MBConfuse
Junior Member
- Messages
- 170
So I bought this mini about 2 years ago as a bit of a gamble (of ebay without viewing it) and it was a bad idea. However not willing to admit defeat I sporadically get enthused to work on it, and the last few evenings i've been trying to sort out the rear panel around the lights. The last owner saw fit to replace the normal light clusters with circular ones, which i thought looked terrible so what follows is my first ever attempt at a proper panel repair.....
The rear of the mini as it was a week ago: (i had already bashed out the circular clusters and made a bit of a mess in the process.)
You'll probably notice that the last owner in their wisdom also tack welded the boot shut and filled the gap.....which how has a lovely crack all the way round it, marvelous! Oh also check out the massive exhaust.
So i'll just show the pics for the off side light as the other side was pretty much the same:
You can see that luckily the corner fixings were still in place.
I made my cardboard template for the replacement panel section before i cut the hole out:
Then i cut the hole....but forgot to take a pic... so here it my replacement section resting in place:
Tack welds:
Fully welded
Ground down, primed, and fully welded the other side
But my metalwork not being all that great, and for whatever other reasons the shape of the panel was well out, as shown when i put the cluster in place:
So i tried my had a filling. First i used the UPOL fibreglass stuff to get the main body shape back - it needed up to about 10mm max thickness.
Sanded that down a bit where i had over done it:
Then slapped on a layer of David's P38
Then sanding:
Then there was more sanding, more filling, more sanding, filling, priming, sanding, priming and finally....
Also the exhaust was really annoying me so i cropped about 6ins off it, so its still massive, but atleast it doesn't stick out so far.
And the lights fit nicely now:
Any comments, suggestions etc greatly appreciated.
The rear of the mini as it was a week ago: (i had already bashed out the circular clusters and made a bit of a mess in the process.)
You'll probably notice that the last owner in their wisdom also tack welded the boot shut and filled the gap.....which how has a lovely crack all the way round it, marvelous! Oh also check out the massive exhaust.
So i'll just show the pics for the off side light as the other side was pretty much the same:
You can see that luckily the corner fixings were still in place.
I made my cardboard template for the replacement panel section before i cut the hole out:
Then i cut the hole....but forgot to take a pic... so here it my replacement section resting in place:
Tack welds:
Fully welded
Ground down, primed, and fully welded the other side
But my metalwork not being all that great, and for whatever other reasons the shape of the panel was well out, as shown when i put the cluster in place:
So i tried my had a filling. First i used the UPOL fibreglass stuff to get the main body shape back - it needed up to about 10mm max thickness.
Sanded that down a bit where i had over done it:
Then slapped on a layer of David's P38
Then sanding:
Then there was more sanding, more filling, more sanding, filling, priming, sanding, priming and finally....
Also the exhaust was really annoying me so i cropped about 6ins off it, so its still massive, but atleast it doesn't stick out so far.
And the lights fit nicely now:
Any comments, suggestions etc greatly appreciated.