWORN that I'd be able to swap the toggle panel and the headunit positions, there's not enough depth behind the toggle panel either. Nor does the dash frame extend down far enough. Perhaps it would work with a less-deep aftermarket unit? I even pulled the front heater ducting off the HVAC unit, still not enough room. So I need to put that back together, and figure out another place for the headunit. It MIGHT be able to mount in the passenger parcel shelf... we'll see. I'll probably keep the toggle panel in the upper location, it's kinda cool there. I'll make a blanking plate for its original position. Probably most of a day's work left to fit the dash cover and the parcel shelves around the cage. There will be a good bit of fitting required for the sill covers, too.
Thats the problems you run into that nobody understands until they have attempted to do it! Good job, and luck!
I knew the head unit wouldn't fit when I designed the roll cage. But also knew I'd work it out, one way or another. Also knew the dash and parcel shelves and sill trim would need to be be fit around it.