Back in 2013 (ish), when I was young enough to still have hair sticking out from that flat cap I never took off, and at the time when I had too much money to know what to do with, I bought a classic mini – On my lunch break. It looked great in the advert. Called Sarah to say ‘Guess what we now own!?’ and off I drove – If only I knew what was in store.

Here it is in its hay-day.

I drove this pretty much every day to Derby and back, through all weathers, bodging it back together it and slowly replacing every mechanical component over the next three or four years.

In my naivety, I was blissfully ignorant that during all this time only dark matter was holding the rear subframe onto the car! So I took over my Grandma’s garage and fuelled by hundreds of cups of tea and cake (from Grandma, of course) I began a terrible bodge job of welding the thing back together – spending as little money as possible and slapping any old paint on there to get it back together.

Back on the road for a few more years, I continued to replace more and more of the 30 year old disintegrating wiring and other manky, rusty or mouldy stuff.

Little did i know its last outing would be for Sarah’s sisters wedding……

Looking back I’m fairly sure the only thing now holding the little car together was the heavy coat of turtle wax polish. Once I got it back home and in preparation for its MOT I did a few checks to see just how bad some of the rust was. And then opened the largest can of worms you’ve ever seen.

The more and more I looked, tapped and scraped, the more I discovered just how much toll the years and years the covering up with under seal had hidden.

And more……… much more.

So…….. don’t think its going to pass its MOT. Time to take it off the road! And this is where the REAL work begins.

I spent ages trying to find a suitable garage/shed/workshop/barn to set up shop to get it fixed for what I thought was going to be just a couple of panels and a few rattle cans of paint.

I cobbled together a totally safe homemade towing frame and off it went ‘to the unit’ for maybe 6 months tops……… (he says over 6 years ago)

And so began the saga. Basically, it was covered in rust. Everywhere.

I started out buying a few cheap aftermarket non-genuine panels and welded them in (pretty badly). No plan. Just hack away brown stuff with the grinder and bash a bit of shiny metal back in.

The rust just kept on appearing on pretty much every panel. So got it off the massive axel stands and built the most scrap-heap-challenge roll over jig you’ve ever seen. But it worked.

One of the hard decisions was whether to replace the whole rear end boot panel. By this point I’d already bought various panels and had learnt that buying non genuine was a total waste of money and time. So I brushed the dust of my wallet and spent a fortune on a load of panels and started removing even more of the mini. The pile of scrap carnage on the floor growing larger and larger.

Life then got in the way and I don’t think I touched the mini for almost a year (think covid finally ended and I went outside and did stuff).

I was pretty sick of doing the mini by this point. And really didn’t see an end point. We had started to think about going away on the bikes and my interest in going to a damp, dark cow shed and spending hours and hours on my own just fettling a few millimetres of thin metal was pretty unappealing. I still had no idea of how I was going to paint it, the electrics were battered, and the engine and running gear had all sat for 5 years on a pallet in the damp.

In 2022 I did a few stints here and there to get the front end on and slapped some £6.99 red oxide primer over the whole thing – to kinda get it to the point where it was a complete body shell.

Roll on 2023. Decision to go away on the bike was made. Operation finish the mini started (although first I actually I had to knock the kitchen wall down, cut a massive hole in the house to fit patio doors, and then fit a whole new kitchen – but thats another post!)

So probably about March 2023 I went at it.

I thought the doors and boot would be simple. Sand them down. Maybe weld up a few holes.

No. Obviously.

Pretty much had to reconstruct the entire door frames and reskin both, and had to build a whole new boot.

The bonnet was actually the only panel that didn’t have any rust. Could be something to do with the fact that it had 5mm of filler and about 15 layers of paint!

Right. Paint. So now its June 2023. We’re due to go away in September.

All our money had been spent on the bikes or saved for the trip. So quotes of £2500 to spray the mini just wasn’t going to happen. Plus it’s not on wheels so how was I going to get it there. Now, I’ve never used a spray gun and I hate painting in general but spraying a car you’ve just spend 6 years restoring, using 2K paint etc is a little different to a bit of emulsion in the kitchen!

However. Me being me. What’s the worst that could happen……..

Did I forget to mention that the unit was next to a natural stone cutting yard – the dustiest place you could imagine.

Anyway, nothing a few YouTube videos can’t solve. What an absolute minefield the world of automotive painting is!! Primers, sealers, urethane, cellulose, 2K, direct gloss, base coats, etch primers, high build primers, epoxy primers, epoxy sealers, top coats, lacker, thinners, reducers, hardeners, fast hardeners, cold hardeners, degreaser, tack cloths, wet on wet, flash off times, air pressures, fan speeds, nozzle sizes, thinners, reducers, air fed masks, A3P3 masks, regulators, moisture separators, masking papers, tapes, sanding, blocking, grit sizes, palm sanders, orbital sanders, DA sanders, body fillers……….. And all of these things mattered. Get one bit wrong and the paints could be incompatible and blister, or not key in, or not go off, or just look shitty.

I still gave it a go.

Found a dodgy shop that was willing to sell me the most toxic paint I’ve ever used. Sarah helped choose the colour of 1982 Ford Caribbean Blue. Got myself a £35 spray gun, and the best mask I could afford (or was willing to pay for) and had a go spraying a car in a dusty cow shed.

It went OK. Ish. The first coat of raptor epoxy primer was probably one of the most unpleasant few hours I’ve had in a while. Hot. Stressy. Toxic. But rewarded with an iced bun! I got runs and dust all over the car, but I managed to sand them off once it had gone off. Next was the high build primer, most of which was sanded off onto the floor, followed by some tiny bits of filler and further sanding. Then, a second coat of epoxy and several more coats of high build. By this point I was actually pretty please with how it was looking!

Then on to the underneath. Raptor Epoxy followed by Gavitex, then a thin coat of some old chassis paint I found in the corner of the barn (think it was from Andy’s Landrover 8 years ago!)

Now time for the 2k direct gloss. Blue body. White roof.

And just like that, (as Carrie would say) I had a blue mini again. After about 7 years of being off the road!

Although not quite………. I had a body shell. The other 50% of the mini was in rotten, mouldy boxes. Next began the dry stone walling approach. When walling, if you pick up a stone you have to place it on the wall and not put it back down. I took the same approach. If I pick it up, fit it to the car. The challenge I had, was I first had to clean then identify and remember what the thing was and where it went on the car. And in many cases paint or fix the thing that had sat rusting in a box for years.

The wiring loom looked like the rats had eaten their way through most of it but somehow I shoe-horned it back into the car with a solid 80% functionality – despite Steve insisting the whole loom was only fit for the bin. Glued the headliner back in. Threw the carpets back down after a quick hoover. Splashed out on £85 worth of NEW nuts and bolts and then somehow I miraculously managed to refit the engine and all the front and rear running gear and all the brakes in just a few days (maybe weeks) and…….

with the fuel line stuck into a jerry can and some jump leads from the van, the mini started on the first turn of the key.

unbelievable. geoff.

So after all that, it was (pretty much) done. I mean, its still not gonna pass its MOT but its nearly there. Just some disks and pads, bleed the brakes, couple of new lights here and there, and a few rubber bushes, and it’s good to go.

Its now August Bank holiday weekend (two weeks till we leave) and I finally managed to find a new home in a council garage of a friends parents down in Nottingham. Borrowed a flat bed trailer from the farm, and off it went to its new home for the next two years.

Jobs a good’un.

I’m fully anticipating it’ll be rusty again when I return.

I’m actually pretty proud of it. I almost gave up. But to say I have done every single element of this car on my own, I’m actually pretty impressed I did it. I’ll probably buy a T2 camper van when we get back……maybe.

Time to get packing up the house.