Travis, the '89 Mini City

[lankyjames]

First of all apolgies that this isnt a p6! I do have one waiting to be reborn but atm this is my toy

I'm going to post all the pictures and do the write up inbetween over a few days, as there is a lot of both photos and talking!

Anyway, on with the photos:
Before i owned him:
He belonged to a friend, who rescued him from a scrapheap, and rebuilt him, shortly after finishing the mini he sold it to me for £800, (after spending countless monies for heritage panels and chrome bumpers)

First night at home:
Look how wide those arches are for those slim 12's...

The wellers i was given with the car:
These were free, albeit a bit rusty, this shows their transformation!

The interior
Hideous at first, but black dash rails, some mdf, and black vinyl make all the difference! And finally a radio too!

 

[lankyjames]

The next year....Not much changed exterior wise, i sold the wellers, two of them were found to be buckled when we put the tyres on, didnt affect the car when on the rears but after an engine swap to the metro heart, we swapped the wheels over to promote even tire wear, and it was horrible! bought some alloys with barely used tyres (but were cheap and had no grip!)

Heres a little photo-shoot of the beast, here a car computer and 7" touchscreen were in the dash (weird i know but i study computer science at uni and thought why not - not very practical in a mini i found haha)

Fibreglass front:
Now after a period of time, rust began to show, namely the weeping headlights, now something i've allways wanted on my mini was a flip/removable fibreglass front, heres how we did it:

Wheel + car respray:
So i ran the mini round with a fading matt black paint job, a bright red door from a late 98 cooper, and a bright white bonnet, i actually liked the white front! Stayed this way for a few months, till i decided to get the badly peeling alloys and the car resprayed

 

[lankyjames]

Now the sad part

The mini i decided to keep off the road from september 08, to raise some money (ie not spend it) to afford a nice holiday, that went up the crapper. So in january after the harshness of winter was over, i rolled my boy out, and got him reinsured (YAY) 5 months without a car/mini made me sad

However this happiness didnt last long! A leaking heater, and then a gearbox that went crunch only a month later after insuring!

Luckily though this meant that i could put a nice cam in the engine, and fit a duplex timing chain, amongst cleaning up the engine to look pretty, picture time!

And thats all for tonight folks.