Jim & Mark's Mini & Moke Page

Jim's Moke Progress

September 06 New Shed Had to build a new shed for the Moke. 9 metres x 5 metres plus a 8 metre carport, of course I had to include a sink with hot/cold water and a loo. Never have to leave :-)
Body work I am just about there. Just need to finish a couple of dents and then paint the top sides. I have coated the floor and sides with stone guard to make it a little more practical. (That is the white stuff). Under the floor and guards has all been painted, I put  acoat on the front while I was going.
Head and crank Here is a  12G940 head that mark gave me. I put all new 'S' valves and springs in it. Also added hard vave seats to run unleaded. The crank was from a 1275LS that I once had, should never have sold it. Anyway it has been stroked and hardend so should give me lots of good service.
Block This is a 1275LS block, very sad story. We rebuilt this for my 1275LS and one of the gudgen pins sliped in the little end and put a terible score up the side of the bore. After the motor was stuffed (about 2 months) we pulled it apart to find out what happened. It turned out the the conrod little end had been slightly over size and the press fit was not so pressed.  Not apparant when we were building the motor but I thought the engineering company might have noticed when they pressed them in, that it just fell in. Anyway, this just means I need to go BIG to clean the bore up. I have 73.5mm pistons ready to go. With the stroked crank it will take me to 1430cc
May 05 Floor pans are in Well it took a bit of fiddling but the floor pans are in and the topsides are brazed. I still have a fair bit of work to tidy the underneath up and replace the sill on the fuel tank side and the floor on the battery side. Should have it all done in the next week or so.... then I can move onto making it look good. Oh you can also see we have paint stripped most of the car and I am happy to report there were no nasty surprises found. Looks a bit of a mess at the moment but hopefully not for too long.
New Floor pans arrived Picked up the new floor pans today. Looks like they will fit fairly well. They do not have the raised strips like like it is from the factory but they are made from 1.1mm gal so they should be more than strong enough.
Pulled Sub frames out Managed to get the sub frames out today. No real problem except I had to cut one of the U bolts holding the steering wrack on. All look pretty good and straight. I will pull them down over the next few weeks and give them a clean and paint. I would like to get them powder coated but we will have to see how the money goes.
April 2005 Got my new moke I picked up my new moke. It is a 10/81 California moke that has already been pulled down to a rolling chassis. I seem to have got most of the parts. It is a little unusual in that is has drum brakes and a 1000cc motor. After some investigating I found out Leyland did produce a limited number on California's with 1000  motors particularly towards the end  of the run. What a cool bonnet hey? The biggest part of the project so far is to replace the rusty floor pans. I have made up some templates out of cardboard and a friend is going to fold them up out of gal sheet metal. I am going to try and braze the new floor pans to give a neat finish.