the alpine garage

  Rear subframe in all its glory.  Hana Demon Dog is the shop supervisor When we last checked in with our heroine, we had refreshed/restored the front end including the motor. If I could chop the car in half, we would win Cars & Coffee. Unfortunately, Solomon withstanding, life don't work like that. So onto the rear! As I mentioned earlier, this is a 1972 Mini, so it doesn't have a unibody. What holds the body shell up is two subframes, one in front and one in back. This is a British car and I think they used wooden rulers for measurements to put the motor together. The front subframe, while nasty, was actually structurally sound and cleaned up pretty well, albeit with a lot of work. It had the benefit of 50 years of oil leaks coating everything up front. The rear subframe .... not so much. Besides the potential horrors of the rear subframe, there were other issues. Among them the battery box which hangs down below the boot (trunk for you Yankees). Yeah, a bunch of rusty sp