Sold the mini got this instead

Over The Christmas Period!

Ahhh it Christmas, a time for giving and receiving!!!

Lucky for me i will be receiving bits and bobs for Ugly Betty this year. A whole list has gone up to the north pole for Santa to choose from.

My Christmas present to myself however is to get the wheels and wheel arches fitted to the car. I cannot face doing this myself, im afraid my knowledge of metal work is no existent so to do it myself would just be too expensive and time consuming.

So its going down to Sommerford Mini on Sat 13th to stay with them for a while so they can do the work, hopefully in time for Xmas.

After that its fixing on the things bought for Christmas and then thinking about what to buy next with the school budget for the next term. I think it will probably be a music system. This in addition to me saving for the paint job!

First Bit of Orange Goes On

The front grille as you can see from the photos has drastically changed.

Originally it was chipped and rusting in places, so we sandblasted it in the Design and Technology suite. The grille comes in 3 parts so they were each done individually.

After sandblasting, they were primed with a standard white primer from Halfords. Three layers went on. 15 mins drying time between layers


This was then left for a week.

Next came the luminous orange colour. Looking at the colour it is probably a little brighter than i was hoping for but it will match the orange acrylic of the centre console so it will at least match other areas of the car. There were probably 3 layers of this colour too. Each layer with 15- 20 mins drying time.

Again it was left for a week in the painting booth.

Lastly came the clear lacquer, 3 layers of this as well.

This was then left to harden for a week before it was then bolted back together and fitted back onto the car. I will admit that with the current blue colour the orange looks a little out of place but it was something that the boys could get on with so it had to be done.

First New Panel On!

You may remember from previous posts and pics that Betty had a big old dent in her arse. Not sure where it came from, didnt want to ask the owner! She now has a brand snaking new boot. We had a look at the old one and the damage was so that we couldn't actually beat it out.

I got a double skinned panel from http://www.hytheperformance.co.uk

It took a couple weeks to come as they had a backlog but it got here and in an afternoon we took off the old boot and the electrics and put ont he new boot. Its a little fiddly as there are some knooks and crannys that bolts and washers were hard to get at.



We also had to re-use the seal as it was in decent knick.

Number plate holes had to be drilled and number plate mounted being careful to get the measurements right.



Its already primed ready for painting so once shes ready its once less bit of prep work...

Ugly Bettys New Shoes

Time came to replace those tired looking wheels. I hunted around and finally set my heart on some Starmag 6 x 12 wheels.

I went to the Castle Combe track day (without the car) to have a look around and get some ideas. There were a couple of cars with the Starmags on and they looked amazing which made me even more certain.

So i bought some, £345, not too bad!

The boys and me spent the afternoon jacking the car up and replacing the wheels. It was always going to be touch and go whether or not the wheels would foul on the arches and the bodywork but there is only one way to find out. All seemed ok at first but on the drive home ever single bump caused the car to foul.... bollocks!

I am not bodywork expert so the car is going to have to go in to have the wheel arches removed the cutting done and the new wider arches on. I have gone for genuine sportspack arches. They will cover the wheels and look quite cool.

I then spent about a hour jacking the car up again and taking the wheels off at about 9.30pm as it couldn't be driven with the wheels fouling. So Betty is back on her ugly wheels again until i get a chance to take it to the body shop to have her nip tuck done.

The Aim

Basically the aim was to buy a mini project that was mechanically sound but aesthetically ugly! What i ended up with was this little beauty, cough cough!!

She is a 1973 mini clubman with one major difference. She has had a heart transplant and now has 160bhp Honda Vtec engine within her subtle frame!!!

As you can see her paintwork is less than to be desired, she has minor rust spots too but nothing that is going to be too much to handle hopefully but as those people with minis know it can seem that way but until you break it down you cant really tell.






The interior is bare, no back seats, no console, no dashboard! A bike speedo for a speedometer and a ripped steering wheel.


The engine is pretty much rammed into the engine bay, not a lot of room around it.

The theme for the mini is black and orange as these are my company colours and i will be putting my company name etc on it once it is finished.

Here is a small list of things that need doing:

Paintwork

Wheels

Dashboard

Centre Console

Steering Wheel

I.C.E

New Boot

Aggressive Bonnet

New Wheel Arches

Tidy up Grill and Paint

Company Decals

Over the next few months and possibly years these will slowly but surely take place, in fact at the time of writing the new wheels are on but the wings and bodywork need to be adjusted to fit them in properly!!