and that is why I no longer have one every hour of driving required half an hour of maintenance, Given that I was driving it about 12 hours a week - life got a little difficult.

i'm a bad driver

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Another Jag story of woe

I took the jag to have the cams chnaged. To do so you have to remove the the cam covers which are held on with acorn nuts with copper washers underneath.

When I picked the car up the oil pressure was really high. I thought nothing of it until I got home the pressure was high with the engine on idle (the oil pressure sender is on top of the bypass valve). So I pulled the bypass valve and found this - the remains of a copper washer that some fwit had dropped down the engine and made its way though the the oil pump.

In my opinion I think the above pics disagree with that comment.

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http://www.youtube.com/user/Hanras

I could show a similar picture of the damage to my clutch housing off my old engine. I bought it as fully rebuilt, it ran quite well but always made a grinding noise in third and fourth which I could never trace. I drove it for a year like this until it let go. When it finally went, the primary gear had shredded through the clutch housing, the idler gear had lost 5 teeth and the idler gear bearings disintegrated and filled the gearbox with needle rollers, jamming it in fourth gear.

All because the engine builder hadn't shimmed the primary gear - it had 20 thou of movement.

On the plus side, I threw on another gearbox, clutch and oil pump and she was good for another year, until the headgasket blew and split the sleeves on third and fourth cylinder. Couldn't reuse it after that.

Yeh, the point I am trying to make is that the IDIOT who did that to your clutch housing must have thought that it was acceptable otherwise he would not have done it.
He probably would have done the same to his own car!!

Dave

I once took my clutch cover to one of the top engine machine shops here in Adelaide to get the blind end idler and 1st motion shaft spiggot bearing track removed expecting they'd have the proper puller tools to do this. They do a lot of race engines and are supposedly super professional, and are conveniently located at the end of my street.

To my amazement when I picked up the housing I found they had drilled holes through it from the clutch side and belted the old bearings out with a pin punch, then patched the holes back up again.

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Slide
1965 Mini Van (1360)
1970 Mk2 Cooper S (1310)
1978 Rover SD1 V8 (4.6)
1996 Land Rover Discovery V8 (4.0)

pulled apart a steering rack to find a homemade spacer and various necessary parts missing

"ohhh, so that's why that car was scary to drive"

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did I tell you that I won a trophy?

In my relatively short experience working on some mini's ive seen quite a few dodgy jobs people have done.

We had a motor sitting around and we decided to use the block from it for a customers engine as theirs was no good. So as i was stripping down the motor i had to go grab a set of metric spanners as litterally half the bolts holding the gearbox to the block, and the clutch cover etc were the wrong thread. On this particular motor the flywheel had not been done up correctly and had spun on the crankshaft.

We had another motor sitting around, a 1300 which we started to build up for someone. It looked fine on the outside, until i took the gearbox off and found a big end bearing, almost flat fall out. And then i noticed one big end caps had come off, and the crankshaft came back around and smashed the conrod. And to boot, the flywheel was loose and the little tab thingy that locates the flywheel on the crankshaft, the tabs had been ripped off. My boss said "no wonder i got it so cheap...."

So seeing as half the engines i've pulled apart have been really dodgily put together i wonder how many more i will see.

And you cant forget brake hoses that are twisted like you wouldnt believe

There are three Mini workshops that I can think of that have had nothing at all to do with these forums even though they have an internet presence. (meaning that they are not all old buggers that don't know how to use a computer! )
They are all known for dodgy work.
They are all known for turning rusty Mini Deluxes into immaculate Cooper S'
These blokes will all go out of their way to rob people blind.

I am also certain that they read these forums to keep an eye on what is being said about them.

Nice welding on a "new" zorst.



Why does my gear stick move around so much?

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One should never skimp on the zip ties.

I guess we all have some horror story associated with anyone else working on our cars. My experiences have been many over the years which is why I am reluctant to entrust work to anyone unless it is something I can't do.

Take a gander at the pic and you can see what I mean. I am not sure who the culprit was but have some idea. Reputable engine builders

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1964 998 Cooper , 1968 Morris 1100

Yeah theres one on ebay at the moment

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1965 Morris 850
1966 Morris Mini Minor
1967 Morris Cooper 'S'
1977 Leyland LS

got my mini back from the garage after some engine work, drove 300km to my folk place, got out and was missing 3 engine mount bolts, one fromt the alternator bracket(other one was half way out) and an engine steady nut. wasnt impressed

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1962 850,Frog

I have only experienced one dodgy mini workshop.

I had an 1098 rebuilt, and it cost me a fortune and smoked from day one. Apparantly it just needed to be run in.....well it wasn't run in up until the day I sold it.

The head was fully rebuild, same with the block. Spent over 3K for a basic no performance mods rebuild.

Also, not long after I got it back a CV joint un-did at Tumut (5 hours from home.) and a fellow ausminier got me out of the crap big time, that guy was a dead set legend. He is a Moke driver.