Sometime during its later life, the engine had been replaced by a 1275cc unit from an MG Metro and has recently been overhauled along with gearbox at RACE Motorsport Engineering of Chorley. Other modifications had taken place too and since it came here to The Mini Restoration Company it has had further internal modifications added. Marco and Karen brought their Mini to us initially to attend to corrosion present on the roof and in the roof guttering. The plan was then to brighten up the exterior by painting the roof in Old English White. However, whilst the Mini was in our workshops, we identified several smaller areas of corrosion around the entire body of the car. Further investigation revealed that there had previously been repairs carried out where excessive body filler had been used to cover over more serious corrosion issues. In the event, we had to replace the front inner wing front halves, the front panel, the windscreen scuttle, both outer wings and apex panels and the door steps.

We also had to repair several areas of corrosion to the rear quarter panels where the corrosion was cut out, small steel sections spliced in and finished off by lead loading and a final skim of finishing top filler. The doors fared no better and we had to replace the door bottom edges and re-skin both doors.

Owing to the amount of work that had been done it was prudent then to have the whole of the exterior of the vehicle repainted in blue along with its new white roof.

Upon re-building the vehicle a new headlining was fitted along with new rubber window and door seals. An original style windscreen rubber replaced the later style rubber which had been fitted sometime in the past. During the restoration, we also fitted a set of new wheel arches. Finally, we fabricated and installed a more substantial framework for the rally style seats which were bolted in to it once we had fitted a brand new carpet set. The new frame was powder coated in black before installation.