VVC clubman

[dizzie]

hey every one,
im arron, 21 and i live in sheffield. had my mini since nov 2008, during that period, the first year i was working alot so had free time after work and on weekends to play, then out of the country for 5 months so didnt touch it, then back worked on the car quite a lot for three months now working again so havnt realy had a chance to touch it much.
as far as working on cars im more or less self taught, have a couple freinds who are mechanics which is handy if you ever need some advise, or brake pipes flairing :LOL: (im usless)

ive been using this site for ages now reading up every ones builds for some direction and insperation and so on, im however prety lazy so thats why its taken me nearly 2 years to put up a build diary
ive got a fair few photos (not as many as i wish i had though) so bare with me as itil probebly take me months to load them up being lazy an all haha.
to give every one an idea as to what stage im at my to do list is -

-finish off cooling
-make exhaust from flexi back, 2" pipe a mid box maby and a bike can
-rear drums and fill and bleed brake lines
-arches, fitting front end properly, tiding body work and spray
-run fuel lines, sort out an extierior pump and and plumb return in with a T before the pump, think thatil do the trick at the moment my fuel tank is half a orange juice carton and a 200 fuel pump haha
-seats mounted, harnesses fitted, cage in, wiring fixed in place, dash, and carpet, head lining ect
- rear valence, left a panel

i think thats the lot

il start posting the pictures ive got in my next post ive made a photobucket acount so see if i can get it to work

im going to try and give a breif explanation with every photo, as thats what i found rely helpful my self with other builds like griffs, matts, gazwads..... list goes on (thanks guys)

ive not done anything thats not been done before, but still my be helpfull for some one with a description

also helpfull critisisms always great! so please mention it if you spot something, its never too late to go back and sort mistakes out

oh and by the way, metro frame with 3et offset 13*7 so no one mention torque steer! its totaly worth it

[dizzie]

ok so first upload of photos...
some of you may remember when it was up on ebay a year and a half ago,
it looked like this





but tbh i wasnt too wise as to what to look for in a peice of bananas car at the time haha. soooo this is what it looked like after a drive up and down the road resulting in a snapped coilover on the day i got it home

notice the look on my face
oh well you some times have to learn lessons the hard way haha

after that id decided it would be safer to just strip it and see what other deamons i could find
front end chopped off
awful wiring!


at this point i was glad that a coil over snapped off at slow speeds insted of driving over the engine at high speed, obvoiusly some bellend tried to weld the engine arm on, not very well at that

then engine out, as you can see everything just looks messy and bodgy

the sideplates didnt fill me with too much confidence, fell to peices with a couple of hits with a claw hammer

the rear subby mounts were just two lengths of maby 3mm thick 3" wide flat steel, didnt take a photo, but were v bendy

the state of the drive at that point, bananas and tools evvvery where


somewhere around this time also started on replacing most of the steel on the car put it this way, if you want to learn how to weld properly, buy a car that needs a lot of body work haha

[cooper_mark]

yes i remember it well..think it went for about £1000 or near as...
thought about having this my self.....
good look with the build and hope u can get it sorted....

[monkey]

Yes I remember this on ebay! Good luck, will be nice to see progress

[dizzie]

cheers guys,
yer was a bit less then a grand but still too much conisdering i striped it and more or less chucked every thing that was on it.

a bunch of boring rust repair photos


























most of those i didnt take finished photos, but it gives you an idea of what was going on. some replacment panels were already on but not welded well, so redid those.

in total i did both scutle corners, both other sills, both door steps,
3 floor panels, rear section of the boot floor and the section where the boot hinges bolt, havnt done rear valance yet, rear heel board corners where the subframe mounts, and lots of patches. im sure ive forgot some.
all welded up nice and solid

also i need to replace alot of the glass where i forgot to cover up when welding so covered in splatter haha whoops

[dizzie]

front subby from a scrap yard all cleaned and with a coat of yellow hammerite (going for a yellow/black thing)
and bolted on loosely with side plates to line up rear mounts



2" box section and 4mm plates to make up rear mounts


rear mounts tacked in place before welding




top arms bottom arms ect cleaned and painted


sorry about rubish photos

cant realy tell but the coilover top mount doesnt actualy line up very well with the top arm

in this one you can see where the top mount should be for it to line up
i remade the side plate so they were wider and had another set of bolt holes so the top mount lined up, dont have and photos showing it tho
but this is roughly where they sit now


it was nice to see back on wheels again, held up with choks of wood on the top arms. my dad though it was funny to put a for sale sign with £5 on it, then when it was back on 4 wheels it went up to £55 funny



you can see how little clearence there is behind the wheel for coilovers.
on the front im using mini top arms and have had the front hubs and disks drilled out to 101.6 pcd with mini studs and spigot rings to make up the difference between metro center bore and minis.
and will be using these supertrax alloys with low ofset

i love em!
but il put more photos of all that later

[dizzie]

tubbing the rear arches, they were a bit rusty so i thought while im at it might as well just tub them









wish i had a garage!




boot repair






i dont have any photos of the finished job. makes me realise how bad i was i taking photos haha

[dizzie]

heel board repair












refitting rear subby

[cooper_mark]

wow u certainly got stuckin to it.....
looks like ur making good progress there....also loving the make shift shelter
"there's me with a garage and can't be peachd half the time to get off my peace and get some work done on mine".....Respect to ya...
is that a gasless mig u using........?

[Oz]

Holy poop mate, thats dedication !!!

[GRIFF2494]

looking good mate,your def cracking on with it !!!! like everyone else has said respectto you working under your sheet

cant wait to see it finished,will be watching this build for up dates

[dizzie]

guys remmeber that ive been at it for just over a year and a half now, and these photos are from a bit ago, i wish i was going at this sort of pace haha

you do get some funny looks from people when your working in a tent on half a car in the grapesing rain haha

yep it is a gasless cooper, an other problem with out a garage i dont half space for a tank and cant realy be shifting it all out side and back in every time i have a tiny patch to weld. tbh ive never realy used a normal mig any way so i find it easy to use with out anything to compair with

[dizzie]

the donor, a 1997 200 vi, 77k on the clock £500.
when i picked it up it had a little mayo in the water but took it for a long test drive temp all good. and no problems on the half hour drive home.
this was some time around november 2009




some prick left his hand break off and managed to hit 3 of our cars in one go.

knock on effect with the 200 and the mini


good thing i acidently sleapt in that morning, because that week i was putting a lot of time into stripping the 200, in particular engine bay stuff and would have been either round the front or under the car, so somtimes it is a good thing to sleap in!






playing with a jet washer = fun!


ive used the full 200 loom, so stripping it out.


huge amount of wires in a car!









engine finaly out here, moved out of pikeys eye sight with a wheel barow (i know now that skateboard is the best way to move engines!)
this was a few weeks before i went to france for 5 months.

[dizzie]

so this was after id got back from france at the end of april this year.

when i got back i started by getting my front flanges and disks drilled out to mini pcd of 101.6 and had spigot rings made up(new bearings, ball joints ect while i was at it). so i could fit my new shoes on-




im using mini top arms and minispares coilover brackets so i can get the coilovers all the way to the end of the top arms. also got 350lb 8" long springs at the mo, see how the work out when i get it on the road, seem fine tho.


in this one you can see the clearance between the tyre and the spring, ive had to put on 5mm spacers so i have pleanty of clearance on full drop ect
also the brackets i made for flexis, they dont foul on any thing.



im gona have to make some big arches!

[dizzie]

engine cleaning and painting, ive just used smooth black hammerite, its come out a bit too shiney for my liking but oh well.








oven cleaner and a jet wash works wonders on dirt and grease

if i didnt mention already, will be using r65 for the time being and down the line i will build up a pg1 with an lsd




the idle was high when the 200 was still on the road. you can see where the gaskets gone.