I'm sure many of you have some good stories to share. I'll start

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Years ago now, one night while I was at Uni I was driving home, must have been 1 am. Like any Uni student, I had absolutely no money, and the Mini (a run down white '67 K) never had a full tank of juice because I never had the $15.00 to fill it. I remember always carrying a couple of litres of fuel in one of those 5-litre steel jerrycans in the boot, because I was forever running out. Might have had something to do with the fuel gauge not working.. then again, it might have been because I was a poor student

Anyway, this particular night I was heading home late. The roads were pretty empty, and as always I had the windows down listening to the note. Doing about 80 in 4th, jinked into the service lane to make a left hander onto a side road. Late on the brakes as always, I pumped the brakes without thinking (as you do with drums ), and then buried the foot, ready to heel-toe down into third.

No sooner did the car start to slow, when the lights went out (not mine, the car's) and the engine died. What!? Then just as suddenly, everything came back. Then died. Whuh?

By the time I made the turn I figured it out. Damn earth connector on the battery must have come off.. I never did get it properly tight. So, coasted to a stop at the side of the road under a street light, engine stalled, and leapt out. Walked to the back of the car, and opened the boot, expecting to see a loose earth lead. Bzzzzt, wrong.

What greeted me first as I opened the boot was the smell of petrol. Now, this is a student's Mini, so the smell of fuel, oil and exhaust are pretty normal inside the car, but this was strong, much stronger than normal. As I got the boot open, however, the next thing I saw was Fuel's Best Friend, the spark. Remember that 5-litre steel fuel can? There it was, punctured, Shell's Finest sloshing around the wheel well, arcing across the battery terminals.

I'm not entirely sure what I did next.. I think my first reaction was to drop the bootlid and take a few rather quick steps backwards. I do remember thinking, "Oh F**K, that's not good", quickly weighing up the possible outcomes:

1. Keep stumbling backwards and wait for the Earth Shattering Kaboom
2. Risk Certain Death, and put some space between battery and bomb.

So I chose box #2, and reached in, half covering my face with my left arm. Like, yeah, that's going to help if this goes badly, you fool. Gave the arcing can a solid flick to the left, then yanked it out.

I'm still not sure exactly what punctured the can, but I'm sure it had something to do with my cornering style and the can's momentum. Had I stopped to think about it, I would probably have remembered hearing the thumps as it flew around in the boot. Another thing, I really have no idea why I'm not dead. There really was so much fuel in there, and good, powerful sparks..

So, that was the first time my Mini tried to kill me. I say first, because it tried again with different tactics.. more about that another day.

One time I had the car resting on it side while I was treating all the bare metal and panel repairs that I had just done with phosphoric acid based anti rust thing. This stuff is pretty nasty so I made sure I was carefull and didnt flick it in my eyes or get any on my skin. So there I was, half a coke can full of this crap in one hand and a paint brush in the other. I must have been getting a little forcefull with the brush , well enough to take the weight of the piece of 4x2 that was proping the car up. As soon as I heard the bit of wood hit the floor my first instinct was to raise my hands to protect my head and hopefully stop the car from falling. In doing so I managed to drop the paint brush and throw the remnants of the rust treatment stuff all over my face and in my eyes. So with my eyes squeezing shut to keep the acid out I managed to catch the mini at about waist height before it slipped out of my hands and grazed down the front of my legs to the floor.
I blindly stumbled inside to the shower and rinsed all the stuff out of my eyes and clothes. After a quick trip to outpatience for some eyedrops and such, everything luckily turned out fine.
That was one of 4 times I had to go to hospital to have things picked, scratched, sanded out of my eyes during my mini build. I am always fairly carefull yet I get crap im my eyes all the time. Someone scratching at my eyeball with something sharp dosent faze me anymore

cheers

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One of mine rolled backwards while supported on a trolley jack with the front wheels off the car.

**THUMP**

It hit the deck hard and I was laying on the ground right next to it, about to slide under.

My moke fell off a stand whilst I was under the car.

It was the shell only - so it didnt kill me (obviously). I had tyres under the car as well so it only reduced the space without crushing me.

I had to to lift the shell off with a couple of busted ribs - fun

<edit> to fix my terrible spelling,

i was expecting a longer post than that, BIAM. Your moke has given you many injuries....though that may be the only time it tried to take your life....

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Introducing 'LITE'. The new way to spell 'light' with 20% less letters!

I don't know my name anymore.

Driving home one night I heard a knocking noise from the front end and before I had a chance to inspect the problem, the left wheel departed. Not having a jack was the first problem, the wheel was still inflated so the lack of a spare was ok. The second problem was no wheel studs left, they had all sheared off.

I am sharing this as I didn't listen to a warning by other Mini enthusiasts not to use std (not cooper S wheels, the std type steelies) mini wheels with high powered 1275's, the particular engine was a warm cooper S overbored to 1310!

Daniel

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Videos - Turbocharged A-Series on Dyno & at Wakefield
Mafs waz not my strong subgeckt at skkol

Mine's similar to Doz , driving the sports850 to work one morning and it started making funny vibrations and then the left front wheel parted company , mini came to a shuddering halt on the side of the road and I retrieved the wheel from the cane field . Fortunately the wheel nuts had come loose and 3 were still trapped inside the hubcap (mini had been in a locked garage overnight , no idea why they came loose all of a sudden) so remounted the wheel and tightened the nuts , then checked the other wheels and drove to work . Had another look at it at work and saw I'd ground a flat on the bottom of the brake drum , and the BALL JOINT'S BOLT AND NUT that protruded through the lower control arm was gone , sheared off by the road surface . The hub was only staying attached to the lower control arm by the interference fit of the ball joint's bolt in the taper of the control arm . It stayed in the bosses yard overnight till I could bring another ball joint and fix it the next day . That's only one of the things the sports850's done to me but it always kept itself together long enough to put out the fire , not roll , get home etc , the bloody thing is possessed

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It wasn't my mini that tried t kill me. It was somebody else's. It was at Amaroo Park raceway and it was a club race meeting.

I was in the anglia sports sedan and coming down the hill into the little tight left hander before the straight into the stop go corner. I was about to sneak under a mini when the mini turned hard left thirty metres before the corner, straight across my front and buried itself into the earth and rock bank. It was a real slow motion thing as it passed by. I missed it but don't know how as I hadn't even gone for the brake.

He had a locked diff in the mini and it snapped a uni joint that pulled the steering wheel out of his hand and just turn the car 90 degrees left in a millisecond at racing speed. I was travelling faster than him and I just dont know how we missed.

WOW...

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My mini has only tried once to kill me. It was a autumn morning from memory I woke up all excited about going out to Parramatta. I was heading along Victoria Rd and at the Devlin Street intersection peak hour traffic I changed from 3rd to 4th or at least that was going to work in theory. The gearbox seized in 3rd gear right there and then it decided to snap a synchro and jam the shifter into the 3rd gear position without allow me to put it into neutral. So there i was peak hour traffic stuck in 3rd gear entering that infamous intersection with a 4WD in front and a truck behind me thinking quickly and flustered about the gearbox i darted into the lane to my right and headed for the Devlin street turn off. I then get stuck at 3 whole sets of lights crawling along in 3rd until I could safety get off the road and into the council car park opposite the Top Ryde Shopping Centre. I smoked at the time so my saving grace that morning was that I stopped earlier to re-fill the tank and buy smokes. Had I not bought smokes I think I'd would have been rather peeved!!!! and more stressed.

I suppose I should tell my story then...

It was early on in my mini ownership days. James (aka Kazjim) had a big garage sale up at the central coast so we Ausminiers decided to convoy up. My mini at the time was in pretty bad shape, running questionnable drums (extremely worn left hub), 1/8 toe out at the rear (!) I ran good bridgstones at the front and hard crappy noname tyres at the back (!!!!).

The day started out at 6am and it was BUCKETTING down by the time we met up at Waitara mackers. We headed up the coast. Lillee felt like she was floating up the freeway at 100km/h. At one stage I was doing about 110 and i could have sworn i was aquaplaning for about 20 meters!

Anyway on the entry to gosford there are a few tight turns off the freeway, still about a 90 km/h zone, 2 lanes. Silly me was trying to stay up with the other cars. Gafmo was behind me. Got down to this one really steep turn that is also off camber doing about 80km/h hard left, right hand lane, cars on left hand lane. I felt the back start to slide and before I could do anything about it, I totally did a 360! swerving into the left hand lane and nearly collecting a commodore in the process! Luckily the left enbankment just happened to be dirt rather than the usual 3 meter high concrete wall!!! and the drop from the side of the road was only a few inches rather than say... 2ft or something, and it just happened to be a clearing of trees! I eventually came to rest, engine stalled on the side off the road, off the freeway having done a complete 360 degree spin.

In hindsite I could have been in ALOT more grief, in particular, someone flying around that corner and tboning me as I swerved across the left hand lane... Trucks galore usually in this area.

All I remember was Gafmo coming around the corner behind me, seeing me spin off and the look on his face as he passed by was for 1 second like this: then when he realised I and Lillee was ok, like this: PRICELESS I will never forget Gafmo's face...

Anyway all that was dammaged was my pride, I simply turned the engine on and went on my merry way. Needless to say, I've learnt alot since then BUT they still call me 360 Chong

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Lillee - 1969 Morris Mini K

360 Chong ehhh ... for good reason too. I'll not mention I did 630 spin on the dogleg near Concord Hospital heading toward Ryde rd and rhodes shopping centre

My mini has never tried to kill me, so all I can add to this thread is this...


For an explosion to be created by petrol it first needs to vapourise. There is a minimum ratio of fuel vapour to air below which ignition will not occur. At the same time, there is also a maximum ratio of fuel vapour to air, at which ignition will not occur. These limits are termed the lower and upper explosive limits. For petrol vapour, the explosive range is from 1.3 to 6.0% vapour to air.

I would hazard a guess that you had way too much fuel vapour and not enough air in the boot of your mini for it to explode. That's why you're not dead.

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- Simon -

Mine tried to kill me about 2 weeks ago.

Tricky towed it from his place to mine. Backs it up my driveway, which is fairly steep. Couldn't back it up the driveway far enough so got it to a put where we had to winch it off backwards.

The trailer is a 'break in the middle' type so we had to be careful the car didn't just fly down it once we have whinched it up far enough. I tried unsuccessfully to pull the handbrake on and Tricky thought I had got it on. I got distracted doing something else and we continued whinching. Trailer was playing up and something wasn't releasing. Tricky got in there with a hammer to release the catch on the bit the 'breaks'. Whacks it with a hammer, car flies off trailer at a great rate on knots. No handbrake on, no steering wheel (starlet column not yet finished), poorly alinged wheels (suspension put on so car could be moved).

Car comes off trailer at great rate of knots towards me, i put the shoulder into into to try and stop it from smashing it my new house. Car turns (refer poor alignment). Smacks into a door to a storage area under the stairs. Only thing that hit the door was the tyre, flair and tail light. Soooo lucky as it was really moving.

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But he's thriving and striving and hugging the turns.

there was this one time, i was driving around the hills (olinda) and it was pissing down with rain, i had a couple of friends in the car, and we arnt hooning, just driving around and we reached the top of devils elbow (for all people not in victoria its a awesome road, about 5 hairpins, extremly wide, steep and well camberd roads.) eitherway we are chatting and i didnt notice a little river had formed across the entry downhill first hairpin.
now i had the most crap tires (kuhmo powerstar, if you've had them you'll know what i mean) and kuhmo's are useless in the wet, i wouldnt recomend them, even for a trailer.
so i've gone into the first corner and aquaplanned straight across the road to the edge of the cliff, there was a gaurd rail but it was 1 1/2mtrs to my left, we all thought we wher going to go over but there was a about 5 feets worth of gravel at the end of the road that stopped us. i was half a foot away from going down a long long way.
needless to say we drove home really slow that night.

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real men race downhill - keiichi tsuchiya