Blake's Den

More progress on the Designer! I've fitted the rear subframe which means that I am one step closer to being able to put it back on to its wheels. I've also given the inside of the sills and the cavities on the subframe a liberal coating of Dynax 50 which should hopefully keep the tin worm at bay for a bit.

Kraftwerk Autobahn

@LightBulbFun to the the nearest phone please 😊

It wasn't far from that!

I used to work in a shite petrol station many years ago. We had three pumps which weren't computer controlled, you had to look out of the window to see how much fuel someone had put in! If three people turned up at once it was chaos. The till didn't work either and wasn't plugged in. It had a cable to pull to open the tray. I once started a shift at 8am and the first customer came in at 10:45. DIfferent times!

Fantastic! I'm seriously considering building an Exocet. I've wanted to build by own kit car for years, it was Ron Champion's Build Your Own Sports Car for £250 which got me interested. The problem is that I don't have enough spare time at the moment and i know that in a few years time MX5 prices will be through the roof! I reckon that I need to find a rusty MX5 now and stash it away somewhere.

My '97 Mini has a 5 digit odometer and no trip counter

An update on the Copper MPI. March is an important month as it means two things. I've owned it for another year - I bought it in March 2009 The MoT is due I've kept it in hibernation throughout the winter. As expected, it fired up straight away. I decided to try some Lanoguard rust protection on the underside. I'm quite happy with the product so far but time will tell. I was surprised at how good the underside of the Mini was looking too. It passed the MoT with only one advisor so I'm taking that as a win!

Some more work on the Ford. I actually filmed this a few months ago but for various reasons I have only got around to uploading the video this weekend. The Lucas C40 dynamo had seen better days so I decided to give it a bit of a rebuild. It is amazing how many British vehicles use this dynamo, in fatc I have the exact same one on my Turner Ranger which runs a 1098cc A-series engine. After the rebuild the charging light went out so I think that we are back in business. Although the only thing on the tractor which draws power is the starter motot, I don't even have any lights!

More progress to report. This time it involved me rebuilding the rear subframe. It did not go as smoothly as I hoped. Firstly, one of the brackets which hold the radius arms on just wouldn't line up with the four bolt holes. Whilst sorting that out I realised that I should have put the front trunions on before that. Needless to say, the other side went together a lot easier! Also a viewer pointed out that I mounted the rear trunions back to front. In the back of my mind I knew that there was a mistake in the parts manual but I coluldn't remember exactly what it was. Its an easy fix, I just need to swap left with right before I attempt to mount it to the body.

I remember driving past the factory on the Team Valley when I was young. There is a Greggs on the site now - a sign of the times!

Back to Mini content. I've been making more progress on the Designer, I've finally got around to coating the underside of the boot floor with Gravitex. Top tip - it is messy stuff! I got it absolutely everywhere - over me, the floor, cupboard, wall, seat, camera, overalls and shoes! It is worth it though, I'm very happy with the result. The next step is to build up the new subframe.

I didn't pay a lot. I reckon I can get back what I paid for it anyway. The original features are quite hard to find and it has most of them. Yep it's a lot of work but it's only small so it shouldn't take long!

In sort of mini related news I've bought a mini caravan! A Thomoson mini-glen to be precise. It came up on marketplace nearby and I decided to go for it. The plan is to turn it into a garden room (without sounding too middle class....) but also it would be nice if I could get it road worth and habitable again. Here is the video of the latest project:

Interesting to see a LHD Imp. I wonder which country it came from? Anywhere in mainland Europe would be quite a drive in an Imp!