New parts

Having squeezed in at least a hour a day this last week, we are still moving forward. Quite close on finishing the front with just a couple of smalll spots to fill and the (subtle) re shaping of the outer bottom vents (tapered the vertical outer edge left & rightside) and finally made a decision/start on blending the leading wheel arch edge into the front valence.

With an added tickling of a few high spots at the back of a front wing and a little attention on the lip for the bonnet on the wings. I'm not feeling to bad about progress and loving the over shap line down the wing, it will be smoothed out a bit more later. I might have gone past a "dead line" for finishing the body work, well it's 13th-27th Feb. If I'm buying primer this weekend because I feel I will need it soon, that will be good. It just takes as long as it takes, a few more minutes now is easier than re working and re spraying a whole panel

New parts are still be aquired, a complete brake servo and pedal to swop on my pedal box. Which is all cleaned up and re sprayed, lovely job done me thinks.

More wheels ! Yep picked up some 6" widem dished mini lights, well 3, so I need to find another one at some point. Crappy photo but I keep forgetting when its light and I really need to take a moment and pop one on to see if we can get the arches a bit more filled up. If they don't and we have to go for the full deep dish ally I will prob get the fourth then sand blast them and re powder coat them to fund the next set of wheels, and yes I'll powder coat them, can't wait till the oven is set up and have a play. Sand blasting is brilliant to revive old parts, but there are some brilliant powder paints out there. The engine bay could be getting blinged with painted brackets and covers.
Here is the current set of wheels on the left (5 x 12 no off set) and the new wheel on the right (6 x 12 un known off set but has 1" rim before the wheel centre).

Another blow

Yep, a blow with the hammer and dolly. Had a really good stint with the hammer and managed to smooth out the bottom of the front valance where the over riders had been twisted raising the metal around the fixing holes and depressing it on the opposite side. Then I moved on to 2 dents in the engine bay cross rail. Which led me onto the holes for the bonnet catch, which are lovely and crisp now. So feeling a bit sourcy I spotted a slight creese on the top front beed.
Pat on the back, not bad progress. Its well worth having a go as its much quicker than filling, I have haad a bit of practise now, but if the paint is off you have nothing to loose as you can always dent it back in if you go to far.
The dents never show up in my pictures, furthest away is a 60mm round dent, in the middle is a raised line and closest is a dent on the front edge of the hole approx 10mm wide and down by a good 5mm. 

I wasn't quick enough and this is where the dent was. It was a strange shallow crease, but now all be it a few raised spots its all gone and wasn't much to rough sand the worst  level ready for a OCD moment of needing every thing smooth.

Yep, got the filler out to do the finishing touch on my bits and smooth off the rest of the rail ! Can't help my self.

Pottering

Over the pst few months, I have still been working on parts of the mini. Through the summer the roof, front wings and rear valance have been cleaned up smoothed and primed. The priming went fairly well for being in a gazebo with sides, until the last session when the gazebo went for a wonder down the road. There was no damage to the mini but the gazebo took a pounding.
Here is the roof before priming.

Oh, looks like I did the rear pillars as well :)
Due to a fortunate turn of events I ended up with a 3m x 2m "shed" more like a small single garage. So after I finished building the kids a summer house I managed to clear a space and get the new shed up. After a few weeks the new shed had shelves, racks and a mini in it, all ready for winter.
With the mini's boot hard against the rear of the shed it was finally time to attack the front valance under seal. Which much to my joy came off quite quickly, followed by a blast with the grinder and the weird paint removing disc. The whole front end is back to bare metal ... ok there was a "few" corners to do by hand/2-3 hours of corners and lips.
Having done a bit more pondering on the overall look of the front end I went off to the scrap yard to pick up a few goodies. I came away with 2 ford focus side indercators orange and 1 clear, 4 side indicator plugs, a glove box handle from a MG 45 maybe? 2 glove box lights with switches and a tray that goes in the din2 stereo slot, finally 2 mini one air vents.
The front indicators are going to be the ford focus triangular ones, 2 or 4 is still to be decided but either way a metal plate is going over the old indicator hole.
Templates have been made and tested to ease the sharp lower edge for the left and right vents in the front valance, with the aim to create a subtle curve accross the bottom edge of these 3 vents but keeping the beveled lead into the opening. Hoping to shape the metal for that this week. Talking of metal work I think its time for the hammer and dolly to come out again as the engine bay cross rail could do with a little work, and the front valance after closer inspection seems to be floored from the factory so it will prob get a little tickle with the hammer to sharpen up some lines.