Hi guys and girls,
My name is Robert. I owned a couple of Minis when I was in my teens when they weren't worth much. I think I paid 500 dollars for my first 1976 Clubman and about a 800 for my Moke back in the early 90's.
I do deliveries for Harvey Norman here in Perth and when doing a delivery to a customer I started a conversation about his 1976 Clubman on the verge, he said he was interested in selling, I asked if it was still rego'd and he said yes, but they had battery problems and it had been sitting not running for a year. They had replaced the battery and the leads but that was it. I asked how much and he said $500.00, he'd barely finished saying five hun.... When I said "Sold". I picked it up that night and I'm now going over it slowly, there has been some good rust repairs and some not so good bodged dent repairs especially in the roof (after hitting the roof with a sander I looked like I sneezed in someones coke stash), but over all it looks pretty good, even the interior light works, however the original mud and snow tyres are a little bit of a concern. The colour is Pea green and somewhere in it's former life someone hit it with a pearl overcoat.. Pictures to come, of course..
After I picked it up I charged the battery, reefed the burnt out wires from the alternator out and turned the key, four seconds later she burst into life coughing and beltching black soot out the horribly modified exhaust (person who pearled her also put a hot dog on her). Took her for a run, gears changes are as I remember, brakes are better than I remember and after good clean fuel she went better than my last mini too. So far in my adventures in repairs I've discovered the alternator is shot, whilst taking that off I found that one of the mounting points for the alternator on the water pump was cracked, so I've replaced water pump and I am now looking for an alternator. Also changed the ignition leads, plugs, distributor cap, points and condensor. Oil change and filter next week, if I get time (damn retail industry).
I love english cars and Mini's are so reliable, she will be nice to drive when all finished and a damn sight more economical than my 1996 model Rangie, but not quite as quick as my Kawasaki ZX-14..
Now onto the wanted section of the Forum......
Rob M
) feel free to pm me 
