Laurence's ongoing adventures in the world of shite - A year (and a half) in review

[Mally]

Someone on here does them for a living, but I forget who.

It will add up to quite a sum.

[Mr Laurence]

48 minutes ago, Mally said:

Someone on here does them for a living, but I forget who.

It will add up to quite a sum.

I suspect so. I’ve already had a quote from a garage a friend works at, who’ve done a little welding on it recently. It was a lot, but considering the amount of work they were expecting to do, it certainly wasn’t unreasonable. (Door skins and steps, windscreen scuttle, a panels, wings and a respray of everything but the roof for £2500. There may have been some other little bits included in that as well). There was work done to the sills and around the subframe not long before I bought the car, so other than a small hole which I took care of a few weeks back, that’s still mostly okay.

[Mr Laurence]

The mini plates have now arrived and been fitted! I’ve got to say, they look amazing and they’re a massive improvement over the cracked and faded old pair. £40 for the pair designed, printed and delivered seems very reasonable to me considering the effort required to make them. I’m considering getting a second set for the MX5 now.

[N Dentressangle]

I've found welding a Mini to be a massive PITA. The metal is thin and not great quality, and the rot always goes further than you think it feasibly could.

As a first project to learn on I would say it's not ideal, especially with the highly visible bits around the front end. Maybe pay someone else to do those bits and have a go at the more hidden stuff yourself? You'll need to buy a decent MIG welder, plus a fair few other tools to make and shape repair panels - probably about £500 worth of gear - and then learn how to chop out rot, make and weld in repairs.

Agreed though that restoring a Mini makes more financial sense than many old cars!

[Mr Laurence]

I’m wondering if anyone could give me some help on the mini, I’ve had an issue with it for some time now that I’d finally like to try and get to the bottom of.

Whenever I start it from cold, it will idle somewhere between 1500 and 2000rpm, and stay that way for at least 20 minutes, but sometimes more. The ‘fix’ for it is to shut it off and then start it straight back up, after which the idle goes back to normal. I took it a garage for some other work, and asked if they could have a quick look, but they weren’t able to work it out. I’m also at a loss, so does anyone here know what it could be? It’s bothered me for a while now so it’d be nice to finally get it worked out.

[500tops]

Those plates look fab!

 

Do you have any details for the maker?

[Mr Laurence]

15 minutes ago, 500tops said:

Those plates look fab!

 

Do you have any details for the maker?

Thank you! I’d definitely recommend them. This is the guy:

https://m.facebook.com/?refsrc=https%3A%2F%2Fm.facebook.com%2F&_rdr#!/prestigeplatesales/?tsid=0.343482317171241&source=result

[rainagain]

This has fuel injection, yes? It sounds like something is gummed up, does it use a throttle bypass for idle? If so give that a clean and also the throttle body and throttle plate. 

[Mr Laurence]

4 minutes ago, rainagain said:

This has fuel injection, yes? It sounds like something is gummed up, does it use a throttle bypass for idle? If so give that a clean and also the throttle body and throttle plate. 

I believe it does, yes. I’ll have a look at that. Thank you!

[Ben_O]

Idle control valve? They are about £40

 

[Mr Laurence]

Quick update: I had a look at the throttle body, and there was a noticeable buildup of carbon on it. A quick clean seems to have fixed the issue, but I’ll keep an eye on it.

(no photos I’m afraid, as it was getting pretty dark when I did it)

[Mr Laurence]

Within a few weeks of owning the MX5, it started to dawn on me how much I missed the luxury* and convenience* of electric windows, so at some point, I was going to have a go at fitting some.

Today was that point, and what a horrible, miserable bastard of a point it was that has done nothing but make my car measurably worse. Firstly, one of the  screws holding the door card in was stripped worse than any other I’ve seen, so not a great start. It actually ended up being so badly damaged that the smallest screw extractor I was able to get away with using was wider than the shaft of the screw. I hadn’t realised this at the time, so I pressed on regardless, resulting in this:

Fuck.

The other 80% of the screw is still in the door, where it will probably stay forever. Not a great start, but the door card can stay on without that screw so it’s hardly the end of the world. With the door card off, I was greeted to this. I’m guessing that the ham-fisted gorilla who ruined that screw was also the one that covered the inside of the door in masking tape for no obvious reason.

Removing the manual mechanism wasn’t all that painful. It came out in one piece without any real problems. Putting the electric one in wasn’t so nice. There were some parts I took off the manual window that were definitely needed for the electric one, but didn’t seem to fit anywhere. The mechanism is bigger, and with the window in, there really isn’t much space. But still, before I put the door card in, I tested it and it worked fine.

The problems really seemed to stay when I replaced the door cards. So that I didn't have holes in them, I also picked up a set of door cards off an MX5 fitted with electric windows. They didn’t seem to fit as nicely as the old ones, and once they were on, I tested the windows again. They very slowly reach this point, then stop. It’s probably also worth noting that for some reason, the passenger side switch controls the drivers side window.

Clearly the door card isn’t in right and they’re getting caught on something. This isn’t helped by how shit it looks from the outside. I think the door card is a few cm too high. The window also doesn’t seem to stop going up like it should, instead it just keeps going up until it hits the hardtop.

By this point I was so cold and sick of messing about that I just left the other one. So in summary, I started with a car that had two matching, working manual windows, and now I have a car with one working manual window, one barely working electric window controlled by the wrong switch, mismatching door cards, a skinned knuckle and a wallet that’s £120 lighter.

Why do I even fucking bother?

[Mr Laurence]

A couple of months back, I mentioned trouble with the idle on my mini. I gave the throttle body a clean, and though there was small improvement, the problem was still pretty much the same. So at the suggestion of @Ben_O, I ordered a new Idle control valve. I bought mine from minispares, but a few sites I looked at seemed to say that part number was the same for some k series engines. These are less than £10 on Ebay, but have to be ordered from China. Seeing as I wasn't sure they were definitely the right part, I played it safe and got the one that was guaranteed to fit.

With the Mini garaged over winter and barely being used, it's taken me  while to finally get round to fitting the ICV, but I've had the chance to now. The instructions Haynes gives aren't too clear, so here's a quick how to guide just in case anyone needs to change the Idle Control Valve on their Mini MPI.

Firstly, remove the airbox. once this is done, the engine bay will look something like this:

To get the old ICV off, those two hoses going into the left side of throttle body need moving out the way. A gentle tug should be all they need. (When I took these out, one hose felt much looser than the other, but more on that in a bit.)

From here, you should be able to see a light blue wiring connector that plugs into the top of the ICV. Unplug this and move it out of the way.

From here, you should be able to remove the ICV. It's held on by two screws, and will then just lift out. Replace it with the new one, along with the O-ring that comes with it, then plug the wiring and hoses back in.

(New vs. Old)

 

you may remember that one of the hoses I unplugged at the very start of this felt loose. A little investigation revealed that this is because the other end of it wasn't actually connected to anything. That hose plugs into the other end of the plastic housing that the ICV is attached to. at some point, this housing has broken in half, and the hose was just floating around in empty space. That at least explains the idle problems. A new housing has been ordered now, though being in a tighter part of the engine bay, it looks like it may not be as easy to replace as the ICV.

The other end of that hose:

And the offending piece of plastic:

[Mr Laurence]

Idle control valve housing has now arrived! I’ll crack on with getting it fitted tomorrow 

[Mr Laurence]

An ICV update - because of Christmas and the cold weather, I’ve been putting off working on the Mini, but I finally got round to putting everything back together again. As it’s been sat for about a month, it needed jump starting, but eventually fired to life, kicked out a thick opaque cloud of  white smoke for a solid 5 minutes, all the time idling at 3k rpm, about 1000 higher than it was before I touched anything. I’ve shoved it back into the garage to worry about another time for now.

[bezzabsa]

re windows....slap the old cards back in , and find a blanking plug...or make one to cover the manual lever hole...

[Mr Laurence]

27 minutes ago, bezzabsa said:

re windows....slap the old cards back in , and find a blanking plug...or make one to cover the manual lever hole...

Thank you! I’ll give that a go. I think there’s just a faster or screw missing somewhere. My hope is that it just needs taking apart then reassembling again. Failing that though, the old one can go back on

[Mr Laurence]

Right, it’s been over a year since I last updated this, but after a bit of a break from posting on here I think it’s time to come back. Here’s a brief update of the last year and a bit:

Mini

Still looking pretty much the same as it did last year, with the addition of some extra rust. A bit more digging into the idle issue found that the plastic housing had been broken by the engine rocking into the bulkhead; the engine mounts were replaced not too long ago, and the garage that did the work forgot to put one back in, so there was a LOT of play. Sorted now and the car seems noticeably better than before. The high idle on startup still persists, but it settles within 5 minutes or so. A bit more investigation is needed I think.

~£300 in welding saw it through another MOT in December, but really it’s reaching a point now where it either needs selling on or a proper restoration. I feel like I’ve had my fun with it now and I’d rather move onto something else, so I’m leaning pretty heavily towards selling.

MX5

 

Now at nearly 170,000 miles and still going strong! Since last posting I’ve fitted a front lip, spoiler and a set of Tein coilovers. It sits a little bit lower and feels better round corners now, but thankfully not at the expense of comfort. Otherwise just little maintenance jobs here and there.

[Mr Laurence]

wow: I didn't realise it had been so long. I've been back for a few months now, albeit just lurking,  so it's probably time I update this thread with what's been going on.

Firstly, the MX5;

I've had it 3 years now, and it's still yet to let me down. Last summer noticed it was starting to get pretty close to overheating when I was stuck in traffic, so I've replaced the radiator with a new one. I forgot to take a picture of the old one, but it was well past it's best and had a crack forming along the top, so I was lucky to catch it when I did. This was a nice easy job that I don't think took me more than an hour to do, and now the temp is much cooler. Almost too cool, to the point where getting it properly warmed up seems to take ages. I think that the thermostat may need looking at too.

It's also had a set of new tyres, along with other little bits and bobs here and there, but on the whole, its wanted almost nothing but petrol. it's due an MOT in a few months time, and last year it got some advisories for rust (somehow the first ones its ever had I think), I've been keeping it clean and doing what I can to slow the rot down, so hopefully I  won't have to worry about it just yet...

and the Mini:

Not long after my last post, I put down a deposit to finally sort out the bodywork and get it solid again. The garage had a bit of a waiting list, so I wouldn't be able to drop it off until June, which gave me a bit of time to sort a few little things out, and sporadically use it in the meantime, or so I thought.

I had the old pepperpot wheels professionally refurbished and some new tyres put on, which honestly worked wonders. No idea why I hadn't  just done that in the first place. 

I also decided that it was finally time to do the London to Brighton run, something that nearly all Mini owners seem to do at some point, but despite owning mine since 2016, I've never bothered with. I think the distance between me and London has always put me off. Unfortunately, I never made it. About halfway down the M1 it just cut out and wouldn't start back up again. 

The AA towed me to the services and neither they nor me could work out what had caused it. Their best guess was an ECU issue, which they wouldn't be able to solve there, and as it was fairly late into Saturday afternoon by this point, nowhere that could fix it was open, so all they could do was tow me back home. I then arranged to have it taken to a Mini specialist with a MEMS tool to work out what was wrong with it. turns out that missing engine mount bolt from the last post was one of two that were missing, so the engine was just being slammed against the bulkhead, basically destroying all of the ancillaries on the back of the engine. As far as I can tell, in doing this, it had sliced through part of the wiring loom, and just shut it down completely. All in, it's cost me about £1,700 to put right, and left an awful taste in my mouth. It runs much better now, but I've lost most of my faith in it, especially for longer journeys.

right after it was sorted, it was dropped off for the restoration work in about Juneish. The guys doing the work have made a few Youtube videos with it in, which are just below if anyone's interested.

It's had some more work done since them videos, including new door skins and a few other repair panels put in, but I don't think that they're finished with it just yet. There's been a fair few delays since I dropped it off, so for now I'm just sitting tight and waiting to get it back.

 

So the plan going forward? I the short/medium term, I'd like to get the Mini back, keep it for a few months and then sell it on before the summers over. I've had it for 7 years now and while it's been away I just haven't missed driving it all, so I think the time is right to say goodbye. once it's gone, the MX5 will probably take its place as the 'fun' project car, and I'll find some ULEZ compliant porridge with a bit more space inside to take over daily duties.

In the longer term, I'd quite like another classic. I was lucky enough to have a test drive of a 2CV recently, and absolutely loved it. But with the Mini still being away, I wasn't able to get the money together for it in time before it sold. I've still got my eyes out for another though, so hopefully this can happen eventually.