The Mini is now occupying 40 or so square feet of my driveway, which is to say the trip to Seattle to retrieve it went well, and the car got me home. On first in-person inspection, I was pleasantly surprised at how well the car showed; usually photos hide blemishes but in this case there just weren’t that many to hide. The guy the seller had hired to restore the car was there to walk me through it and take it on a test drive, and I got my first taste of what a hopped up 1275 motor can do when it’s pushing less than 1300 lbs of car. The cliches all hold true: it handled as if it were on rails, and the front wheel drive is a very different animal from the Alfa experience I’m used to.

The Italian Job, including a truck for all that gold. An exercise in contrasts.

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The summer officially began on July 2, my last day of semi-regular employment and first day of a period of vacation and car project activity. The vacation was spent in and around Seattle, which lead me (inevitably) to browse the Seattle craigslist postings in the weeks leading up to the trip. I had a romantic notion of finding something fun and interesting and driving it home, forfeiting the return plane ticket in favor of a fun little ride to complement my current rag-tag assortment of Alfas. I thought about looking at this BMW 2000 sedan, then focused my search on a Dodge A100 van or splittie VW bus. Then the Motherlode 400 happened, and I found myself newly afflicted and looking for a classic Mini, ideally an early MK1 or an Innocenti variant. Any commentary I could make on the appeal of a classic Mini would go into a great pile of redundancy that has been accumulating for over 50 years. What I didn’t want, however, was a car that had been given the usual treatment with Union Jacks or checkered flag motifs adorning otherwise clean panels, billet under the hood, VTEC conversions, etc. I did want something that was more suitable for modern traffic, though, meaning as big an engine as possible, disk brakes, safety belts… What I found was this:

1959 Morris Mini, looking very clean in off-white and black

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This year I decided to participate in the Motherlode 400. The Motherlode is a 2-day gathering of vintage rides, mostly from Europe, and mostly of the sports car variety (though this year’s event did have a couple notable exceptions in the form of a ’76 Firebird and a Citroen Mehari, among various other outliers). Each day involves about 200 miles of backroads of the California Sierras and foothills, thus the 400 moniker. Elevations range from barely over 1000 feet to the rarefied airs at Sonora Pass at 9400 feet, with lots of twisties and single-lane roads twixt the two.

My intent for this year’s Motherlode was to give the Sprint 1600 its débutante party, but alas that plan was thwarted by a failed front main seal (I think), which caused oil to spew out onto just about everything in the engine compartment, including the exhaust headers.

Waiting for AAA. You can just see the oil dripping from the rails. Good times.

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I see you upon the street, you look so sweet,
I see you with your dancin’ feet, yeah.
Said are you ready, said are you ready to stop,
Said are you ready, said are you ready to stop,
I said stop.

A TI report, brought to you by the English Beat, of course.

I’ve had to keep the Giulia TI up on jackstands for the past couple weeks while I waited for a new front left caliper. It would have been a quicker turnaround but I wasn’t paying much attention when I removed the old caliper and didn’t notice that, at some point between 1966 and 2008, someone had swapped out the original little ATEs for the bigger ones found on the 2-liter Alfas of the 70s.  I wasn’t overly bothered by this discovery, since having bigger brakes is never a bad thing. The caliper I replaced was completely frozen; I’m really looking forward to stopping in something resembling a straight line.

The calipers were easy to get off and even easier to get back on, so there really isn’t much to tell; this is already the long version of a very short story so we’ll leave it at that as far as the brakes are concerned. I’ll have a road test tonight and hopefully everything will feel good and solid.

Having to remove 2 of the 4 wheels on the car gave me all the excuse I needed to finally scrub all the rims down, brush and clean with some highly noxious paint prep stuff, and rattle can them from gray and crusty to silver and shiny. This was a quick and dirty medium-term fix to address the last really ugly part of this car. Maybe when I replace the tires I’ll do a proper job of media blasting and powder coating. Or not – they look fine from 20 feet away.

As seen from the front....

... and as seen from the rear. This once-ratty TI is nearly ready for the prom.

I’m glad to have the TI back in service and give the Super (yet another) well-deserved break.