Restoration diary / 05-02-2006
05-02-2006 >> Various things (mainly brakes and intake manifold)
 | p1030224.jpg (800 x 600) 05-02-2006 - The grill will cover up all the big holes and extra hardware behind it. When finished, there will be a nice new Cooper grill for the Van. |
 | p1030228.jpg (800 x 600) 05-02-2006 - For strength, I added this pillar in the middle. It helps the front a lot. |
 | p1030229.jpg (800 x 600) 05-02-2006 - Received the brake pads and fitted them to check clearance. As you can (barely) see in the photo, clearance is good! |
 | p1030233.jpg (800 x 600) 05-02-2006 - Here you see the brake pads fitted in the brake caliper. |
 | p1030236.jpg (800 x 600) 05-02-2006 - Compared to the normal Mini pads (left and right) these from a Fiesta (top and bottom) are huge! Hope they will provide adequate braking... :-) |
 | p1030237.jpg (800 x 600) 05-02-2006 - I won these braided brake hoses for a Fiesta Mk II on Ebay. They're from Earl's (as highly recommended by Carroll Smith in "Engineer to win" and "Nuts, bolts..."). Two hoses for the front, two for the back. I think/hope I can use the two for the back too (although it's mainly Mini parts over there). |
 | p1030238.jpg (800 x 600) 05-02-2006 - Everything (except brake disk) fitted together. There's a little problem though ... |
 | p1030239.jpg (800 x 600) 05-02-2006 - ... with the Mini lifted off the ground, a bolt hits the suspension. No problem under driving, but it might be a problem for the MOT. Don't know yet how to fix this. |
 | p1030243.jpg (600 x 800) 05-02-2006 - In the last two weeks I've been working on many small things, not worth taking photo's off. For instance the front and rear bumper fixating holes, clearance for the side doors, etc.. This little thing was worth the photo. The right rear door fits perfectly, but the left one has the wrong radius on the outside. It's off by 11mm in the middle. A big problem I don't know how to fix (yet). |
 | p1030246.jpg (800 x 600) 05-02-2006 - At the top of the photo is one of the last things I still have to fix. |
 | p1030249.jpg (600 x 800) 05-02-2006 - First try at making a mold for the intake manifold. The wood used here is very strong, but still the mock-up broke when it fell on the floor. |
 | p1030250.jpg (800 x 600) 05-02-2006 - A second try at making a mold, this time with MDF with two layers glued together. Somehow I messed up. The left side is perfect, the right has quite a different shape. |
 | p1030256.jpg (600 x 800) 05-02-2006 - With the caliper in place, I thought it would be a nice idea to trial fit the 10" rim to see how it would look. Well, it will come out very nice. On this photo I have the tire next to it, to get a feeling how much tire there will be under the car and how it will fill the fender. |
 | p1030261.jpg (600 x 800) 05-02-2006 - The rim sticks out just about half a centimeter. The tire will stick out another half a centimeter (I think), so it'll be perfect. Hard to see from the photo, but the negative camber seems to be spot-on too. |