Removing the panels
A month went by after My wife and I had our second child in July. During some time off I organized for a local fabricator to strip the rusted parts off the car and put them back on but he said that if I unpick the panels off myself that I could save a fair bit of time and money so away I went. This is where opened a can of worms. originally I was going to remove the front panel, RH guard, RH A panel, inner guard, RH scuttle panel corner & battery box. 23rd August is when the unpicking began.
After seeing the rust underneath the RH inner guard panel I was a bit concerned what the LH would be like. Seeing as I have gone this far I thought rather than have doubts for the rest of my life I decided to continue the demolition and strip the LH side too. Not much left of the car now.
The RH inner panel that I purchased require a hole to be cut out of it for the A/C condenser fan. Yes, I am putting the A/C back in. I figure that if I want to take the kids for a drive on a hot day then it better have A/C. Hopefully the extra power of the 1275 and the engine mods that I am making will compensate for the power the A/C will suck out of it.
On the 24th September 2010 I loaded up the trailer with parts and what was left of my Mini and drove it over to the fabricator where it sat there for a month without any progress. When he agreed to this project he said that it would only take about a week to do but he would spread it across a couple of weeks to which I said was fine as I had plenty of other parts to clean, paint and repair during this time.
