First was another original 850 (blue from the start - RBW 397, see , I can remember that !) - one of the first 30,000 ever built, and so had a thinner/light bodyshell than the later ones. Went through several engines, until I dropped an exhaust manifold nut down one pushrod hole when changing the cam for "948", and which then made its way out of the bottom of the gearbox when it got caught under the crownwheel during a rally! Thought that engine had had it (although it later turned out that the bottom end was still fine after running 3-4 miles with no oil in the sump!), and so built a balanced 1100 with a strapped main bearing on top of an 1100 g/b with a low ratio diff - had to do a lot of bodywork mods to fit the gearshift!
Finally replaced that by a MiniTraveller (FRO 419C!) and fitted the 1100 combo to that - went like sh1t and surprised not a few people (including an MGB owner in France )before I ran it into a wall and put an f/g front on it, and then it got stolen and returned with a buggered engine (my fault for a poor rebuild!). That went into retirement when I got my first, and only ever, company car - a 1300 Allegro, which was nowhere as bad as most seem to make out!
Left the job (before it left me!) and took over my Uncle's old 1300 Marina - had two of those, and well tweaked, they even handled well by the time I had finished with them!
Jumped from that to a Mk 1 Astra 1600 after being peed-off by all the Astra vans that used to rocket past me on the motorways, and tweaked that a lot until I broke the crankshaft! Then 3(!) Mk II 1800 SRi estates - comfortable, bloody quick and very, very reliable even when hammered (and they got a bit of tweaking too)!
Jumped ship again, to VAG. First was a 1.9 TDI Mk IV Golf estate which got bigger injectors and a remap, with Konis and an ARB at the back - also very quick and pretty reliable until the whole engine sagged to one side after an engine mounting failed. It got sold to my neighbour for a pittance (145k miles and so on) and he got another 40k out it before the head went. Now a 2l TDI Mk II Octy estate which did not go well until it got a very good remap to about 185 bhp and an awful lot of torque - which helped me blow the turbo one cold and wet Sunday night and the clutch just afterwards (all very expensive to fix!), but now fine and goes like sh1t off a shovel at 119k miles (just run-in by now!).
And then, early on, there was a CA Dormobile used for a holiday to France the year I left college, a Austin C4 mini-bus that we used for another French holiday and then for "paying jobs" like helping people to move (after I put another engine it because previous owner had let it blow a core plug); and the infamous Yellow & Black Minor Van bought for £50 to replace the Traveller when it got stolen - kept that for years and lent it to various people on the basis that they just kept it taxed and running and so on (that finally got sold to a policeman when the clutch master cylinder went west).
): - gearbox went "silly" on the Van and the stick wobbled all over the place. Repaired it with the gear cluster out of the Mini box that got replaced when I fitted the 1100 box to Mini No 1 because they were actually identical! - dirt cheap repair and it was great afterwards!
