1980 Mini from Chile

After 10 years of ownership, I finally decided to start a build thread on my Mini. I'm new to posting stuff like this, but I'll do the best I can.

I wanted a mini ever since I was little and we went to England to visit my relatives. At that time they were still fairly common as an everyday car and I got to ride in 2 different ones. I was in love, I wanted a mini more than any other car, but never saw any back home in the USA.

25-ish years later, I moved to Chile for work and noticed there were a lot of mini's around. I made a friend with a mini, Pedro, and he helped me look for one. I finally got a chance to buy my own mini on March 21st, 2011. This date is easy to remember because it's the day President Obama came to visit Chile and consequently every highway and major road was closed. Pedro guided me through backroads and alleys until the mini finally died of unknown reasons. Conveniently we were on a bridge overlooking were the presidential motorcade would be passing by in the next hour, and the local Caribineros were not happy. Thankfully instead of shooting us they just helped push the mini out of the way and then shut down the bridge. The problem with the mini was a broken fuel gauge and no gas, so we filled up at a gas station and eventually made it back to my apartment.

I drove the mini around Santiago for the next 2 years. It wasn't a commuter, just something for fun. Car ownership in Chile isn't easy, especially for a foreigner that doesn't really speak the local dialect. Annual Car inspections, weird traffic rules , heavy smog days we're I couldn't drive an old car (announced via radio that I didn't have and wouldn't have understood anyways), etc. Somehow I managed not to ever get arrested or even pulled over.

I found a local shop that specialized in classic minis and had them rebuild the front suspension, including a new steering rack and disc brake conversion. The mini proved to be reliable and almost never let me down, with the exception of running out of gas just after I bought it.

In 2012 I got married to a lovely local lady and of course the mini took me there:

In 2013 my work contract was up and it was time to move back to the states. No one would buy my beautiful mini, so I decided to ship it home. I found someone on ADVrider.com that swore he could ship it back home for me. We settled on a Roll On Roll Off shipment and I sent him his money. I don't think I even talked to him on the phone, much less met him in person.

A week before flying home, I drove the mini to a Valparaiso shipping port and straight into a shipping container. The worker there said the shipping company decided to ship the car this way instead, that I should give the keys and not worry about it. I never expected to see my mini again, but I was out of options.

A month later, after I moved back to my dads house in Michigan, I got an angry call from someone telling me to come to the Port of Houston to pick up my stupid little car. That's all the info I got. So I bolted on a hitch to my rental SUV (!), rented out a U-haul utility trailer, and headed down to Houston with my wife and (soon to be adopted) son.
 

It took us half a day to find the right "port of Houston". I quickly found out a port is not somewhere fun to be, especially without proper security clearance and small SUV with a trailer. After dropping my family off in the middle of the street, I was escorted to a warehouse and was surprised to see my mini in one piece. More surprising was that it started right up. Unfortunately my rigged up ramps failed with the mini halfway on the trailer and I was stuck. That's when 5 burly workers, who grew fondly of the weird little car, simply lifted the back of mini up (with me still in it) and pushed it the rest of the way into the trailer. I thanked them, exited quickly, picked up my wife and son still in the middle of the street, and headed home.

Very cool! and lucky.....

The mini originally came with an 850cc series A engine. This was replaced with a 1000cc series A at some point, but it was ridiculously slow. So I bought a 1275 A+ engine / trans from California. This was sold as a rebuildable core,  but it ended up being in great condition. Moving from an A to an A+ series requires changing almost everything. All I kept was the HS4 Carb and the alternator.

I pulled the old engine out the top, but decided it would be easier to put it back in by pulling the subframe, attaching the engine to the subframe and then attaching the whole thing from underneath. This was a mistake...but I got it done.

Great story and I'm waiting for more of it 

Great story!

Been to Santiago many times and always remember the thick fog in the mornings. 

Since then, I installed 10" mini lite wheels to replace the 13" VW bolt pattern wheels that never quite fit in any way. They rubbed on every turn and were just ugly too.  I also replaced the wheel studs and lug nuts for good measure. I called up a local tire shop to see if they could mount 10" tires. They were insistent that it was no problem and that they did it all time. When I showed up with 10" _diameter_ wheels they were shocked and assumed I meant 10" wide wheels. With the help of every tech in the shop they managed to get the tires mounted up.

Here are 10" mini wheels, next to 13" VW wheels, and in the background are 18" wheels off of a Saturn Outlook. No more rubbing with the new wheels.

I also bought a HIF44 carb off of eBay that seemed like a good deal, but after buying the rebuild kit and numerous adapters I could have just bought a kit from one of the mini parts stores for a similar price

so, my next projects are:

-fixing the front subframe connectors that never seemed to line up right after the engine swap 

-tune the new carb

-fix the hood lock mechanisms that snapped off. I've been driving around hoodless for 5 years and it's getting old.

-numerous other projects. 
 

thanks for reading, and I hope to have more updates soon!

Great stories! Will follow along.

More more more!

Mini's are cool...neat story!

I feel bad for not updating this earlier, I really had good intentions. This thread was going to be my inspiration to keep working on the mini, to improve and make it better than ever. Not only that, I wanted to document all the work I've done so I can refer back to it later. But sometimes life gets in the way, and I was feeling I should spend more time with my family and make some big changes.

First things first though, springtime was here and I needed to fix my ailing riding mower. I tore out the "non-serviceable" TuffTorq K46 transaxle, watched some YouTube, ordered parts...then decided just to replace the axle seals and put in new fluid. This wasn't as bad as I thought, but I should have taken more pics.

next up was my beloved Suzuki DRZ400. This had been sitting for years, and I decided now was the time to sell to fund our future endeavors.  Oil change, remove and clean the carb, and it started right up. I drove it around the block and it almost didn't strand me, but a twitchy ignition switch gave some drama to keep it interesting. This really made me sad despite breaking my leg, dislocating my shoulder, and crushing my foot I had lots of good memories on this bike. I was also terrible in taking pictures, and it was worse to work on than I remembered. Here's a dirty float bowel for you:

At this point I felt I was ready to move on to the next stage in life. I'm trying to be more mature in my decision making and get rid of my projects. As I get older I appreciate comfort and dependability over quirkiness  and "adventure".  It was finally time to put on the big boy pants, put away the foibles of my youthful self, put my wife and kids first and make sane logical choices with my money.

Just kidding! I forced my family to fly out to Seattle with me, bought a 39 year old Wanderlodge, and drove home to Michigan. In March. I'm an idiot.

also, I'm keeping the bike 

The Wanderlodge

So, the mini is temporarily sidelined as I figure out my new obsession / family hauler / back up house. I feel the need to talk a little bit about the Wanderlodge and why I find it so fascinating. Actually I’ll probably talk about it a lot. My apologies for threadjacking my own post.

Our Bus is a 1982 PT-40 (Pusher / Rear engine; Tag / rearmost axle to support the portly Detroit diesel engine, and 40 feet overall length). 40 feet is huge! The wheelbase is 257 inches and there are 8 tires. It has a turning radius of a container ship, but that just makes it more interesting and or frightening.

This is the first year Bluebird built the PT series, previous version were  known as FC31 / 33/ 35 (Forward Control = front engine). Wanderlodge’s were built using Bluebirds all American school bus frame and body but were custom built as motorhomes at the factory. The random pic from the internet below shows the body structure of a FC. The steel hoops provide a rigid structure for the steel body panels and some form of rollover protection. I’m not sure how much safer this makes a Wanderlodge over a typical fiberglass bodied motorhome, but it makes me feel better. It also adds up to a staggering 42,000 lb GVWR.

Here are some specs taken from the Blue Box (the owners manual comes in a filing cabinet)

My favorite specs include

- 300 gallon diesel tank (2,100 lbs of fuel or ¾ a tank of fuel weighs more than my mini)

-105 gallon freshwater tank (840 lbs, about double my DRZ) and 154 gallons of waste water tanks.

-180 lb / 44.5 gallons of LPG

-There are 4 Air Conditioners and 11 (?) heaters. Most of them work.

Pretty much everything about this bus is ridiculous, or at least it is in my world.

In reply to DrZRider :

There should be plenty of room to park the Mini in the back of the bus!

Wow, this car has had one epic trip to get where it is now! So... are you going to make a little garage on the back of the bus so you can carry the Mini inside?

Interesting specs for engine oil: straight 30W/40W for 0-100F but 10W-40 for 0-30F only -- and 27 quarts!

Wonderful story so far, thanks for sharing!

I bought the wrong Motorhome....

In reply to newold_m (Forum Supporter) :

The oil requirements for a 2 stroke Detroit diesel are interesting. Ash content is very important, and Delo 100 is one of the only oils that has the right amount (not too much, not too little). It's also straight 40 weight, I'm told to run the block heater if it gets too cold.

Getting rid of 27 quarts of oil is easy, but the thought of trying to dispose of 55 quarts of coolant has me stumped.

Where in MI are you?  There is a pretty good GRM contingent in the state with gatherings occasionally.

Also, love the toys!  Looking forward to following along!

In reply to PMRacing :

I'm just a few miles north of Waterford Hills race track, I take the mini there some times to watch races. A gathering would be cool. Thanks for following along!

I'm going to go way off track Mini stuff here, but I find it too interesting not to share

The Air System

Another feature new to me is the air system for the brakes and suspension. Learning about air brakes  has been fun and adjusting to driving them over “juice” brakes hasn’t been as bad as I thought. The Ridewell air bag suspension is a dream, I feel like I’m riding on a cloud. Or, more accurately, a greyhound bus. Whatever, I love it.

The air system is its own beast in terms of maintenance and understanding. I’m lucky the previous owners did a great job of keeping this up to date. My very basic understanding of the air system is as follows (I could be wrong on all of this):

1. Air Compressor driven off the rear / trans side of the Detroit diesel. The compressor is water cooled by 2 rubber lines that are both nearly inaccessible and right next to the exhaust manifold. This leaves them prone to heat aging and neglect, bursting at an inopportune time and puking out all the engine coolant (which leads the engine to overheating and dying a very quick death.) Luckily my lines were replaced about 8 years ago with quality hoses. Should be good for a while.
2. Then there is a governor (Bendix D-2?) that controls the min and max air pressures.
3. Next is an Air Dryer to prevent water from getting in the lines.
4. Then there are at least 3 air tanks? to hold pressures. I should find this out for sure.
5. From the tanks, air is routed to the service brakes and the spring brakes (parking brake, there is no “park” in the automatic transmission.) Spring brake is on drive / middle axle only.
6. Air is also routed to the air bags (2 to 4 airbags per axle…I think). These raise the bus 6-8 inches off the bump stops and make for a very uncomfortable ride when the bags have zero air in them. There is one switch by the driver that control air to the steer and drive axle and another switch below to control air to the tag axle. Tag axle can be aired down to lessen tire scrub when turning sharply.

There is also an auxiliary air inlet port in the back by the engine. I can either hook a hose up to fill the tires or run some pneumatic tools, or I can hook it up to my garage compressor and fill the tanks without having to run the engine. Future plans include plumbing in a small quiet electric compressor so I can fill the system while at the campground and hooked up to shore power. Less time smoking out my neighbors with the stinky and LOUD diesel engine.

Things that terrify me about the air system include:

1. Everything
2. So much maintenance on things I know nothing about. For example, I need to get under the bus to drain the air tanks of moisture, but I’m afraid to because:
3. The air bags could fail at any time, dropping the bus down and crushing anything and everything underneath it with 42,000 lbs of vintage anger. With the airbags deflated there isn’t enough room to slide under the bus. The correct way to perform maintenance is to have a proper mechanic’s pit. Instead a lot of people use a combination of ramps, 20,000 lb jack stands, and hardwood 4x4s(backup to the backup) all on a reinforced concrete pad. I have none of these things. At least the bus hasn’t put divots in my asphalt driveway yet.
4. The parking brake release is just sticking out of the dash all willy-nilly, inviting every young child or pet around to push and release the brakes, sending the bus down whatever steep hill its parked on. This hasn’t happened yet, but I’m sure it will if I don’t come up with a plan to prevent it. Once the bus is parked for the day I “fan the brakes” to let out all the air pressure from the system, which in turn sets the spring brakes. The spring brakes can’t be disengaged until the air pressure is built up again. But if we are stopped somewhere to relax and enjoy the scenery, I rely on yelling and intimidation to prevent imminent death. Fun times!

Here is one of the drawings of the air system that may or may not be for my bus:

Before I get any further with my incessant rattling on and lose everyone, I'd like to mention Wanderlodge Owners Group. This is a fantastic resource and a great group of people. Piles of information and a whole lot of people willing to help at any hour.

Not only did they help me find my Wanderlodge, before I left I was emailed the names and numbers of 5 different members who were willing to take a call 24/7 if I needed any help along the way (everything went ok). I never would have bought a Wanderlodge without this group existing. It's a locked website though, so you have to email before you can view the whole site (to prevent spam).

I also would like to thank the 2 previous owners, Jim and John, who did fantastic work on this bus and ensured I would have a trouble free trip home. I still pester them with questions. Sorry!

As you are the new owner of a GMC 2 stroke Detroit Diesel 6V92 powered Wanderlodge I would suggest that you go to the Bus Grease Monkey site on You Tube.  Scott specializes on 2 Stroke Detroit Diesels and GMC buses.  He has done quite a lot of work on Wanderlodges over the past year or so.  I do not know why but I find these buses and their engines & chassis facinating.

Superchief

In reply to superchief :

I was going to write about Bus Grease Monkey in my next post, he is a wealth of knowledge and is great at explaining things. Here is my friend Marty and his beautiful PT36 visiting Scott:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRs93B_g3T0