On Friday the 3rd of May 2013 restoration of the mini officially began! Dad joined the team at Kent Volkswagen and they began to strip the mini down to just it’s shell. This is so that new body panels can be added to the mini and then it is ready for a full respray! Dad has been brilliant and got plenty of photos along the way…

This was the first stage of stripping the mini, removing the bonnet to allow for the engine to be removed and removing the boot to allow for the petrol tank to be removed.

These photos were taken at the same time showing the mini from both the front and back.

 This is another view of the front of the mini before the engine was removed. I think at this point the engine was pretty much ready to be removed.

This is with the engine removed from underneath the car. You can see that the front wheels are still attached and that the whole thing is one unit..

These two photos show the interior of the mini. At this point, most things had been removed such as the seats and gear stick. The rest of the interior was still to be removed, such as the dashboard, gauges and the steering wheel (see further down this thread).

Once the exterior of the mini has been completed, we will then begin to think about the interior restoration..

Here are a few more photos of the mini during the stripping down process. As you can see, it really is looking like a shell now! The back wheels are also off and are shown above left . The final parts of the interior have been removed now, like the steering wheel and dashboard so it really is completely empty (photo below right). The petrol tank was siphoned and removed from the boot (below left), from which I was given a free quarter of tank of petrol (Thanks Dad!!). .

Hopefully it shouldn’t be too long before we have the new body panels we need to make Ben’s mini look brand new. Once anymore work has been done on the mini I will update again!