garellikatia

Further to the rust proofing mission. I bought some buzz weld chassis guard. This stuff is essentially lanolin oil, and dries tacky through "polymerisation" its one of those that needs reapplying every 6-12 months but for £12 a litre, thought I'd give it a go. I thinned it and attempted to spray it through a "pump up" garden spray bottle, but I don't think I thinned it enough as the jet throw wasn't great, more like a water pistol than a fine spray. Nonetheless, the product can be applied to rubber, so no harm on that front. Equally I hit the exhaust with it inevitably which is going to smell nice when it melts off. All in all time will tell, and the car is never driven in the wet, so hopefully it will last another 25 years. I'm will give it another coat when a bit drier for bits I've missed.

I decided to take all the underside plastics off to assess any corrosion properly. It's Really good under there given the age of the car but decided to wire brush the loose and as much accessible rust as I could, then a coating of vactan rust convertor, followed by a finish of oil based heavy duty paint. Next job will be a good coating of lanolin oil on the under side and inner chassis, sills etc... The inner wheel arches have a couple of scabs that need sorting. They will be painted yellow to match the body. Excuse my lack of painting skills, but the paints there for protection rather than perfection, or that's what I'm at least telling myself.

Tried colour matching the old worn out plastics in the interior tonight. It didn't go well . I got so many runs in the paint I got fed up and stripped it all back down again. Back to square 1 but I'll just do them in black this time. I forgot how much of a bugger yellow paint was to work with. Oh well. Not the end of the world .

Absolutely love this car. The nostalgia this brings back from the 90s is unreal. What a beauty

Mot time today. Clean sheet, no advisories!!! Happy days.

Finally set about doing the service. Turns out the sump plug bolt was fairly rounded so instead of wasting time and effort trying to botch it off and risking damaging the sump I bought an electric oil extractor pump. Was £30 from eurocarparts. I'm actually very impressed sucked out 5L in next to no time. All sorted now until the next 6 months!!

Not much of an update as the kids are on easter holidays and as much as I'd like to crack on they're my priority at the moment. Popped into the Merc stealers near me to pick up some bits today. Namely an oil filter and a gear oil dipstick cover that was misplaced. Not too bad for the princely sum of £20 ish. In my opinion OEM give me a sense of reassurance, after watching the Indian factories make there's with next to no product control or quality control, rolling the filter paper up on a dust gritty workshop floor. Seems like a no brainer to me. The shocks look very worn too and I'm tempted to get some fibi Bilston replacements soon, but out of curiosity thought I'd see how much genuine ones are. £1000 all in, front and back .... maybe I'll stick to the former haha. I also had to invest in a little tool to tighten my wheel caps, as much as I'm ham fisted the caps still needed a good old half turn or so each. Glad I did, as the last thing I need is one of these flinging off and causing an accident.

In other news, looking forward to doing some other simple tasks over the next week, like a good old service. Brakes are looking a bit worn, and as much as I'd like to splash out on some more 'yellow stuff' pads and discs, I think I'm going to settle for Mintex. Got some decent gen merc oil for a steal though, so I'll be taking a pootle up to my local dealers for some OEM service bits, like filters etc...

So I've just pulled custard out of winter hibernation, put on the wheels I got from Agila of this parish. I have also half fitted these spats, (only gonna fit to the rear as I had new front wings last year) they're only held on lightly hence they're not properly aligned and flush. I'm I'm 2 minds with these. I know they're normally there to hide rust, but in my case the rust was all ground out, but the mismatch in yellow paint looks a lot worse than the arches. Besides I can't really afford £500 for a panel spray at the minute. I may decide to spray them yellow to match the body, but I don't know, I quite like the black haha.

Aye I can't wait to see what they look like on. I'll have to post a pic. these are the light weight ones id originally intended to put on,( need work) but couldnt resist the gold ones when they were for sale.

Slk is on storage at the minute and I'm due to go away with work for the next month however she's nicely tucked up. I needed getting 2 sets of rims for it this month. One being the set from Agila of this parish. I'm chuffed to bits with them and I know it's not to everyone's taste but I will be putting them on when I return, and I think it will look great. I've been sanding the laquer down and re polishing them. I've found that course wire wool works the best slowly upping the grade. I know paint stripper would get the laquer off in no time but I don't want to run the risk of getting any on the paint. haven't fully polished them yet, but here's a half done one.

Ahhh no I never even thought of that. Nice one I'll check that tomorrow thanks. Happy days. To be honest the valves seem fairly smooth in the guides after a good clean up it's not looking too bad. I'm tempted to see how it runs with a skim to get the compression up and replace the seats and valves if they're badly worn.

So some progress. I bought and fitted a new boot seal, and RC40 twin box exhaust. The smell has gone to the point where I can't smell anything nor do my clothes smell. I do get a little light headed at times when I get out of it, but whether that's because it's so close to the ground I'm not sure. I intended to remove the exhaust manifold and replace the manifold gasket but also feel at the minute the mini Is a big gutless with modern day traffic. After much deliveration, I've bought a rather cheap 12g202 head . Originally fitted to 997 coopers, 1100 Morris minors and Midgets. It looks to be in rough but hopefully workable shape. It will need a good de coke. Then probably about 40 thou taking off it.

Thanks mate, Hahaha sounds like fun mind!!

Ah great thanks for your help!!