Well as usual its been a fun day and also quite hard work, I have had some visitors today which are always welcome, no need to mention names but I hoped they enjoyed seeing the project. It was nice to meet you too.
While working on blue today I also had another car along side which was having the springs changed, I took more of a guidance roll because I wanted to spend some time with blue.
The day started early with the main goal to remove the drivers door as I had sold it, this meant opening the door and removing the glass and locking mechanism. This is fairly simple though is quite tight for room, I had Dave from think mini with me so the helping hand soon saw the glass out.
With the door out I could then continue to solve the other problems I have with blue. The car caught fire when it was not running and was closed, this meant that the doors had been deadlocked and the boot also had been locked. The mini unfortunately does not have a key in the boot or the passengers door so the only way to open them is with the key fob and through the electrics. This left me with a small problem being a catch 22 variety where to turn the electrics on to open the door I needed to remove the door to gain access behind the dash and to the main wiring loom.
While I thought about how I was going to open the boot and passengers door I thought it best to start removing the interior.
The mini normally has a boot release under the rear seats for such a problem as a mechanical failure but this being an early mini did not have that option. I therefore had to remove the drivers seat, then the rear seats and slowly undo and remove every panel from inside the car out. Most of the panels are normally removed with the boot open so this was fairly tight. With access to the lock I was able to open the boot fairly simply
The next lock to solve was that of the passengers, I quickly looked at the drivers lock and figured out how to open it mechanically from outside the car but since this door was already open I did not need to worry about that. Working on the door I realised that the lock was not the same, this left me with only one solution which was to place a battery in the car and chop the cables and short the lock across the battery, glad to say this worked and the door was then open.
Now the door was open I dedicated the day to removing the majority of the interior and stripping most the parts out as they will not be required. I was surprised to find that the car had been built with curtain air bags which I have never had the chance to remove and as yet have not had time to take them out.
Most of the interior came out well though there where a few bolts which gave me some trouble and where very stiff to remove, I am happy to say that they are all sorted now.
I decided that I would take the dashboard out to enable easy access, I set about removing the steering wheel, this is normally simple but I was making a pigs ear out of it by using the wrong torx bits and thinking it was removed the same as the later model wheel ~ I was wrong, there was a simple connection of 2 T25 bits holding the air bag in, with the T25s removed I was able to pull the air bag out and put it somewhere safe ie not where anyone could get hurt. With the air bag out I undid the main steering wheel and pulled the wheel, at this time I fell back and managed to some how break the full force of pulling the steering wheel with my nose! this hurt as you can expect but thinking I had broken my nose is now not a problem, just a little sore.
The day seamed to quickly with very little exciting to report on or to show. Though towards the end of the day I was satisfied.
All the photos seamed to be full of orbs this week and I took many shots to try an avoid them, probably to do with the fog weather rather than an infestation of spirits or whatever you may think... "spooky?"
