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those were the days

Posted: Sat Apr 25, 2009 9:41 am
by David Leikvold
My first car was a '69 Mk11 Cooper S, ex cop, bought in '73 with a worn out everything. Rebuilt the engine and gearbox on my nett weekly wage of $33, took forever. Went club racing with it, lap dashes and hillclimbs mostly, finished up with a half roll cage, Corbeau seat, four point harnesses, 45mm Weber with ported head and manifold and lots of other bits. It was quick. Ran 34mm chokes on the street, had a pair of 40's for racing. Too stupid to get it rejetted on a dyno to get the tune right for the different chokes. Spent lots of time by the side of the road whenever it rained. Finally fixed that with a washing up glove over the distributor cap and leads. Those were the days :wink:

Posted: Sat Apr 25, 2009 12:44 pm
by Dreamliner 200
Still got one (or two :wink: )

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Dam, :o now my embarassing little secret is out there.... :oops:

wow

Posted: Sat Apr 25, 2009 12:51 pm
by David Leikvold
Wow, even the door handles are horizontal. That's a beautiful Mk11 you've got there!

Re: wow

Posted: Sat Apr 25, 2009 4:43 pm
by Dreamliner 200
David Leikvold wrote:Wow, even the door handles are horizontal. That's a beautiful Mk11 you've got there!


Ha :lol: That's an ex Mini owner thing to say; the saggy door handles!

We bought the MkII (it's a 1970) two years ago, it was advertised too cheaply (I think) So we snapped it up, the way the prices were rising I never thought we would own one. Oh and it too is an ex cop car, it has the revesing lights, park brake warning light and lowered seats. You can make out the filled arial hole when the sun is right on the roof.

The other is an English 1964 Mk1, one of th every first 1275's. We bought that one 15years ago back in the UK I restored it and brought it out with us when we emigrated here to Aus 10 years ago.

Glad you like em David. :P

Posted: Sat Apr 25, 2009 5:46 pm
by ben james
oh no , we've attracted geeky mini guys. :P

Posted: Sat Apr 25, 2009 6:23 pm
by Dreamliner 200
Thats more like the reaction I expected Ben...

Thanks for that! :lol: :lol:

MiniGeek :oops:

Posted: Sat Apr 25, 2009 7:01 pm
by ben james
know you're place in the peckin order dreamliner,
you can't all be as cool as me.
check out my daily ride
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and the harem that a persona of this level attracts
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Posted: Sat Apr 25, 2009 8:14 pm
by BIG GAZ
This topic is getting way off line! First mini's, then step throughs and now fox terriers. Boys... get back on track. You're letting your private lives encroach too far into the public domain. Get back in the shed!
BIG GAZ

Posted: Sat Apr 25, 2009 8:24 pm
by Rob
Ah the mini bug. Cut my teeth on an 850 van, the loooonnnnggg gearshift out of the firewall and the Punchbowl bus company steering wheel. We did the clown challenge on Saturday night, squeezed 11 people in and drove around the block (back doors didn't close lol, we stacked em in) Thanks god for rubber cone suspension... Sold it when it dropped a rod. The bloke I sold it to rang and said a big end cap had come undone.

Then a '62 sedan with the sliding windows. A big gap and I snavelled a restoration project, unmolested MkII Cooper S that was sold before starting on it to finance a Trans Am (now THERE is an oxy-moron).

Lastly came the low miles 1100K so I could get a parking spot when attending Tafe at night. That car was a hll of a lot of fun as were they all really.

Once you knew the tricks they weren't bad to work on. I used to hang a rag over the grill when it started to rain, looked bad, worked good!

Met a guy once at Bexley North once, he had a methanol 1310 in his sedan. You could only do a round trip of about 10 miles but man, what a trip it was. No idea what happened to that one.

I got out of it when parts started to really go through the roof.

Love your pair Dreamliner, brings back lots of good memories.
Rob

dash it

Posted: Tue May 11, 2010 9:59 am
by Dr Goggles
Window winder handle just fell off the drivers door in the VT , probably because the regulator is ( or feels like) it's flogging out....after 300,000k's....Now, what I want to know is why the f*** did Holden give a job to the Half-witted-dingbat-Wally-door-designer from Ford's XD days anyway?

plenty

Posted: Tue May 11, 2010 11:57 am
by David Leikvold
Doc, don't worry about your Commode-door falling apart, there are thousands of them in wrecking yards all over Melbourne already. Some may even have usable parts.

Speaking of Ford engineering, my EF has gouged front rotors which shake the car when used. Guess what? It's the only model with integral hub and rotor so fixing the brake shudder will cost me roughly what the car is worth. EL went to a separate rotor which is cheap and easy to replace but I didn't buy an EL did I? :(

Cheers
Dave :D

Posted: Wed May 12, 2010 2:08 am
by ben james
glad to se this thread is up & running again. :D

Re: dash it

Posted: Wed May 12, 2010 9:02 am
by fredeuce
Dr Goggles wrote:Window winder handle just fell off the drivers door in the VT , probably because the regulator is ( or feels like) it's flogging out....after 300,000k's....Now, what I want to know is why the f*** did Holden give a job to the Half-witted-dingbat-Wally-door-designer from Ford's XD days anyway?


If those winders are anything like the earlier VB-VL items then that technology predates the XD and purely of Holden's own making. I think Holden wins this race to the bottom. :)

Useless things have no heavy clock spring in the regulator like the older HQ style do. All it has is an outer drum and inner hub and a piece of steel wire wrapped around the drum to create friction with the outer drum. After a few years of winding that up and down the wire wears and holds no tension between the drum and the hub. The result is self opening windows. Great if you lose your car keys because all you have to do is walk up to it put your open palm against the window push down and voila , its open. :shock:
What absolute rubbish. :(

Posted: Wed May 12, 2010 11:49 am
by Lynchy
Fredeuce

Ford actually started the crappy design with the XC falcon. They would break all the time. The weird bit is that Holden customisers would then graft XC door handles into their Holdens......? The Holden design must have been really bad.

Lynchy

you beaut

Posted: Sun May 16, 2010 1:02 pm
by Dr Goggles
Ok back on topic..................................

So, I've finally started the long overdue panel repair on my HR ute....I cut the skin off the tailgate....I've nearly got that fettled and fitted..no matter how neat they look they've ALWAYS been bastardized and so i've been mucking around with it for probably ten hours just to get the skin to fit the inner panel, made the EH tailgate I did years ago look easy, the crease in the HR 'gate is a right mongrel.

This morning I get up and go out and get started removing the guards.....did I mention EH, yeah well they are EASY to remove as they don't have an inner section, these HR ones are a different story...there aren't actually any bolts going into them from the other side of the car, but there might as well be..... Anyway , this ute has had a fair bit of time and money spent on it some time in the past, I'm thinking the guy who did it found a pallet of drip-check while he was working on it too.... I get to the bit on the drivers guard where it bolts to the beaver panel and there are three bolts in an area no more than six inches long......the above mentioned bloke did some nice work on this car but why he decided to use nut and bolt pairs on these particular bolts(instead of captives is beyond me, after an hour I had them all undone as far as I could( yes, of course the exposed area of thread was rusted), about three turns each and had managed to get a hack saw through the gap to cut one but god bless 'em Holden put a lip on the inner edge of this bit so I can't put the hack saw through to get the other two............

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If I could meet the guy who did it I'd kick him right in the nuts , but instead I'm off to the Big Green Hardware place to get some more cutting discs, I'm done lying under the car and whatever damage I do with the grinder I can fix in less time with no skinned knuckles with the Mig.

Who designed this rubbish anyway?