Caesar the 1275 E - Diary of minor changes

[Vinay-RS]

Got the manifold fixed by the folks at our university workshop. Turns out the stud on the inlet manifold has two thread sizes on the inside and out, so they drilled it out and tapped it to an M8 then dropped in a bolt.

Got that back home on Friday, picked up a gasket from my good friend and got to work. Removed the manifold studs, popped out the old gasket. Fitted the new one and the carbs and then the throttle cable. This morning I got the car started and took it to my friend for some help to tune it. After what felt like quite a while we got it tuned quite well I think. It ran decently on a short drive, and it might just need some more fine adjustment after checking it on a longer drive.

Some issues to report on. After a week of driving, the Mini has had some problems. I need to get the choke cable fitted firstly, as I know it will help with cold starts. I think the issues are more around fuelling and timing though. On Monday to Wednesday, the car was struggling to hold its idle speed and wanted to cut out when even I needed to stop at a set of lights. Then on Thursday, it decided to cut out on a rather steep uphill section of road, in bumper to bumper traffic. I got it going again fairly quickly, using both my feet, one on the throttle and one on the brake to keep it from stalling. Very odd feeling driving like that. Then this morning I decided to try and turn up the idle screws on each carb, as it should surely not need choke to keep the idle up after sitting in traffic for 10 minutes. I really need to invest in a carb balancing tool, as I must have messed up badly. When downshifting after a bit of highway driving, the car started to backfire badly, something that I've never experienced before. It then proceeded to cut out as I was getting into work and refused to start back up. I turned down the idle screws to close to the positions they were in at the start of the day, got it going and got the car parked safely. Not a fun experience with the twin carbs so far.

Got a hold of a balancing tool on Tuesday morning.


The Mini has been running badly this past week. On Monday it cut out it traffic, started up straight away and then spluttered for 10 min before running properly on the way to work.
Then on Wednesday it completely cut out just outside my house. Got some help to get it going again and then decided to try and sort it out that evening.

Fitted the new choke cable and it turned out I had a proper fixture for the choke cable onto the carb linkages. Got all that fitted and decided to attempt to use the balancing tool. I failed badly at this so I might ask a friend for some help one evening if possible, when it isn't raining. Definitely need some training in this stuff.

The choke is helping to keep the car going but it is clearly not happy and I think the mixtures to the different sets of pistons is clearly wrong.

[Vinay-RS]

A bit of progress on some of the jobs on the car. I had sourced a grille a couple of years back and needed to make time to restore it. Thanks, Ben (Ben_O) for the advice on the restoration process, I think the result is quite good.



One of the mounting fixtures was rusted and damaged. Hopefully I can find a suitable replacement for the self tapping screw to go into.

[Vinay-RS]

A little bit more progress. Took off all the bits from the old grille and fitted the refurbished one. One reflector refused to come loose.


The side pieces of this grille were in worse shape than the other one, so this morning I took those off taped them up and painted them and then swapped them out.


Also picked up a perfect Autoplas louvre, which looks rather neat when I loosely placed it on the rear windscreen.


A bit of an odd one, but I can't seem to get the grub screws from the flip fuel cap loose, so I can't get the cap off and thus can't shift the tank position to remove the taillight from that side of the car.
I recall it was a bit tight when I put it on and I'm thinking maybe I should try and tap it loose.

[minitim]

Looking very neat Vinay!

[Vinay-RS]

Looking very neat Vinay!

Thanks, Tim

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Fitted an Autoplas louvre on Sunday. Quite chuffed with how it looks on the car.

[Vinay-RS]

We had our best Mini run this past Sunday in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Mini. Here are some pictures from the day.
The oldest Mini in South Africa. No. 2 in the country, completely restored.



There were also two completely original GTSs.





This Mk1 is a single family owned car. Beautiful patina on it.



A nice selection of BMW MINIs in attendance too. The BMW dealership (SMG Tygervalley) were our hosts for the meet point.



And some pics of my little E from the day.

[Vinay-RS]

Decided to sort out the taillights this weekend, since they've been sitting at my desk for quite a while.
After much difficulty, I got the flip fuel cap removed, then I removed the tank and the old taillights.


I know there is a how-to guide that says that it's worth using the mkIV loom connectors, but I don't plan on going back to the mkIV lights, so I used the bullet connectors from the mkII/III loom ends.

Fitted the lights and everything seems to be working fine, although the earth connections are weird... there is no place for the spade connector to slide onto on the mkII/III lights.


Quite happy with the look. I need to wire up the reverse light, but I'm still deciding how I want to route the wire into the boot.

[Vinay-RS]

Some fun times, I know I messed up the wiring in some way because the park lights and gauge lights came on when I pressed the brake. Removed the tank this morning and pulled the wiring out to check it out, and now the LHS is working after some fiddling but nothing seems to work on the RHS... dunno what's going on. I think I need to get some help with this.

Also, both flasher units have failed, so no working indicators... and literally none of the spares places close to my house have them (and they say they don't stock them either).

[Vinay-RS]

A very small update. The rear lights are all working now! Replaced the flasher units and checked and worked through each connection again. The last job is to solder all the connections and apply some heat shrink to make it neat. I also need to get the extra reverse light wired and I was curious about how to correctly earth it. The loom earths is connected to the housings of the mkII lights, but would I need to run an extra earth from them to the reverse light housing?

Learnt something interesting yesterday. Turns out I've never had working reverse lights as the wires from the loom to the switch had been cut off. Someone really bodged parts of this loom in the past.

I checked the wiring diagram and it seems to show a green and brown wire and a green wire from the switch to the loom. I'll try and wire these up roughly this week and hopefully have a working reverse light.

[The_confused_clubman_25]

We had our best Mini run this past Sunday in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Mini. Here are some pictures from the day.
The oldest Mini in South Africa. No. 2 in the country, completely restored.



There were also two completely original GTSs.





This Mk1 is a single family owned car. Beautiful patina on it.



A nice selection of BMW MINIs in attendance too. The BMW dealership (SMG Tygervalley) were our hosts for the meet point.



And some pics of my little E from the day.

Whos owns the braaaap reg plate mini? What a legend