Funday in the garage

Today the Mini took to the road again, after about 7 years in the garage! It is a 1969 Mini which only had one lady owner and apparently no passengers, as the interior of the car was in pristine condition when we bought it some 10 years ago, except for the driver's seat which was almost worn out. It gave a lot of trouble with the brakes, and there were a number of advertising stickers of brake companies that had worked on the car over the years, so it must be a Mini thing. Also, if you drove up a hill it would overheat and it was always with great trepidation that I made my way over Ou Kaapse Weg, crawling in the gutter at 50km/hr so as to let all the traffic go by and nurse the engine to the top, when I could freewheel down the other side and all would be well again. I remember one horrendous day when I made it all the way into Cape Town for some reason and decided to go home via the scenic route up Kloofnek and over into Camps Bay. What was I thinking? There is a hill with a stop street at the top which joins Kloofnek which is almost perpendicular and any car with an engine of less that 1200 cc has to go up in first gear. My little Mini is 999 cc so it was touch and go as that needle hit the red and beyond. But we made it and eventually got home safely.

It was the brakes that took us off the road. It reached a stage where you had to pump the brakes before they would take, and one day I just sailed gently into the back of the car in front, at 10km/hr and dented the front. Obviously there was no damage to the other car, as I barely reached his bumper, and he got out, took a look, laughed and got back into his car. I took the Mini home and parked it in the back of the garage and there it stayed until today. He Who Can Fix Anything undertook the mammoth task of restoring the Mini to its former glory and stripped the entire car to bare metal, had it sandblasted, cut out the minimal rust, panelbeat the front until it resembled the original and fitted and welded and brazed extra bits to fill in the gaps. Every single piece down to the smallest nut was washed in petrol, stored in marked crates, and the engine stripped to its basic components, cleaned, rebored (and whatever else it is that you do to engines), reassembled and repainted. Missing parts were tracked down and slowly the car was put back together.

Today we adjusted the clutch, connected the wiring, bled the brakes, and drove it up to the garage to put in petrol. The engine still needs a little tuning and the electrics are not quite complete, but all in all, it's a pretty good job, considering he only had an old manual to work from and his own knowledge of cars.

I'll be out and about in it soon. I just hope the brakes hold!