Its been a while since I acquired this car, and I've done little to it so far.  I had the rotting tires removed from the rims, and then I moved the car into my garage.  Me and my son spent a little time just disassembling a few things like the carb filters and the rotting spark plug wires etc.  He is eager to get to some real work on this car though (he's only 6.5 years old now!).

Thats going to change soon.  We recently had a garage sale and made more room in the garage.  As we are still on a pretty tight budget, I am thinking about things I can do that don't require much money.  An engine rebuild right now is probably out, but, we can start to work on the chassis.  There's much rust!  Also the interior is pretty shot, including a floor pan on the passenger side that is pretty much rusted away.

So I'm thinking, the first step will be to get the car up on some jack stands and/or wood/bricks so we can get under it easily.  It would be nice to remove the body and raise that up high enough to work on all of the chassis, but I'm not sure how necessary or easy that will be.  If I do this, I will probably fashion some wood saw-horses to support the body, and then drop the chassis back down.  Maybe I can avoid a full engine rebuild and work on it while the body is off?

The floor pan appears to be the worst rust area.  It needs to be removed and replaced.  The rest, I think, just needs to be gone over with wire brushes and such to remove any rust flakes and then painted with Por 15.

Let the fun begin.

Rust in piece.

I haven't had much time to work on the Mini.  Switching jobs abruptly took the wind out of my sails, but, at least I am working from home again 100%.

This last weekend I had the goal of simply moving the darn thing into a better position on the driveway from where the tow truck dumped it.  But the brakes were locked up.  So, figured that was a good place to start.

There's a fair amount of rust, but, I was able to back the shoes off from the drum by turning the star adjusters.  After that, it was able to roll... kind of.  All four tires are of course flat!

 I don't think the floor carpeting and foam is salvageable..

 Driver side floor panel is pretty rusted, not sure if its savable.

Passenger side however is shot.  Its hard to see, but, there's a rusted through hole where you can see the concrete below.  So, at some point, a new floor panel will have to be spot welded into place.

Engine code

Its hard to see it, but the model number of this engine is B6315215.

Google tells me this is a 1970 model with dual relief and single ports.

Which means I can, in theory, register this car as a 1970 model, and avoid smoging.  The trick here is to be one of the forst 500 people to request a SPCNS from the DMV at the beginning of the year, thus allowing you to later get the car examined and then registered based on the engine.

Got it!

Finally retrieved my treasure.  It wasn't easy and required three guys to laboriously move it into position just to get it onto the tow truck.  The wheels of course were locked, even after a liberal whacking with a sledgehammer.

Now the fun begins.

First look

I'm the lucky new owner of a Bremen Mark Mini kitcar!  I haven't gotten it over to my house yet, but I did snap a few pics from where it currently sits in my ex-neighbor's back yard.

Underneath all that dirt and crap (literally) is a cute little car.  

There's a lot of leaves and dirt even though it was covered with a tarp (which started falling apart when I pulled it off). 

Its a type 1 engine, with dual carbs.  A bit different looking than the other Mark Mini's I've seen on the internet.  Its a bit rusty in parts but overall it doesnt look that bad.

I forgot to check for the engine model numbers to see what year it actually is.  The pink slip says its registered as a '79 but I'm wondering if this engine is actually older (I hope it is).  Would be nice if I could prove its a '76 or older so I can avoid smog check.

From what I understand, VW's in 79 had fuel injection, which this clearly does not have, and the chassis is not a super beetle (no struts on the front suspension).