Caesar the 1275 E - Diary of minor changes

[Vinay-RS]

Dude! I'm sitting here thinking the same thing! That was an awesome trip and we must do more

Really nice pictures too.

Thanks dude! Yeah, people are too scared to drive and enjoy their Minis and there are so many cool places to visit in SA.

[minitim]

Well done guys! Awesome trip you had. Will be keen for the next one

[Vinay-RS]

Did a bit of work two weeks ago on Saturday. I fitted the new discs and cleaned up a build up of grease under the car, it still leaks from places and will need sorting out at some point.

On the drive home I noticed some rubbing and scratching. The rubbing faded fairly quickly, in like a day or two, although folks had suggested rebuilding the calipers, investigation of them shows they're in perfect order with no leaks and they work perfectly.

The scratching did not fade. I got someone to check that I'd torqued it correctly, and I had. I then took a short drive and while driving I heard a loud bang from that side, pulled over and checked that nothing had disconnected (thankfully not). I'm almost 100% certain the front right bearing has collapsed I limped the car home at 40 km/h, which was the speed at which the whirring sound was minimal.

The car is now safely parked up in the garage while I look for a new bearing. I'm curious if it's worth fitting non-genuine bearings? I fitted the GHK1140MS bearings and I'd heard they aren't bad and work well, and I'm guessing they failed because I installed them incorrectly. I'm keen to not repeat this incident, but I'd like to know if I should wait and get the GHK1140 Timken ones instead.

[Vinay-RS]

Box of Minispares arrived early week. Most of the big stuff in the box isn't mine, but it does have some new bits to get my car going again. New bearings and some uprated drive flanges should do the drivetrain a world of good Time to get it all installed in the next few days.


Started stripping last week the hubs to get the new bearings fitted and the hub didn't come free from the CV joint, tugged at it for a bit and boom:



So the whole side shaft came out and the outer bearing and seal were completely trashed... The inner bearing and seal were stuck on the CV joint too. Very odd things.


Anyway, since it came out anyway, I figured I'd get new thicker GTS side shafts, which should be better. Also, it means the car won't be running quite so soon. I'll need to get the new shafts, clean them, drain the oil and then remove the pot joints. Clean and assemble everything on a bench and then fit it back. I also need to adjust the top ball joints on both hubs as they seem pretty loose at the moment.

On Friday I got the hubs rebuilt.


This weekend I was hoping the GTS side shafts would arrive, but sadly they were only going to get here on Monday. Anyway, a friend and I decided to crack on with some other jobs. We figured we'd get a start on fitting the carbs and manifold with the car not being used. Also decided to paint the calipers in situ to brighten them up as the paint had faded quite a bit.

So, we disconnected the carb and using a hacksaw, we chopped off the old manifold. It is really a rubbish example of an LCB when compared to the Maniflow one. Once they were out, I was hoping to fit new manifold studs and nuts, but I couldn't find them in my box of spares, so we called it on that job and I decided it was a good a time as any to clean the back of the engine and the firewall.

Some Clean Green and a spray bottle seemed to work quite well. I need to try something else to get out more of the gunk that's on it and the gearbox housing. Going to get a more powerful degreaser and some copper grease from the spares shop this afternoon and get some paintbrushes too. While there, I'll pick up some rust remover and gloss red rattle can spray paint and tidy up the back of the firewall. It may not be an exact match, but it will look better than rusty metal.

Then for the week the goals are to get the shafts rebuilt and bolt it all together with some copper grease on the threads for the drive flanges. Then clean and paint the back of the engine bay. Fit the manifold, twin carbs (Yay :proud: ), firewall sound deadening, side shafts and discs with new flanges.

I really wanted to fit that detent spring kit and the roll pin replacing kit for the gear selector but we had real difficulty knocking out the roll pins. I'm not sure but perhaps we were using the incorrect tools for the job. Anyway, once those are out I can get the spring kit thing fitted too.

[Vinay-RS]

Side shafts arrived yesterday and on my way home I went past a Midas store and bought some paint, Prepsol, copper compound and rust remover. Got some paint brushes too. I decided to crack on and get everything cleaned up. First up, I fitted the new flanges onto the brakes:


Next I took apart the stock drive shafts and the GTS ones and gave everything a thorough clean.


Here's a side by side picture showing the difference in thickness between the original shafts and the GTS ones.


And then I got it all put back together. I couldn't finish assembling them yesterday evening, as the one CV joint still has the old bearing stuck on it. I am going to borrow a bearing puller to get that off the joint.

[Vinay-RS]

This weekend was extremely productive. The weather was miserable on Friday, so I decided to take the day off and work on the Mini in the garage.

I painted the firewall behind the carbs with some spray can red since everything was out of the engine bay on Thursday evening. It's not great but it looks better than rust brown. I applied rust converted by the master cylinders to try and make it look neater too.

So, first task was to get the drive shafts fitted again. Slid them into position, fitted the hubs and discs. I think I had compressed the brake pedal with the discs off and the pistons had compressed too far out. I felt annoyed so I left this job.

Moving on, I fitted the exhaust manifold. Took a minute to work out how to do it. Luckily I found a thread on another forum (not sure if I can share the link here) that explained how to position the pipes so they could get into place. I couldn't get the y-piece fitted, as the plating was a bit thick so they couldn't slide on.


Then, I got the twin carbs and manifold into place (finally!).


Getting the centre nuts tightened is really annoying by the way. Good suggestion from a friend was to take out the springs so that a socket and extender bar can fit in the gap.
Now at this point I needed to get a new throttle cable and was rather tired. So I got the new cable and then stopped for the day.

Saturday came around and it turned out the cable I got was damaged, so I went and got a new one before the shop closed. I have been keen to tidy up the wiring loom with some black loom tape (I think it looks neater than electrical tape.) So, I got busy with that job and taped up the loom while there was space. It also meant that I didn't have to tackle fitting the cables on the carbs or the brake issue. I also bought some sound deadening material from Minispares and wanted to fit that. So, got started on that job. (It makes a real mess with all the fluff coming out.)


The side by the master cylinders went in fairly easily, but the other side was proving to be troublesome.

On Sunday, I removed the pads and compressed the pistons back. Slid the calipers onto the discs, popped the pads back into place and torqued up the calipers.



Next, with the help of a friend, I got the cables fitted to the carb and got the second piece of the sound deadening fitted.


Started up the car and it started first time, which was awesome.
I lowered the car onto the ground, torqued up the castle nuts to book spec and popped in the split pins.

On Monday morning, I got the rear exhaust mounts removed, chucked it into the car (sticking out the window) and drove about 2 km to the exhaust shop down the road. The Mini sounded like a Harley Davidson!



The shop fitted the exhaust, I needed a new piece between the flexi joint and the y-piece. They also got on the y-piece and used some cable ties on the pot joint gaiters. I need to get some longer metal cable ties to secure them properly.

And that's where the Mini is up to now. It really needs a thorough clean around the subframes front and rear and the lower end of the engine. Going to get some assistance to tune it properly, as it is not running too well right now.

[minitim]

Love the Twin SU's Vinay. Very smart!

[Vinay-RS]

Love the Twin SU's Vinay. Very smart!

Thanks, Tim! Just need to get them tuned up

[Vinay-RS]

Got the castle nuts torqued to the correct spec on Saturday after buying a suitably strong torque wrench on Friday.

The choke cable was getting very stuck when I tried using it. Turns out it had completely frayed on the inside, so I'll need to get a new one.

Sunday came along and I decided I'd tidy up the garage and pack away tools and stuff. I thought that perhaps the heater cable and choke cable were the same and I could use a brand new heater cable that I had in storage. They're not the same and the heater cable is shorter.

Anyway, a friend came through so that we could try and get the car going without the choke. Turns out there's a massive leak at the manifold gasket, so I'll need to get that replaced. Assuming of course that there isn't an issue with the actual inlet or exhaust manifolds. I wouldn't be surprised if there was. I like to think that Murphy has been sitting on my shoulder as of late and his law is affecting every part of my life.

I then tried to take apart the little throttle bracket on the manifold and proceeded to snap off that stud/bolt.

That abbreviation about the problem being between the seat and the steering wheel rings true right now. I'm very good at breaking the car...

I'll get back to it in the evenings this week. Either source a new manifold or work out how to extract the damaged stud. Then figure out why it's leaking air. If the inlet and exhaust manifolds don't clear each other I'd be rather frustrated. The point of swapping the rubbish old locally produced LCB was to eventually fit the twin carbs and now they might not work. Really feels like one step forward and 10 steps back.

[Vinay-RS]

Got the carbs off yesterday evening and found the source of the blown gasket. I have a feeling this happened when they knocked on the y-piece at the garage I took the car to for the exhaust.


Bit annoyed but it looks like the chrome plating is flaking already, but the more solid zinc plating seems to be holding up well. Glad that they used both on this one.


Also, I think I stuffed up when fitting the locating ring as this is how one of them looked when I pulled it out. It was very stuck.


I did a thing over the weekend and checked if the little light I had would fit under the bumper, and yay! it did!


Now to wire it up with the mkII lights at some stage soon.