Off topic - Minis

[dangerous doug]

6 hours ago, Happyoldgit said:

Haha, I recall adverts in Exchange and Mart for "over-sills" that you could fit over existing panels to cover up inconvenient patches of corrosion and any unsightly holes. Welding not required 🤣

Oversills….such a good idea😂

[defender dinky]

Hate it when people cover things up like that, better to cut it all out better job satisfaction,dd

[Anderzander]

Agreed - but back in the day that was the antidote to a proper job. 

[defender dinky]

That, and daily mirror n filler

[smallfry]

58 minutes ago, defender dinky said:

Hate it when people cover things up like that, better to cut it all out better job satisfaction,dd

Yes, but back then, with youthful enthusiasm and no tools, no experience, no acquired skills, and no spare money, that's what you did. That's what everyone did, even people of our age.

There were no MIG welders available back then, and any welding gear was mortgage money. Anyone remember the Kel Arc attachment for stick welders ?

Hilarious really, now I look back. No one would bother nowadays ( I hope) spending hours carefully sculpting filler and fibreglass to disguise this sort of rust, but the reality back then was that you just couldnt afford to get the job done properly, AND it was always a can of worms ! My first Mini was only six years old and it was like this, but then all cars rusted badly back then.

Also remember using concrete in the footwells of my mates Mk1 Escort ! That was a masterpiece of sculpture too, barely distinguishable from original 🤣 AND it passed the MOT !

[defender dinky]

The range rover classic I have now, had a beer can opened up and stuck to the floor with bitumen also had the top off a bean can to seal the floor

[FridgeFreezer]

And they say they don't make 'em like they used to!

By comparison my R53 is 16+ years old and aside from surface corrosion on subframes it's solid.

[Peaklander]

Used to braze stuff that was too flaky for real welding - that was a lot of my Fiat 850 coupé

[geoffbeaumont]

18 hours ago, Anderzander said:

Can’t seem to find the build episode - but it’s this car: 

 

I love that - particularly with the basically stock looks.

[jeremy996]

The middle part of my '91 LR90 van with windows bulkhead was cardboard and filler - putting in new footwells exposed the fraud and required me to change the bulkhead. It would have been less hassle to weld in metal than it must have been to sculpt everything to match! I should have taken pictures, but I was too cross at the time.

My 2000 MX5 NB had sill ends made from filler and washing machine casing. Some of the sculpted filler was 40mm deep; a magnet caught that out, I knew it was dodgy and I was going to have the sills changed anyway. Running an angle grinder through the outer sill was a small voyage of discovery, finding the enamel coating on the inside of the steel was a surprise. Probably explains why the welds did not penetrate well.

I saw worse as an MOT tester in the very early '80s; back then bean tins were structural! 

Edited April 12, 2022 by jeremy996
Thought of something else!

[cackshifter]

In my youth I worked at a local garage. We took in p/ex a Mk2 Zephyr that seemed to have at least one broken spring as it had a pronounced lean to the left. On the lift the springs were all Ok which puzzled everyone, till they started poking at the nearside sill which was very solid. Someone had filled it with concrete then filled and painted over. No-one was very surprised.

[landroversforever]

6 hours ago, dangerous doug said:

Oversills….such a good idea😂

 

I was going to tag you  Am I right in remembering that there were a few layered up? 

[rusty_wingnut]

I've done a sills, boot floor, most of the floor on a mini and it is hateful. Like welding biscuit tin.

 

 

[Eightpot]

Had a few minis many years ago - the last was a 1275GT with Webasto roof - stupidly I weighed it in for scrap in a rush to cobble the cash together for a ticket to a rave at Donington park 😆

Had a lucky stroke a couple of years ago buying an old '64 mini pretty much blind in South Africa - didn't look great flat on its hydrolastic in the blurry photo covered in dust - turns out it was pulled out of an old ladies garage who had passed away - she owned it from new, it had 36000 miles on the clock, hadn't used it for over 30 years and was still on it's original tyres!  Luckily someone had shellaced the entire underside, brakes, suspension etc and underneath the crust it was like it had just rolled out of the factory. One 2p size piece of rust on the whole car.   Pumped the suspension up, new exhaust and couple of bulbs and it passed an MoT!      Did not want to sell that one 🙁

[Bowie69]

Probably a £50K car now...

[Stellaghost]

1 hour ago, cackshifter said:

 Someone had filled it with concrete then filled and painted over. No-one was very surprised.

Useful stuff way back when a mate of mine fixed his triumph Toledo windscreen in with cement..

Worst I've had was when I bought an old series landrover and sections of the chassis were filled with paper mache finished off with underseal, have also had the bean tin too ....Regards Stephen 

[L19MUD]

32 minutes ago, Stellaghost said:

Worst I've had was when I bought an old series landrover and sections of the chassis were filled with paper mache finished off with underseal

I had this on a IIa 109. I had been driving it about as a run around for months before it stood up for a few weeks as the MOT expired. Decided to just take it in as was (before I had a ramp) and see what failed

Had to ask the tester to abandon as the underseal and paper did appear to be structural and did not want it to fall in half getting it on the trailer!

[dangerous doug]

3 hours ago, landroversforever said:

I was going to tag you  Am I right in remembering that there were a few layered up? 

No…just silicone😂

 

[cackshifter]

3 hours ago, Eightpot said:

Had a few minis many years ago - the last was a 1275GT with Webasto roof - stupidly I weighed it in for scrap in a rush to cobble the cash together for a ticket to a rave at Donington park 😆

Had a lucky stroke a couple of years ago buying an old '64 mini pretty much blind in South Africa - didn't look great flat on its hydrolastic in the blurry photo covered in dust - turns out it was pulled out of an old ladies garage who had passed away - she owned it from new, it had 36000 miles on the clock, hadn't used it for over 30 years and was still on it's original tyres!  Luckily someone had shellaced the entire underside, brakes, suspension etc and underneath the crust it was like it had just rolled out of the factory. One 2p size piece of rust on the whole car.   Pumped the suspension up, new exhaust and couple of bulbs and it passed an MoT!      Did not want to sell that one 🙁

 

 

 

She can't have hooned it about much if it had the original tyres at 36k; my 1275GT used to do a front set every 7000.

[Eightpot]

11 minutes ago, cackshifter said:

She can't have hooned it about much if it had the original tyres at 36k; my 1275GT used to do a front set every 7000.

Apparantly not - they weren't in bad nick either considering - still held air.  The spare didn't look like it had been used.  I got a lot more out of my old 1275 tyres, though they were all bald and three different sizes 😆 

I used to have a mini van which used to go through headlamps at an alarming rate - I fitted a one piece fibreglass flip front by simply chopping the front of the car off and bolting two door hinges to the front subframe.  It was secured at the A panel with a pair of cheap overcentre latches which always came undone if I braked hard at the lights  🤡

[landroversforever]

2 hours ago, Eightpot said:

Apparantly not - they weren't in bad nick either considering - still held air.  The spare didn't look like it had been used.  I got a lot more out of my old 1275 tyres, though they were all bald and three different sizes 😆 

I used to have a mini van which used to go through headlamps at an alarming rate - I fitted a one piece fibreglass flip front by simply chopping the front of the car off and bolting two door hinges to the front subframe.  It was secured at the A panel with a pair of cheap overcentre latches which always came undone if I braked hard at the lights  🤡

🤣🤣🤣🤣

[JeffR]

On 4/12/2022 at 4:27 PM, cackshifter said:

She can't have hooned it about much if it had the original tyres at 36k; my 1275GT used to do a front set every 7000.

Bring back Stomils... Carved out of ebony, never wore our, never gripped in either the wet or the dry mind you. Taxi drivers swore by them, everyone else swore at them. Still they taught me what terminal understeer was.

[cackshifter]

In my day it was the original Michelin X. Transits had original ones on at 100k. 2CVs were scrapped with the factory fitted tyres. In the dry, great. Lethal in the wet but especially just wet after a dry spell.

[Peaklander]

5 minutes ago, cackshifter said:

especially just wet after a dry spell

Days of rubber put down on the dry road followed by rain lubricant. Tricky!

[Steve King]

 

On 4/11/2022 at 10:35 PM, Happyoldgit said:

Haha, I recall adverts in Exchange and Mart for "over-sills" that you could fit over existing panels to cover up inconvenient patches of corrosion and any unsightly holes. Welding not required 🤣

Those cover sills caused more problems than they cured. The original drainage holes were ignored and so the floor would rot out!

This was also a problem on the ADO16: the Austin/Morris, Wolseley, Riley, VDP, MG, Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all 1100 and 1300 range of cars! Lovely cars to drive and quite advanced when they were introduced! However designed in rust points, poor steel and poor build quality (plus poor repairs) all played their part in many thousands of these going to the scrappy!

I passed my test in an Austin 1300 GT, it is still on the road, but sadly not under my ownership and they are quite rare nowadays!

I do have a MK1 Riley Kestrel version, that is nearly restored.