I’m talking Mini / car stuff again so be warned, all non-car types! So anyway, last week I put Sylvester in for MOT and it failed. I was expecting it to fail anyway since I knew there was a bunch of stuff broken, but luckily I don’t think it failed on very much.

The biggest thing that it failed on was no doubt the rear subframe being excessively corroded. Luckily, however, "The Mig" (my other Mini) has a really great rear subframe which was destined to go into Sylvester, it seems. This Saturday was the day I chose to remove the subframe and depending on the weather and how the general operation went depended on how much I was hoping to get done. Amazingly, between 7.30am (yes, that early I started!) and about 1pm, I had both subframes removed from both cars, with the help of two friends! Super-fast!

I thought I’d take the opportunity when doing this task to document and talk about how to actually go about the process, so here it goes.

Sylvester was a running Mini, so everything was still attached unlike The Mig which is basicllay a rolling shell. Removing these things took some time and it really made a difference to the speed at which we managed to get the subframes off. Anyway, without going into too much detail, removing the wheels is one of the first jobs.

After that, remove the exhaust system. We managed to remove just the backbox section of Sylvester which helped a lot and speeded things up even further. Once that was done we disconnected the battery, poked the positive lead through the boot floor and pulled it out the other side to ensure its clear of anything that it might get caught on.

Next was to remove the handbrake cable and hydraulic brake lines for the rear brakes. The handbrake cable was really knackered on Sylvester so we decided just to cut through it which was easy, although we left the front section still intact. The brake lines on the back was fairly easy to remove - simply just undo the brake union on the 3-way splitter which was mounted on the rear subframe itself. Once it was undone, just bend the brake pipe very carefully out of the way just by a little bit to make sure it doesn’t get caught.

You can see in this photo the 3-way brake splitter and the handbrake cable still intact. On the
far left is the exhaust pipe and hanging down is the battery cable. The bracket at the top on the left
is my after-market exhaust mount hanger bracket.

Now we’re onto the mounts. After a lot of WD40 and some waiting around we went to tackle the front trunnion bolts. These go between the very front of the rear subframe and into the back of the heel board in the seal. The top two on both sides were loosened and removed quite easily, but unfortunately the lower two bolts on both sides sheered off. That sucks, but we can live with it.

This shot shows my lower bolt sheered off, and the top bolt loosened ready to come off.

Next up was loosening and moving the fuel tank out of the way to get to the nuts holding on the remaining subframe mounts and the shock absorber mounts. We left the shocks ’till last since I know that they would be quite easy to remove and they can easily support the weight of the subframe.

After the tank was moved out of the way it was a two-man job to remove the remaining two mounts and 4 bolts holding the subframe on. A spanner on the top with a friend holding and a socket and ratchet on the bottom. All 4 bolts and nuts were removed with ease which was great.

These are two of the 4 bolts for the rear mounts on the subframe. This is the fuel-tank side
with the fuel tank moved out of the way

Finally, then, was the shocks. We placed axle stands under the subframe itself (as well as the ones under the car already) and made sure they were tight under so it didn’t drop too much. I carefully removed the last two nuts holding the shocks on while Ben and Ian were under the subframe in a position ready to catch it depending on which way it was going to go (with the help of the axle stands already in place). Minutes later and hey-presto, it was off.

We dragged the subframe from under the car. And we’re done! Watch out for part two where I re-fit the rear subframe again, with a new handbrake cable, new rear brake shoes and wheel cylinders and new subframe bolts and mounts all round. Hopefully it’ll go as smoothly as this did!

Here we are with it completely removed. And Ian looking very
pleased with himself!