johnnys series 3 resto project

Hi Johnny,

What a great read...making me want to get a proper project going!

Re, the heater: if you don't get that motor going the ones in defenders can be cut off the heater box and a square to round output adapter made up using a bit of tin shoved in the square hole and packed with body filler. The deffy heater then fits under the wing where the old one does after a bit of fettling. I managed it in a few hours so you'd probably do it ten minutes! Defender blowers seem to be cheaper the motor seems to be the same one but wired with the slow resistor in the other lead. Its got a bigger set of blades on it and is better for keeping your feets warm in winter.
D

the first project i ever did was a 1983 mini that i bought for £100 just passed me test and shoved a 1275 gt turbo metro engine in with a lot of swearing and a really big shoe horn i then spent the next 4 years completely replacing the floor pans sills boot floor and just as i was getting ready for the paint job i got a convertible mini with a decent rag top from another scrappys then turned mine half dog rag top cost me well into £4000 in the end

the first time i took it on the road i realised why i had done it 114 bhp at the wheels in a mini fully race prepped masquerading as just a road car short change gearbox 3 branch manifold 2 way splitter cherrybomb diver middle box and a 3" oval chrome cherrybomb back box it went like **** off a shovel

i had the fastest mini in north manchester at one time it was nigh un catchable by anything untill it got nicked and i never saw it again

dominicbeesley said:

Hi Johnny,

What a great read...making me want to get a proper project going!

Re, the heater: if you don't get that motor going the ones in defenders can be cut off the heater box and a square to round output adapter made up using a bit of tin shoved in the square hole and packed with body filler. The deffy heater then fits under the wing where the old one does after a bit of fettling. I managed it in a few hours so you'd probably do it ten minutes! Defender blowers seem to be cheaper the motor seems to be the same one but wired with the slow resistor in the other lead. Its got a bigger set of blades on it and is better for keeping your feets warm in winter.
D

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cheers matey ill have a weigh up on that one i was originaly thinking of useing a heater blower off either an old mini or a metro but recently ive learned that the vw passat has a seperate blower under the dash to the heater matrix with a lightning fast motor and a 5" induction fan with a hell of a lot of umpff

Mini does sound fun! Anyway keep up the good work. If you're going that far and have the dash off some nicer outlets might be in order. With the heater on this winter it was a case of nice and toasty knees and feet but not a lot else....Though even on the motorway at minus 4 with leaky doors, holes in the floor and a badly fitted rag top I ended up in T-shirt...I did cheat a bit and leaned the mixture up to get her up to temperature first!

I'm half tempted to skive work and go and practice my welding...

Awesome matey.

Looks like you'll be finished way before me

Never occured to me to re-build and strip at the same time..... then again I'm expecting the top rails of my chassis to be pretty corroded, may even need a new un

Keep up the good work and keep smiling, it'll all be worth it when your trundling round in her.

cheers lads although i cant be doing too much this next week or so as ive got no gas for me welder till i get some more spare reddies again as i got royally ripped off with a fabricating job i welded a cement mixer drum fer someone and they came and collected it when only the missus was in they gave her £5 for the job where i quoted £25 coz i had to fabricate new paddles for it

oh well thats the end of me gas i guess its worth the £20 for the sake of him not comeing back in the future

Mig welding with gas is expensive, so I've taken a new approach; if it's thick enough arc it, really thin gas it, and general body mig it. Arc is mich cheaper I think.

if you convert to pub gas bottles you can get a refill for about £16 average unless yer a regular customer then you get it for £12.50 like i do with a 10kg reel of wire for £15 and 2 bottles of gas it works out doing an entire bulkhead and chassis as extensive as you like will cost about £40 including lecci but not including metal as i got that free from the local scrap men ( swapped for an old engine block off a ****roen )

ive noticed with the arc welding what i save on rods ill lose on the lecci meter as that welder has the disc thing spinning like a fekkin dvd player but the mig doesnt

Point taken but I can't get pub gas down here, to get an air products bottle cost over £200 with rent for a year, I got a I think it's a 20kg bottle from a local firm; £60 bottle, £50 gas and that lasted 3 days welding the tractor, so scared to use it; but this last bottle seems to be lasting longer.

Telboy111 said:

Point taken but I can't get pub gas down here, to get an air products bottle cost over £200 with rent for a year, I got a I think it's a 20kg bottle from a local firm; £60 bottle, £50 gas and that lasted 3 days welding the tractor, so scared to use it; but this last bottle seems to be lasting longer.

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Have you got the gas set too high? you seem to be going through it pretty fast.

the usual rate for gas use should be a whisper you can just about hear when you put the gun to your ear i always check it this way regardless of how accurate i think my regulator and flow gauge is

however i will turn it up slightly if im welding out in the open and its windy but not much more than usual

I think that was a bad bottle, this ones is lasting longer but I will check out how much I'm using; the last air products full size bottle lasted over a year but I don't do much welding, it's just renting them bottles that eat your pocket.

thats why i own my bottles and get them refilled while i wait the fella that does it for me owns a welding and engineers supplies shop and has an account with BOC he uses there big 6 foot bottles to fill peoples pub sized bottles for £16 a pop but as im a regular i get it cheaper

i also take me bottles into our familys boiler works to have me bottles pressure tested once a month wich takes 12 hours as they have to hold 300 bar pressure for that length of time to be certified safe

johnny curt 1 said:

thats why i own my bottles and get them refilled while i wait the fella that does it for me owns a welding and engineers supplies shop and has an account with BOC he uses there big 6 foot bottles to fill peoples pub sized bottles for £16 a pop but as im a regular i get it cheaper

i also take me bottles into our familys boiler works to have me bottles pressure tested once a month wich takes 12 hours as they have to hold 300 bar pressure for that length of time to be certified safe

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Wouldn't like to be around when they discover a faulty one.

its done in a blast chamber sort of looks like a divers decompression chamber but made of concrete they swap the 130 bar safety valve in the bottle for a 350 bar valve then with a gauge on the filling pipe they stand it in the chamber and observe it through the porthole in the door if its gonna fail itll do it when filling with air once its up to pressure its leaft for 2 hours to cool as the bottles get hot while expanding with the pressure

they then remove the bottle sith the pressure still in leave it for a further 10 hours and see if its lost any pressure if all is ok theyll purge the bottle put the original valve back in and certify it safe up to 300bar

Land Raver said:

Fast progress! Quick squirt of WD40 on that blower fan and she'll be good for another decade

I need to paint my axles and wheels at some point this year. What did you strip the wheels back with to get into the awkward angles?

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reet in response to this i thought id do a little show n tell bout the wheels



as theyve got decent tires on 3 of em i chose to be a cheapskate and leave them on while i do this so the first thing i did was run round it with the wire end brush on the drill forceing it into all the curves and crevaces and used a half round file to get into the 4 spaces between the hoop and centre



then coz im an idle git i then run round evry flat area i can get at with a rubber sanding attatchment on me 4" angle grinder ( my best freind ) with a 40 grit disc



i then finished off by giveing evrywhere else a damn good going over with just a bit of 80grit paper by hand then giveing it all a good blast with the air blower



this process took roughly 35 mins to do both sides the same then its just a matter of masking the tire good n proppa and spraying it up with zinc 182 primer





and then shot it with some old english white enamel based 2 pack stuff i had left over from god knows where and peeled the tape off to reveal this





when the paint has fully cured i just lather the tire with this stuff and leave it to run off of its own accord i love the stuff as the tires come up like brand new with it

Good job on the wheel.

Thanks for photos of the wheels. The insides of mine are getting bad and will probably do the same approach as you. Will probably save the job for summer evenings - you know the sort - light nights arrive so it pi$$es it down until September

theres always the great wheel swap option

swap one wheel for the spare do the good wheel and let it dry in the back of the landy then swap that for another wheel one at a time should only take a weekend

Good plan - practice on the spare first too