As with all good engineering projects, the Westfield ran slightly over budget. So the trusty old green Astra you see in the build photos had to be sold to raise funds. I was thus left with the Westfield as my only car. There was also a sort of perverse macho challenge thing about having a small open sportscar as my only means of transport. Anyway, a year after getting rid of the Astra, and proving how hard I was by driving around everywhere with the roof off I decided the constant agro of finding somewhere safe to park it when out at night, the constant damp in the wet and the ear infection from all the road crap going in my right ear wasn't worth it. I was having a good whinge about this in the pub when a friend of mine told me about another friends' Mini that had been sat in a garage since it got rear ended at some traffic lights. I spoke to Caroline who owned the Mini. You can have it for £35.00 (yes, thirty five) she said, "it ran when I parked it there over a year ago". Bargain I thought and the deal was done.
The prospect of dry, moderately reliable motoring
was a nice thought now. It looked alright at a distance, however when I got
it home and started poking at the bubbles in the paint work with a screw
driver, a different picture emerged. The body shell was rotten in all the
usual Mini places, however the rear subframe, a classic mini rust trap was
ok. Further encouragement came from the fact that with a fresh battery and
some petrol poured into the SU carburettor the engine started almost first
time. Then it started raining, and continued to rain for the next three months.
Arc welding in the rain, what fun ! I think I'll go and play golf next time
there is a thunder storm. I managed to get some old minilite wheels off a
work colleague for £50.00. They had come off his sons' mini which no
longer existed in one piece. The flat patch on each tyre with scratches/scraps
at 70 degrees to the direction of travel told their own tale.
Total project cost to the "finished" purple state was about £500.00. It then tried to kill me in a variety of ways over the 18 months I had it on the road. Still it kept me dry, unlike its' own electrical systems.
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