Well, fellow ne(u)tters,
I have kept my quiet on the bodges, but I must now take keyboard in hand
and relate a couple of my own temporary repairs.
I had bought a '61 Mini Estate for a second car. One of the chaps in the
lab had a '65 that had broken the rear suspension, and the garage told
him that it would be more than the car was worth to fix it. He came to
me and asked if I wanted to buy it from him for US$50. Being a poor GI,
I couldn't afford even that. The next day, he came in and told me that
he had called the breakers the night before and that they would be picking
up the car later that day or the next. I asked if I could get it before
them could I have it? Sure he said, so the adventure was on. My neighbor
and I drove over to the garage in my Marina, and looked at the Mini. It
was a hydro-elastic suspension car, and the right rear corner was sagging
very low.
So low in fact, that the tyre was rubbing against the inner wing, and the
car was immobilized. We jacked the back end up, and wedged a piece of
concrete block in the suspension so that the car would at least roll.
After tying off the tow rope, my neighbor climbed into the Mini, and with
me in the Marina, we set off. It was an ten mile drive back to my house,
and it was already after dark. Talk about Lucas terror. About four miles
into the drive, Denny starts flashing the lights, so I pulled over to see
what the problem was. It seemed that the concrete had shifted, and the car
had fallen back on the tire and was starting to smoke. We jacked the back
end up again, and moved the chunk to where it was when we started. We got
back to my house, and dropped the car off.
The next day, I started to investigate the problems, and discovered that
the concrete had worn a groove on the inner sidewall, and the tire barely
held air. It turned out that the problem on the suspension was a very
minor one, and it cost me only about US$15 to get the car back on the
road. Since it was in much better nick than the '61, I took all the good
pieces off the older car, and put them on the '65. Sold the '61 for $10
less than I paid for it.
Same car, but different day. I was sponsoring a new family onto the base,
so I went to the airport to pick them up. I had borrowed a luggage rack
since I knew that the boot would not be large enough. As we drove around
the base, showing them the sights, I put my foot on the brakes and the
pedal went right to the floor! Oh, s**t, me thinks, how do I tell them
that we have no bleedin' brakes? I nonchalantly reached down and pulled
on the handbrake, and brought the car to a halt. I continued to drive them
around the base for another hour or so, using the handbrake each time we
needed to stop. I never knew that there were so many stop signs on that
base until that day. I know that if they had only known that we were
without brakes, they would have gone nuts. I don't think that they
ever found out, at least I never told them.
I got a rebuilt master cylinder, and everything was fine until the head-
light dropped out one day, but that's a different story.
Doug Mitchell - I loved my Mini, but it had destructive tendencies.
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