01x08 - Austin Mini Mk1 Part 2

[bunniefuu]

Welcome to Wheeler Dealers, the show
that's mad about modern classics.

Our challenge is to find a car and do it
up for no more than £1,000.

Now, you're probably wondering what these
bits are.

Well, they used to be bolted to the cute
little mini that I bought for £300.

And they're just some of the
parts that my mechanic, Ed

China, has had to replace
to bring the car up to scratch.

Our cheeky little mini cost just £300.

A proper bargain, but I have to admit it
did have a few problems.

Well, one enormous one.

The terrible bodywork.

Almost every panel was rotten
and my mechanic, Ed, faced

the near impossible task
of beating the dreaded rust.

And he's still a long way off.

So far, he stripped
back the bodywork to the

basics and removed
the glass where he could.

The passenger door has
been rebuilt and the rusty

A-frame cut out and
replaced with new steel.

So far, it really hasn't cost that much.

Just a few quid for the sanding pads and
the replacement of steel panels.

Paul Ed probably wants to
chuck in the towel, but there's

still plenty more to do before
the minute will be finished.

I reckon this car will look fantastic if
we ever get there.

And it will turn a decent profit when I
come to sell it later on.

But we're still only halfway through the
work and I think it would be a while

before I can start advertising for a buyer
for our car.

However, I do think we're in for a tidy
profit.

Before that, Ed's got to mask up the car
and give it a spray.

He's also got to clean the engine bay and
give that a brush up.

Now, while he's doing that, I'm off to
meet a guy called Don Gregory.

He owns one of the most pristine minis in
the country.

Don,

the Mini, an iconic car not only of my
generation, but previous generations,

and it seems everyone loved the Mini.

What made it so special?

I think in its day, it was way ahead of
its time in design.

It was a car for all classes, a class of
society of car, for the working man.

It was a car to complete
the third sort of coming

over that day and the early
German Messerschmitts.

In terms of mechanical engineering as
well, it was a marble.

Take the engine, for example.

It was planted east to west with the
radiator to the side.

The body was a chassisless body.

It was all welded up.

It welded outside, seems, for ease of
construction.

It was way ahead of its time.

You've had this car stripped to pieces.

You obviously
know... It's a bad shell.

Every nut and bolt have been placed on it.

Right, so you know where the problem areas
are.

What are the problem areas?

Everywhere, sometimes, in minutes.

Look on the engine.

You find oil leaks.

Head gaskets tend to leak a little bit.

Dynamers tend to squeak a little bit
sometimes.

Fan belts jump off.

Now, you've just gone... The oil leaks,
mechanical, mechanical, mechanical.

Surely the biggest problem
with an old mini-mark one

like this has got to be the
old grated brass, hasn't it?

The rust is as well.

There's a problem.

But this one took me four and a half years
to do.

It's got two-gallon of wax oil in it.

Every silk, cavity orifice, I can get the
wax oil in there.

It's in there to keep the rust at bay.

Your car is stunning.

It is the best example of a mini I've ever
seen in my life.

If I drive it at one mile an hour,
can I have a go?

Not a problem at all, Mike.

Thank you very much.

Up into fourth, foot flat to the floor,
into the tight little chicane.

This is taking me back a bit.

Turning in left, turning in right,
tight little chassis.

A glance over at the speedo and I'm doing
17 miles an hour.

You want to drive it with a bit of
dignity.

You don't want to push it too hard.

It's an old car, but you also feel that
you should show it a little bit of respect.

It's quite a miserable day out here.

It's developed a little bit rainy this
afternoon.

And these are cross-ply tyres and they do
tend to drift and wander all over the road.

They seem to have a mind of their own.

It's a car that everyone remembers.

Now, this car is in stunning condition.

Dom has spent four and a half years
labouring away in the back of his garage,

giving this car everything that it
deserves.

He's done a full bodywork metal respray.

It's been bought all the way back to its
original monocoque and then repainted again.

And he's done an exceptional job.

Our car, unfortunately, is nothing like
this.

Our car is going to need a whole heap of
work.

Now, Dom had four and a half years.

We've got about four and a half minutes to
get our car to the kind of condition of

this one, which, on the face of it,
you may think is an impossibility.

However, I think that we can get our
paintwork looking and feeling as good as

this, with a little bit of hard work and a
little bit of graft.

Well, quite a bit, actually.

Restoring this Mini was always going to be
a mammoth task.

When it came in here, it was a total rust
bucket.

But after many hours of hard work doing
welding, grinding, priming, filling and

priming again, this
car is finally looking

like an actual Mini,
which is fantastic news.

And now comes the exciting part,
actually getting to paint it.

And I've got a couple of jobs to do before
I can do that.

As usual, it's the boring,
tedious, unglamorous

jobs that you must
give absolutely 100% to.

Why?

Because if I get any of this masking
wrong, all the effort that's gone into the

respray might be in jeopardy with one
small blemish.

And I'm not joking.

You have been warned.

Being a fan of Blue Peter, of course,
I know all about sticky back plastic,

although this is actually masking tape,
that's close enough.

And I have actually
omitted the adult supervision,

but, you know, I'm
being a bit daring.

Here's my other little tip for masking up.

Buy a roll of paper,
rather than using bits of old

newspaper, and try to enjoy
this final stage of preparation.

Nothing can escape the masking,
even little things like windscreen wipers.

Every single opening in the car has to be
covered.

I've finished wrapping the car,
and I'm getting very excited indeed,

because it's nearly time to get it
painted.

The best way to do this normally is by
using a booth.

So I'm not going to do
it myself, I'm going to get

it to a professional friend
of mine who has one.

Hello, Duke, how's it going?

Excellent.

Well, you have to be honest with me here,
because I'm a bit worried.

You saw how nasty this car was when we
first got it in.

First of all, there's these bits around
here, around the back of the wings.

Are you happy that's all nice now?

Yeah, that's really good now.

And of course, remember,
this panel here was

pretty, I hope it was a
massive hole in here.

It's a reconstruct on this that's
completely, so that was pretty cool.

Are you happy with that?

No, I'm happy with that.

That looks good.

The door aligns properly now.

Excellent.

I'm glad you noticed that.

I spent a lot of time on that one.

So basically, the car is ready.

The prep is done.

The prep is done.

Excellent.

It's ready to go, apart from panel line.

It's vital that I do this
job, because otherwise

I might waste all the
work I've done up till now.

What this does is gets
rid of all the dirt and

contaminants that might
still be on the bodywork.

And that means that when the paint goes
on, it stays on and looks lovely.

This is a tack cloth, and as the name
suggests, it's slightly sticky.

And as the last thing
before painting, what it

does is picks up and
even tiny little dots of dust.

Well, I'm done.

So if you're all set, I better leave you
to it.

Thank you, Ed.

We'll get on with it.

See you later.

You can hear it's really, really noisy,
and there's two reasons for that.

One of them is the
compressor, because he's using

air to actually throw
the paint onto the car.

And the other noise is the extractor fan,
because he's painting in a nice big box.

Obviously, if he kept painting without
getting the air out, he just choked to death.

So obviously, all the excess
paint and fumes have to be

extracted out through a load
of filters into the atmosphere.

The paint he's using is called 2-pack,
and that means it's made out of two

different chemical components
which are stuck together and

mixed around before they're
actually painted onto the car.

Now, it's actually very poisonous.

It's based loosely on
cyanide, which is why he's

in a special booth and
wearing a special suit.

I got d*ck to paint this
car in the original green,

so he didn't actually
have to redo the interior.

But it looks lovely.

It looks like a lovely period car.

Well, I think he's pretty
much done now, but I

can't go in there because
the paint has to dry.

So rather than watch it dry, I'm only
going to have a really long cup of tea.

That's it for now.

Join us in part two and
see how the mini that

started so rotten looked
after the paint dries.

And I go hunting for a buyer.

Stay with us.

Welcome back to Wheeler Dealers.

The challenge is to buy and restore a car
like this mini for a total of £1,000.

Our ratty mini, which
I paid just £300 for, is

nearing the end of its
difficult transformation.

Ed has been hard at it for
days, grinding welding and

preparing the car for its total
respray, which is now finished.

I want to turn all our
effort into profit when

I try to sell the car later
on in the programme.

Well, I finally got the mini
back to the workshop and

I suppose you're going to
want to see the end result.

Take a look.

It's stunning.

Look at this paintwork.

You would never guess this car was over 30
years old.

It's almost back to showroom condition.

And what I've got to
do now is put the lights

on, the handles on and
just put it back together.

Once you've connected up the wiring on the
car, it makes sense to test it now rather

than putting everything else back on and
then finding it doesn't work.

OK, let's give it a go.

Ignition, side lights, dip beam and main
beam.

Fantastic after all said.

And then we have a lovely brand new bumper
for our mini.

There are three main areas I'm going to
concentrate on.

The first being the
air filter, next is the

radiator and the last
is the rocker cover.

First of all, I'm going to give them a
thorough clean and then if it needs it,

which I think they probably do, I'm going
to give them a bit of a paint as well.

The next job then is a good clean.

Not difficult, just dirty.

It certainly doesn't look like this car
has been looked after too well.

It hasn't been cleaned that many times for
the looks of it.

This is quite a kind of little gadget.

It's basically a paraffin g*n,
rather like a paint spraying g*n.

It has a vessel here
which holds liquid of any

kind, not many cleaner
or water in this case.

And it has a little rod inside
there so when you blow air

across it sucks out of the water
and blows it down onto here.

So I'm going to use it like a mini
domestic steam cleaner.

Bit of a cheat but hopefully it will make
my life a little easier.

Degreasing an engine always shows up the
areas which are letting the side down.

In this case it's the coil, the air filter
and the rocker cover.

So I'm taking them out to prepare them for
stripping and painting.

This is the air cleaner.

You can see it's supposed to be black but
it's actually, the paint's peeled up and

it's gone a bit rusty and a bit
unpleasant.

So I'm just going to grind it back and
then repaint it in satin black.

It'll be lovely.

In the short amount
of time we've got, this

engine is really getting
the star treatment.

First of all I use a grinder to remove the
worst of the rust.

And then acid etch followed by a good coat
of grey primer.

While those other parts
are drying I'm just going

to have a go at painting
the block on the head.

Because they look pretty nasty and so
again, bit of black.

This time I'm using enamel paint and
brushing it on.

I would definitely get a better finish if
I spray painted this.

But that would mean having to mask up the
whole of the area.

So this is when it's quite handy.

It has to do with the brush.

You get enthusiasts spending weeks and
weeks doing this kind of stuff.

Engine dressing for
shows is just huge and

it is a real investment
of time and energy.

But it does always make a difference and
it really finishes off the car.

The primer is now dry on the parts I took
out.

And after a couple of coats of black and
half an hour to dry they can go back on.

For the final touch the HTDs were a bit
old and crusty so I stuck in a new set.

And that pretty much is it.

What a pleasant surprise.

It looks great.

It seems that every job I do on this car
just makes it look better and better.

I'm so chuffed with that it was well worth
the extra effort.

I think now it needs a bonnet.

It's quite awesome to think that this is
the last job on this car.

It has been a long time coming,
I tell you.

I have two cups of tea and a whole slice
of cake after this.

Not surprising perhaps,
the bonnet takes a bit of

fiddling before the old hinges
can be persuaded to work.

But once they do it goes on a treat.

Fantastic.

The mighty mini is finished.

Let's have a look at what we've achieved.

A few weeks ago I was lucky
enough to stumble across

this completely original
car on a local paper.

Ok, it was covered in rust and the paint
was as flat as a pancake.

But it drove well and it really was a
lovely little car full of character.

The owner wanted £350 quid but I beat him
down to £300 because I knew we needed

every penny to give this car a professional
respray and stay within our £1000 budget.

Ed spent days taking the car back to
metal.

The A-frame was cut out and replaced.

Then it was sanding, sanding and more
sanding.

Eventually the car was ready to be masked
up and resprayed.

A few coats of the old Austin Mini Green
and she came out looking great.

Then it was time to bolt on all the bright
work and give it a good polish.

Finally Ed tidied up the engine bay and
the Mini was ready for its close up.

Overall we spent £30 on
materials, £80 on panels, the

paint was £150 and the
labour for the respray £400.

Bumpers and bright work
were £140 and in the original

purchase price we came
in at £100 over budget.

Now that's pretty good going.

Ed, how are you fella?

I'm doing mighty fine.

I'm gobsmacked.

It's a wind up surely.

That's the same number played on a
different car.

This is a product of many, many hours at
work.

Nobody's going to pop out in a minute and
say this is all a joke.

Ed, I am speechless.

That's great.

I'm very, very proud of this car.

I mean it's spent hours and hours and
hours of work on this.

But it is a fantastic transformation.

It's gorgeous and the car was rubbish to
start with so I'm really pleased with this.

It just looks amazing.

Ed, well done.

I want to hug you but I'm not going to.

It looks fine.

Does it go well?

Drives beautifully.

Absolutely wonderful is how to describe
how I'm feeling at the moment.

I can't believe the total transformation
this little mini has undertaken.

When I first walked into the garage and
see this car and I was gobsmacked,

I truly was gobsmacked.

I'm still a little bit emotional over it.

Ed has worked tremendously hard.

I know he's had his work cut out for him.

But he's done an amazing job.

What a transformation.

The original design of this car,
Alex's Agones, will be up there now

feeling as proud as punch
that we're still driving one of his

original cars down the road
and it looks in stunning condition.

It's not so much about how this car makes
you feel.

This is a piece of motoring history and it
makes the people around you feel happy.

When you drive this car around,
people are going to wave and point and

smile at you and say,
there goes a guy who kept

that piece of motoring
history on the road.

And I can only take my hat off to Ed and
say, well done.

Top work, fella.

Now, we bought this car originally for a
measly 300 quid, but it was a wreck.

It was a total mess.

Ed's worked his heart out with a transformation
and I reckon now we're in the money.

We can ask 1,400 quid for
this car and I should think

anyone would be proud to
own it around that kind of money.

The Mini looks great, but how can I get
top dollar for it when I want to sell it?

Well, this Mini is an enthusiast car,
the kind of person who knows exactly what

they're looking at, but will also appreciate
the amount of work that's gone into it.

So I'm going to advertise
it in one of those specialist

Mini magazines that you
see in the newsagents.

I'm going to pay for a full colour ad.

That way potential buyers get an idea of
what a minter she really is.

I've had plenty of calls on
the Mini and this guy here,

called Darren, he's come
all the way from Guernsey.

No, I call that keen, wouldn't you?

Anyway, he knows Mini's inside out and
he's got a pocket full of cash.

I reckon he's ready to do a deal.

Wish me luck.

Darren, I really appreciate you coming all
this way.

It's a long way to come as well,
isn't it?

You're welcome.

So, what do you reckon?

Looks really nice.

What have you had done to it?

Well, since we had it, we've done a lot,
believe it or not.

I'd like to say my hands
are dripping with blood

from the amount of work
that I put into this car.

But actually, I had
a guy called Ed who

stripped it back to bare
metal and repainted it.

We put a new A-frame in around the other
side, which is this A-pillar here.

And it's shaped like an A, so it's like a
little framework that goes in there.

And that was to remount that door.

We've tidied up the wings.

There was stuff that had to be done on the
wings.

We've completely overhauled the bodywork,
re-sprayed it all.

The doors had putty in them.

Not like filler.

It was like putty, like soft stuff.

So we had to dig all that out,
refill them and repaint them.

And I think we've made a cracking job.

So round the front, we've done new front
bumper.

We've tidied up all the paintwork round
here.

That's the A-frame that we replaced.

Along down the back here,
not only did we repaint all of the

back, we also put a new
boot lid in, which is quite tidy.

New bumper.

All new bright work round the back as
well.

So it's nice and shiny.

Impressive?

Not bad.

But under the bonnet,
because it's pretty impressive,

it was absolutely rotten
under here, so look at this.

Nice, shiny engine.

We actually repainted the engine,
put some new HT leads in, new coil,

given it a small service and it goes like
a train.

Yeah, it looks like a decent job.

It is a decent job.

It's a decent car that needs a new owner.

So it's deal time.

What do you reckon?

I like it.

You're asking 1,400?

Yeah.

What would you say to 12?

No, I'd want to go... but I won't.

Come on, you can do a bit better than
that.

About 1,350.

1,350 and it's a cracking little car for
that money.

I've spent a fortune on it, honestly,
I have.

Well, I do like it, but I've come a bit of
a way, Mike.

What about 1,300?

1,300 quid.

Tempting.

Tempting enough for me to say,
yes, go on, well done.

Cracking.

Great.

At 1,300 quid, I've made a couple of
hundred quid profit.

All right, you might win more playing
bingo, but it's still a profit and I'm

really chuffed that we turned a lemon into
a peach.

And you can't put a price on that.

So that's it for this edition of Wheel of
Dealers.

You know what, I still
can't believe how well this

little mini turned out and
how well the deal went.

Fantastic.

You make sure you join us again when we'll
have some more cars in need of TLC.

We'll see you soon.

Tala.