Restoration Day Three - Front Subframe

The weather has finally turned its face towards spring here - the lack of freezing rain, high winds and frozen fog (cold fog, btw, much harder to drive in than freezing rain), makes for a much less stressful drive to my father's place (2+hrs) to work on my Mini. Hopefully over the summer I'll be able to make more frequent trips, but it looks like it's going to be about a year before "Nacho" is on the road.

Yeah, I named my Mini "Nacho". Once the restoration is complete I have another name picked out, but for now this is Nacho Mini. As in, it's "not-your" Mini, it's mine. The final name won't be so cheesy.

This trip up I got my hands dirty. My father's machine shop business is now in full force and keeps him pretty busy, so while he works, I get my own "kid table" within yelling distance of him in the workshop. This also means I get to do all the grunt work needed before my dad helps again with the major work next winter.

I'm finding it amazing how quickly the hours go by while I'm trying to get 30 yr old rusted bolts out of their holes. And I'm learning at every step - leverage, torque, resistance...physics is phun!

Here are some exciting (and over-exposed, still working on taking decent pictures) shots of my work on the front subframe:

The front subframe - before:

And from the other side:

My tools of destruction:

Mid-destruction:

All apart:

And from the other side: