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Cooper Blog - H696 AGW - AKA "The
Green Meanie" |
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13th November Saturday, Cold but Dry. The Shed
was cleared and the side removed so that we could push "Meanie"
in for her winter hibernation. the way Money is looking i
might be converting the shed side into make-shift doors so
it can act as her garage for the next few years |
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1st May 2010 Saturday, Dry and Warm. Today
involved re-arranging the shed to make better use of the
space as now I've got 4 more doors for the van to store now.
As I had the roll cage out. I thought I'd take the Angle
Grinder to it with a Wire Cup Brush to see what would
happen. Bingo the old paint flew off. so I took more time to
clean up the Centre Roof bar and the Side to Side Roof bar.
Then sprayed them up with Black Primer. looking good I set
about the Rear section. |
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29th April 2010 Thursday, A work day.
Today saw the arrival of the Alloy inlet manifold i bought
off eBay. it's in much need of some porting and polishing
work to smooth the inlet mixtures flow |
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24th April 2010 Saturday, Sunny and Blue. Today
saw us remove the Thermostat housing and Engine stabilizer
bar to modify it to allow the Radiator bracket to fit. Also
back end was jacked and placed on Axle stands to enable us
to re-bolt the Exhaust back on. in doing so it was found
that the rear sub frame is crispy and may require it to be
changed. we also removed the battery for charging but after
3 winters since the cooper was turned over the battery
charger reported the battery to be dead. The Spare Battery
for the Diesel Focus that we acquired over the winter is a
perfect fit for the battery box. oh and a small hole has
appeared in the battery box bottom. |
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9th April 2010 Friday, Sun and Blue Sky's
again!!!, having devoured an entire packed of Chocolate
Brownies and a brew we made a start around 12pm. 1st job was
to remove the rockers from the Mini head, then take out and
number the Push rods, unplug and number the spark plug
leads, then slacked off all 9 bolts holding the head on,
once done we brought the head down to the outhouse to swap
over the missing studs into the Metro head and the spark
plugs. having spoken to Ian at the weekend he suggested to
swap the water pump over now as it's easier to do so with
out the head on the engine, as they only cost £16.34 we had
decided this was a wise move and bought a new one from Mini
Spares on Tuesday. Yvonne set out unbolting the Fan and then
the old water pump, once off it turn out to be filled with a
waxy gloop, a quick clean up of the face on the block and a
smearing of Loctite gasket sealer we set out putting the new
water pump in, once the water pump was tighten up we turn
our attention remounting the alternator again something
simple that turned out to show another missing nut and bolt,
after digging in our spares tin and mounting the alternator
properly we then started to fit the new head gasket and then
remount the the Metro head onto the block, this was turning
out to be much easier than I thought it would be, once the
head was sitting pretty on the block, Yvonne reinserted the
push rods in the same order they'd been removed, then I
slipped on the rockers and buttoned down the 4 retaining
bolts, next on the list was to find the head bolts and wind
them down to finger tight, then riffle thought the trusty
Haynes manual to find out the bolting order and torque
setting, (50 lb/f) Yvonne tighten down the head, next step
was to loosen off the exhaust manifold from the gearbox
clamp, while under the car i notice a massive dent in the
one of the down pipes and a smaller dent in the other, looks
like she's either been up a kerb or off roading with a
previous owner. oh well something else to add to the
shopping list. why oh why is it so hard to get the exhaust
manifold to slid onto the studs, this must have taken us a
good 30mins just to get it onto the studs. that done we
fitted the rocker cover and moved onto fitting the
thermostat housing and new engine stabilizer. Yvonne covers
all the parts and gaskets in Loctite gasket sealer again and
we bolted it down, only for me to remember I'd forgotten to
put the thermostat in!!!! PLANK, unbolted, inserted and
re-bolted again. only now did we notice that the stabilizer
bar blocked the radiator mounting plate, really wish we'd
done a dry run 1st, oh well Junior hacksaw and metal file to
the rescue after some hacking and filing we gave up. it was
18:30 so we packed up for the day and ordered dinner |
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8th April 2010 Thursday, Sun and Blue Sky's, been
to to Lowestoft today to pick up our eBay purchase, a 6
point Roll Cage with door bars and front roof bars, only
things missing are one clamp, plates to strengthen the
outside of the floor once drilled and bolted and a number of
Nuts and Bolts, needs x38 in total, Going to looks for some
nice shiny new one required and a rub down and repaint and
it'll look tip top. |
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7th April 2010 Wednesday, More Rain however in
between be managed to unbolt the exhaust and inlet manifolds
again, removed the rocker cover and started to unbolt the
coil and head until we found that we needed a deep-reach
socket to slacken off the bolt that the coil sits over.
another trip to Halford was needed. also we noticed that the
metro head hadn't had the left hand side drilled out for the
water system like the mini head, so after a quick call to
Dan to double check we when about opening it up with the
biggest HSS Drill we could find that would fit the corded
drill (12.75mm). once it was opened out and we'd bolted the
water pipe mount on we came to a stop as it was still
raining. Tomorrow a trip to the sea side to make a
collection of an eBay purchase. |
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5th April 2010 Tuesday, Made it to Mini Spares
for a few more bits :- 1x, Head Gasket, 1x Water pump, 8x
Bolts for the door hinges, 1x Pair of White Cooper Mirrors,
1x Engine Stabilizer and a Passenger Floor panel
Also from Halfords
1x High Temp Gasket Sealant, 1x Gasket Sealant, 1x
Anti-Seize Copper Stick
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1st April 2010 Thursday, Today was spent swapping
the lock from the Passenger door handle onto an undamaged
one which Dan gave us. This was then put back on the
door and tighten up, hey presto a locking door imagine that,
the door card and furniture were also re-added. Next we turned out attention to cleaning up the head off the
Metro block in preparation to rebuilding it and swapping it
on to the mini block. Still needs work, Valves need tidying
up, a fresh coat of red paint, then the rockers and push
rods reattached oh
and it rained and hailed on and off all afternoon....Great |
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22nd March 2010 Monday, Made it to Mini Spares
for a few bits :- 1x 88c Thermostat, 3x Thermostat
gaskets, 1x Thermostat
Sandwich Plate, 1x Thermostat housing, 2x Towing Eye Bolts,
4x Towing Eye Nuts (2x plain 2x Nyloc), 4x Exhaust Manifold
Nuts, 1x Door handle Screw, 1x Wheel Nut, 2x Rear wheel
brake cylinders, 1x Alloy Front Sub frame mounting kit.
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21st March 2010 Sunday, Finally we've started
work on our Cooper she's spent 2 years sat in a council garage
with us doing nothing,
now we have our own driveway it's time to crack on and
get the cooper running again, First job of the day was to unbolt the Exhaust and
Inlet manifold and put the inlet manifold locating rings
back in, after I'd found them sitting on the back of the front
sub frame. while i did this Yvonne got
working on unbolting the Passenger door as it was pretty
rusty and Dan had kindly swapped us his spare black passenger door off his
Cooper. As normal with anything made by BL 1 of the 4 nuts rounded off, so hours
later and after much hammering a smaller socket on to a
larger rounded nut we got
the green door off, next we removed the door handle, mirror
etc and bolted the Black door onto the car. Now for the hard
part as the radiator bracket bolt had snapped off, we had to
remove the thermostat housing and sandwich plate to drill
out the snapped bolt. however in doing so
we ended up with 2 studs with the heads snapped off and 2
smashed pieces of Aluminium that used to look like pieces of
thermostat housings. oh well
off to mini spares tomorrow. Steve out |
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