November Progress Report!

Well, I have had my ups and downs, so here goes, bare with me whilst I tell the tale!

I tried to strip the mini front subframe using degreaser but it was taking forever, so I decided to take it away for media blasting and powder-coating. I thought while I was at it I'd have the steelies blasted and the backplates for the rear wheel drums.

After promising the parts would be ready by the next weekend I agreed a price and left, upon return, they'd not been done so I reluctantly left and hoped they'd be ready soon? I spent two weeks working abroad and after my Dad tried twice in two weeks and I tried the week after, and only after a bit of verbal did the parts finally get sorted. And of course to cap it off, they loaded an odd wheel from another car into my boot, which I had to take back and exchange! I'll not be going back there again even though they did a good job!

So, in the meantime, I started spraying panels...
1st - Primer, then topcoat (with a couple of disasters along the way! But we'll not go into that!)

After my success with spraying these panels, I went on to paint the steering column, steering rack and various other bits and pieces. I'd decided on Smoothrite, dunno why, seemed like a good idea at the time?

Having let the paint dry, I went on to fit my pedals, and loosely fit the steering rack. After which I decided to spend an awful lot of money on a rather large rivet gut that also did rivnuts but the rivnut escapade was rather unsuccessful (I won't go into it now) and the riveting resulted in me making a bit of a mess of the panels, so some touching up to do! Dissatisfied with the state of my panels I thought best to walk away and work on something else and come back to it when I'd calmed down. Onto my wheels...

I'd decided to spray the insides of the steelies black and the outside in silver, except, oops, I'd bought white! Rather than take it back, I decided to risk painting the wheels white, I think they look okay?

The final step in this episode, and my greatest achievement so far in the build is to fit the steering column, almost looks like a cockpit for a car now! Oh alright it doesn't but it's a significant step in my mind!