I think it's about time I started a thread for my new build, I'll need a place to pose my questions to the brains trust on this forum!
For those among us that don’t know the story of this car, I’ll go from the beginning, which starts about five years ago.
This is my 87 Park Lane model as it was sold in Japan. When I got it, it looked like this:
Seen better days. Two busy weeks of late nights later, it looked like this:
I only bought the rolling shell, I had enough parts stashed in my shed to make it drivable – engine, brakes, electricals and enough bits to cobble some kind of interior. What I didn’t have, I made. I bought it because my blue car was miles from being done and I wanted to start mini-ing again. I drove the car around randomly and on weekends, but two years after building it I sold it to pay for a Bini as a new daily hack. I sold the car for peanuts in the end, and regretted doing so afterwards, as it really was a good, solid, mini.
Over the next few years I went back to working on my blue mini, finally finishing it early to mid 2012 though it had been driving for a year before that.
With that car now finished I found myself with a lot more free time, so like most mini owners started looking for and thinking about another project. Though I wasn’t planning to buy until sometime in 2013, the opportunity to buy my old rover popped up as the guy that bought it off me had decided to move overseas. He needed it gone quick and I scored it back for a good price.
That sounded good initially, but the car was now in poor shape. It had been used daily for a year where it racked up an impressive number of kays, and then hidden away for two more years after that. Though it had been resprayed, it was straight over the old paint without any prep, rust repairs or even masking of some areas of the car, and had mechanically been neglected in some areas.
My original plan was to whack a 1275 engine in there, bin the interior and start over, and just keep the car going as a much simpler mini than my other one, but after going over it I decided I should do things properly and redo subframes, suspension and nearly everything else too. Was looking like it might be a full rebuild all over again, which aside from the cost bit, sounded good – something to do!
It was around this time a very good mate of mine was having thoughts of building a GTI mini.
I won’t go into details, but to cut a long story short, the evil genius brainwashed me into doing one too. Didn’t take too much pushing though, I’d contemplated doing this with my blue car during a few moments of insanity.
I’m really not the person to tackle a conversion. A basic list of requirements for doing one as I understand is:
1. Have a welder, and be able to actually weld.
2. Have tools and technology in the garage greater than a hammer and crowbar.
3. Have some level of steel working and fabrication skills / experience.
I don’t have any of those, I don’t even think I have a crowbar.
Plans for where the car will end up? Nothing too crazy, I just want a fairly timid looking car with a G13B in there. I’m not dreaming of going fast, changing the world, or reinventing the wheel, I just want a project to pass the time that’s a step up from the last one. If I get to the end of this having enjoyed the build as much as the last car, I’ll do another one!
