Look, calving season on the prairies!!

Say hello to 'TARDIS' a 1968 Morris 1000 Traveller. The history, as far as I can piece it together, is that a doctor brought it to Canada, directly from UK, maybe 20 years ago. It's still right hand drive. It was deposited on a used car lot in Vermilion, Alberta, where the last owner's father bought it. He used it for about 5 years then parked it because it 'needed new brake lines'. At that time it had only 35 K miles on the clock, had never been modified or messed with in any way. All the parts it came with from the factory were still there...amazing. Of course, the entire brake problem turned out to be leaking rear wheel cylinders which could have been fixed for about $20. Stupid.

When I got the car home I started up the engine for the first time in 5 years. After 20 minutes of running, and fiddling, it settled down to a nice idle, demonstrating that it really is a low-miles car. 

Unfortunately the car was improperly stored these last 15 years. It was raised up on blocks in a backyard. This in itself is not a bad thing, but being exposed to the sun for so long took its toll on the paint and rubber seals. When the windscreen seal shrank it allowed water in which soaked the carpets, and, well you've all seen that mess before. Round the back the valence panels and area around the fuel tank were completely packed with mud which held the moisture against the steel.  Fortunately, restoring Mini’s is cheap! A couple of hundred Canuk $ will fix all the damaged panels. 

Don’t bother checking back to this page for updates, it will be at least a year before there’s room in the workshop for this project.