Back home and ready to update!!!

Well, you can all start reading again!

I'm back from Afghanistan and ready to start updating again :)

Standby for further "hilarious" Mini inspired anecdotes!

A Bit Of Fun With Latex!

Calm down... it's not as interesting as it first sounds!

I wanted to put the Clubby through a car wash as an interim measure until I can be bothered to roll my sleeves up and get busy for a few hours and give it a proper clean - unfortunately I was mindful of the last time I did so when I became stranded outside said car wash as the car contrived to pack up and refuse to respond to any turn of key for a good 10 minutes!

The problem - as ever with Mini's - was water getting in the ignition works. The bane of having a dizzy that sits right at the front of the engine in front of an open grille!

I read in a Mini magazine of an old Cooper Works rally team trick that sounded like a fantastic idea well worth trying, and costing only £1 at Poundstretcher!

Step 1: Purchase pair of medium size Marigold gloves.

Step 2: Cut off all 5 fingertips (of gloves!)

Step 3: Feed spark plug leads through said fingers and wrap glove over dizzy!

Step 4: Seal off with tywraps.



What a great, simple idea - and suitable for any car with a distributor! Perfectly sealed against even the most heavy downpour!

It does look rather odd when viewed from the front...



...until it gets a bit of road muck on it, but not half as odd as having to push a dead - but clean - Mini out of a car-wash! Still, at least I didn't get my hands dirty doing so!

That's been it for the last week or so really - soon, with my house move having now been completed, it'll be down to the proper nitty-gritty of starting to strip down Percy.....

Not until this lot clears though!!!

Blue Mini Interior Progress

I had attempted to manufacture, with my own fair hands, a set of interior door cards to replace the torn and eaten specimens that resided within my Blue Mini doors.

Alas it seems that this is one area where it really does pay to dip your hands in your pocket and but custom made items :(

I did make and fit one, using the old door card backing as a template but the end result was quite poor and looked so obviously D.I.Y. as to be embarrasing.

I'm sure it's quite possible if you can buy the wooden backing thin enough (less than 2mm I feel would be adequate) and don't glue the covering directly to the front of the card.

What I'd advise is to buy 1.5-2mm flexi wooden backing and a very thin layer of foam indeed to place between wood and covering to make impression of looking "plush", then glue/tack the covering only to the back of the card not the front - all that serves to do is to reveal to all and sundry every single drill hole and imperfection as the glue sucks the vinyl tightly to your pre-drilled attachment clip holes etc...

...in fact it now sounds so easy why did I just spend £75 on them?!

Here's why...



Pretty impressive I think!



The rear of the car has also received a minor amount of attention with the beginnings of a seat back having been fashioned! Illness has curtailed much more action this week but with the foam I have left I shall shortly make a seat pan to surround the bass-box :)



The Union Flag theme compliments the dashboard nicely and does look rather eye catching to those peering inside!

As promised!

Here they are - the pics of the rear seat subwoofer!

It really does sound a dream and I so enjoy driving the car now and hearing music as if you were standing front row at a concert! The bass simply drives right at you and now I've tweaked the gains up on the first amp for the other 4 speakers it all compliments nicely.


Looking back at the box.


The bass amp attached to the back of the sub box.

Fear not about the nasty looking cables visible and the lack of upholstery there! I have about 3 metres of cream vinyl and 6ft of foam!!

As with everything Mini... it's still work in progress!

your number (plates) up sunshine!

The hopeless task of buying number plates from the usually brilliant Halfords exhausted me to the point of no return.

Unless you have both living great-grandparents in attendance, your front door with number still attached and every petrol receipt since 1943 you're in for a very long wait for them to stick a few numbers on a bit of plastic for you!

So 5 minutes on the internet, via the handy www.fancyplates.com not only saved me a 30 mile round trip and 2 hours with a screwdriver on the front door, but saved me £20 in cost too! They'll print anything you want on any style of plate at all, obviously whether you choose to display anything naughty on your car is between you and the Old Bill but hey!

Our car, being as it is a 1963 registered model is perfectly within its rights to show black/silver plates, and they do look great!

Anyway - here's mine still with the plastic protection on, as they will do 'til the grand day when I fit them signalling the end of the restoration!

Shedding a 'little' light on the subject!

I spent rather an hour or two wiring up two extra quite natty low level "driving" lights on Friday.

Quite what else the lights would be used for other than driving I'm not too sure!

Anyway, here they are...


Look quite good I think! £40 from Halfords and the pack includes a supposedly pre-made wiring loom. That would be ok were the battery sat 3" away from the light relay, and not in the boot!

Anyway, the much used wiring kit came out again and with a few crimps here and a few swear words there we were up and running!

I've wired the relay up in about the only spare bit of engine bay that's accessible with an electric corded drill...



and the lights sit just under the front bumper on the valance...



ok the engine just about stalls when the stereos on and you turn on main beam but who cares!

I also wired in a new aerial after I snapped the last one off trying to retract it with a hammer (yes, I really did do that - it had siezed!) however after driving back from Chester after a football match the radio died to a few bursts of crackles. The CD plays fine though so I think something's amiss either with the aerial (it is still plugged in before anyone asks!) or an extremely well aimed spot of moisture has landed strategically on a little wire somewhere!

On a similar note, I can quite categorically state that you haven't heard anything quite so fantastic until you've had your lug-holes invaded by the opening riffs of Time by Pink Floyd through my stereo set-up!

It was so good I didn't believe it until I'd had another listen - but this time with the volume REALLY loud!

Apologies to anyone who may have been on the M6 at around 20:30 on Saturday 5th Jan!

Can you speak up a bit?!

Yeeeaaaaaahhhhh!

I finally plucked up the courage to do it!

For the last 3 months I've had a 12" subwoofer and bass box (www.bassjunkies.com) up in the spare room waiting to be fitted to the blue Mini - the great person who fitted the rest of the audio stuff was going to fit it for me but tonight I opened up the boxes, took a very deep breath, and did it all myself!

Wow! What a feeling of satisfaction! The most amazing thing, for me at least, is it bloody well works too!

With it now being almost 9pm I sort of forgot to take pictures, but fear not - they'll be along soon!

The fitment of the speaker itself was fairly straightforward, well as much so as these things ever are, hunched up bent double in the back of a car that was probably built to carry a bag of spuds at best! Drill a couple of holes in the speaker box, match them up and drill holes in the rear seat pan, fit 2 bolts! Bingo!

That was where I was going to stop - but intrigue got the better of me, and it's nice and cosy in the garage these days! So...

Cut down and fit power cable onto battery terminal (wire crimp set £20 or less www.halfords.co.uk thank you very much!), feed through hole in rear bulkhead. Cut down and fit Negative cable. Affix both forementioned items onto clearly marked terminals on amplifier (second amp - one in boot also :-)) Strip down wire and fit spade connectors to speaker cable inside box and fit to speaker. Use crane (!!! very nearly) to hoist 12" subwoofer into hole in box and tighten in with 8 screws.

Next - find 2 long forgotten metal thingys for removing stereo head unit from dashboard (finally located in bedroom for some odd reason!) and remove head unit and spaghetti load of wiring behind!

Plug two clearly marked red/black phono connectors into 'front' plugs behind unit.

"Remote" wire? What the hell's this?! Aaaah, vaguely recollect friend informing me that it turns the power onto amp when stereo is turned on. Find black wire running under carpet.... SNIP!

..........then think about carrying out continuity check to see if it really is the remote wire!

Phew it is... use bullet connector to fit new remote wire onto existing one and affix to marked connector on sub amp! Tuck back under carpet!

Now then - plug phono jacks in at amp end, turn on stereo and...................

...................Oh My God..........................

my car windows are bouncing out of the frames!!!!!

You can safely assume from that that it works!

My God does it work!

I have seldom heard anything so damn sweet ever! The bass simply adds about 7 dimensions of depth to the music! I've tweaked the output so it doesn't quite overpower the rest of the music, just enhances it, and while I was there I tweaked the 'gain' on the existing amp so that volume level 25 is just about enough to bring on the onset of cranial bleeding!

I hardly wanted to leave the garage!

That it sounds so good is a complete bonus to me! I'd have been ecstatic had it merely produced a few crackles with it being my first time attempting such a task!

The car can officially carry no back seat passengers now but hey! Who cares?!

I need to do a bit of tidying up back there - fit something round the base of the unit to hide a few cables and remove the seat pan from view. Then maybe just fit only a seat rear piece?

It's the British Mini Club's open day thing at Bingley Hall, Stafford on Sunday so we'll see what we can pick up there this year perhaps?!

One things for sure - they'll hear us coming!