Members car's rolling reports.
This month, reports by John Collins and Maddy.
John's report first. Mini Neon - This rolling report was meant to have said 'the Neon now has an MOT' but as you can see it doesn't. We already knew the previous owner had some welding done on the leading edge of the floorpan, plus a few mechanical repairs that the car had failed the MOT on. I quickly realised that none of these repairs had been done. Fast forward to 2007. I was prepared for this years MOT to be a bit of a struggle. The fuel tank had a hole in the filler neck, but I got a good one out of Alan's scrapped Mini City. Maddy sold me a new carb that used to be on BORIS 'old 1100cc engine, and that cured the lacklustre performance and 10% CO.
Cris did a sterling job of installing a replacement screen. The old one had picked up a crack on the way home from a show last year. Cris tells me it was the hardest 'screen swap he's done! Just a CV gaiter to go now, but with the car up on ramps our mechanic calls with a problem "The front subframe is about to fall off!" What he had meant was that the front teardrop mounts were shot, but there was worse. The subframe was now moving fore and aft, pushing the rear mount into that previous welding and cracking it plus the floorpan and exposing rust rot that had not been cut out. Here we go again - and L2B is but a few weeks away. John C, very P....d off mini owner.
P.S. Mustn't grumble, the CO is now at 2.8% CO with that new carb!!
Maddy's Mini Cooper now... Commiserations to John on the above, but Maddy is pleased to announce that Mortie passed the MOT (20/04/2007) with flying colours much to her relief. Mortie is going to have new Hydrolastic valves fitted by the local garage (Saturday 05/05/07)plus new fluid. As reported previously the source of the slow drop of the drivers side suspension had been traced to a leaking valve. New parts have been supplied by SC parts. See our links page. Boris the Clubby Estate needed some TLC a couple of weeks ago - nothing too serious. Maddy had finished washing the car and noticed a small hole in the front valence, ever curious the hole was poked with the result that the hole rapidly grew in size - yep' tin worm had been at work. A strip was cut out and the rust ground away, next a new strip was cut and bent to shape and welded into place, followed by grinding down and finishing off with a thin coat of body filler. Finally, it was primed and then coated with black underseal front and back. One further job was to fit new brake shoes to the rear drums.
To all members - please send in your reports.
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