Last autumn I bought this '66 Minx as a cheap runaround for winter. The route to work is deserted country back roads and no-go for the bike if there's another freeze. It's got the Rootes 1725 motor, auto, lowered, cherry bomb fitted. Not keen on the satin black and red, it looks OK I guess but far too common/the easy option. So I thought maybe gloss black it, or ivory or Old English white with some other touches, some time. And some general 60s US kustom type things, laced roof and whatnots.
The heater kept blowing one of the two fuses, taking out all lights & gauges etc. Seemed the motor was shorting so I took it off and opened it up. All sorts of mangled bits floating around in there. Luckily I'd already stripped and sorted a near-identical motor for my Landy, so that went in OK.
Very solid looking, it was undercoated probably decades ago, going by the state of it and the pre-historic 3M sticker. It's dried and flaking, and has let water seep in so there was some rust underneath it all. Some of the undercoat & wax fell off easily...
Plenty was well stuck on, so we started the lovely job of scraping the underseal off the wing/inner wing/valance etc. My carcass objected strongly to being contorted to get in there. Need to chain up some of the local small urchins, or train some monkeys maybe, it's got to be the way forward.
Made a flexy chisel bit to help the scraping.
In a couple of areas the rubberised glop was in place but the metal behind it had all but vanished... Below is a classic rust spot apparently - an excellent krap trap, as is the inner wing, which curves down after the peak, leaving a lovely 'shelf'.
A couple of tiny paint blisters on the front wing were nudged (which smartrrse was it said never poke a sleeping lion/tiger/insert large ornery cat of choice):
This eventually revealed a patch melted on over the original wing, with a fair lot of distortion and some very well-sculpted plod. So the patch and wing were chopped, and I made a repair panel over a ply template, plus smaller infills for the inner wing/sill 'ventilations'. Wing was slightly pesky for an eejit like me with little tin shaping experience, it needs to flare out towards the arch lip. Trial fit-
And with quick skim of plod and some primer lashed on so we could be useable on the Monday.
So then we drove around for a few months, great fun and faultlessly reliable, though it did like to mark it's territory a bit. An engine sump gasket swap helped (what a fiddy setup that is, with crap-fitting pattern parts), but the gearbox needs doing too.
The heater kept blowing one of the two fuses, taking out all lights & gauges etc. Seemed the motor was shorting so I took it off and opened it up. All sorts of mangled bits floating around in there. Luckily I'd already stripped and sorted a near-identical motor for my Landy, so that went in OK.
Very solid looking, it was undercoated probably decades ago, going by the state of it and the pre-historic 3M sticker. It's dried and flaking, and has let water seep in so there was some rust underneath it all. Some of the undercoat & wax fell off easily...
Plenty was well stuck on, so we started the lovely job of scraping the underseal off the wing/inner wing/valance etc. My carcass objected strongly to being contorted to get in there. Need to chain up some of the local small urchins, or train some monkeys maybe, it's got to be the way forward.
Made a flexy chisel bit to help the scraping.
In a couple of areas the rubberised glop was in place but the metal behind it had all but vanished... Below is a classic rust spot apparently - an excellent krap trap, as is the inner wing, which curves down after the peak, leaving a lovely 'shelf'.
A couple of tiny paint blisters on the front wing were nudged (which smartrrse was it said never poke a sleeping lion/tiger/insert large ornery cat of choice):
This eventually revealed a patch melted on over the original wing, with a fair lot of distortion and some very well-sculpted plod. So the patch and wing were chopped, and I made a repair panel over a ply template, plus smaller infills for the inner wing/sill 'ventilations'. Wing was slightly pesky for an eejit like me with little tin shaping experience, it needs to flare out towards the arch lip. Trial fit-
And with quick skim of plod and some primer lashed on so we could be useable on the Monday.
So then we drove around for a few months, great fun and faultlessly reliable, though it did like to mark it's territory a bit. An engine sump gasket swap helped (what a fiddy setup that is, with crap-fitting pattern parts), but the gearbox needs doing too.