Can you get a diff off insitu - I have never tried that.

But I am from the school that says spend the hour pulling out the motor and then access is not the problem. gaskets and some money maybe.

Andrew
Yes - $25 is a good rate but may still end up costing in excess of $200.

However, I would loose a lot of respect for you if I thought you had knowingly sold a car about to have sudden mortal problems to some one unsuspecting who bought in good faith.

There are options - dont rush into anything - think it through and if necessary put the mini away until you can do something about it.

Plenty of cheap cars on ebay, trading post etc that would tide you through. By cheap I mean bought for hundreds, not thousands.

Looking at now I can see the box properly - yes there would be enough room to get in there but no I don't think you could do it in situ . Those diff bolts/studs are about 5" long and I don't think there would be enough room to pull the diff straight back that far with out fouling the firewall

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David L


My greatest fear in life is that when I die my wife will sell my Mini and tools for the price I told her I paid for them!

before jumping to all sorts of bad conclusions, just try draining the oil and you might get lucky... jack up the left hand side of the car as high as you can, and a bit higher at the left rear... so everything in the bottom will go to the sump plug side

maybe even find a steep bit of hill and back it up - anything to get the arm to fall to near the sump plug

you might get lucky

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did I tell you that I won a trophy?

mechanic showed me arm - deffiantely not getting through sump plug hole

mechanic showed me a gearbox - there is a seperate compartment on the other side of sump plug that it would have fallen down into near i forget what he called them.

but taking of some plate that covers something under the radiator seems like the way to go. he said he can get it off without taking the engine out and get the arm out then fish around with magnets to get any other little bits of metal.

yes it is gonna cost alot, but the amount of money i have saved from not driving for the last couple of weeks and the weeks to come will pay for that.

what a headache.

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Sunday Morning Mini Sprint http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtGuzqBQ32Q my "rendezvous"

As he said, if he were to offload this car he would let the new owners know of the problem.... There is nothing wrong with that at all, I would pull the engine and replace with a cheap 998 run about engine. But if your gonna thrash the nuts out of it, then expect nuts out of it, but resect it and it'll respect you all the way till you go on your holly's overseas...

Just went down and had a look at a rod change box I've got open at the moment , I'm assuming remote change is similar enough inside for the basics . Yes , the webbings etc are too big to work the lever through (I didn't think they were at first but they are unless you were incredibly lucky) and there is a large open area that can be accessed by taking the speedo drive housing off once the radiator was out . This is also the most likely place for it to have landed as it's almost directly below the fuel pump , otherwise it woulkd have landed on top of the two counter rotating gear clusters which could have been messy and expensive . Maybe drop your oil into a clean container and have a fish around in the drivers side of the sump with a magnet or three pronged gripper and see if it's in that side , if you can't find it then replace the sump plug and put your oil back in (all it's cost you is some time) and then you can assume it's in the speedo drive end which can be done like your mechanic suggests . I had a look at an arm from a fuel pump as well and assuming it hasn't broken on the pivot pin it is too big to come out the sump plug hole but you might be licky and it's broken in half and be easy to get out .

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hang on,


how can a rod and spring from your electrical fuel pump has falling into your engine?

theres no way anything that big just has falling into your engine

Read before quoting , it saves embarrasing mistakes

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well for those intersted

she has had a complete oil change penright (nice and golden instead of been a black), new fan belt (old one about to snap), new old thermostat housing (last one was bashed and leaking respectively [that'll help my cooling problem alot, i noticed average temp is 2-3 mm below what it use to be])

arm was fished out by taking out radiator then the plate that has the radiator mount on it off. (this is done by taking it of as far as possible undoing studs then sliding them out then taking the whole thing out... i belive casue studs are to long) he also fished around with a magnet to get any other little bits out. the mech. fuel pump backalight spacer had lost its bottom 1/4 and that was where the oil was leaking from. arm had snaped outa the pump.

arm is in odd bent shape after hitting something, and i looked again and it seems a bit of wear on it so may have been rubbing on something. would post pics but camera doesn't want to wake up, mabey some phone ones some day.

edit: oh and it cost $220, not to bad i thought i'm happy

and she roared off happily ever after

until the next thing brakes that is

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Sunday Morning Mini Sprint http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtGuzqBQ32Q my "rendezvous"

Really good to hear , I hope you're keeping all the bits that break on molly as memento's , I used to have a trophy wall of broken mini-bits but some got lost (favourite stuffed piston ) in a move ...

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Thats fantastic. Good to hear it worked out well

Great to hear she's roaring along just fine now....this is really good news.