Latest update: 12 Aug 1999
The rear parcel shelf has been made, and speakers fitted to it. Hope its ok since its impossible to remove the speakers now. At least not without damaging the grilling. A trick of the trade: don't cut out the holes for the speakers in the canvas/leather before you staple it to the board. It will never be in the right place. After you staple it well all around, turn it face down, and use a sharp scalpel to cut the hole just where it should be. Remember to firmly press the board down so that it doesn't move around, and that you cut just at the very edge of the speaker hole.
I also made a special tool for putting in the window seal stripe back in. Its modeled on the special tool available from Mini specialists, except this one didn't cost anything and worked quite ok. There is scope for improvement, and a few lessons to be learned, but otherwise works a treat.
You can download all the pictures in one easy package from here. You will need TAR and GZIP to open it up. Both are available for UNIX and Windows machines.
This is some of the pictures taken during the installations of the radio/CD system into our Mini. This is a '79 model (or at least a large part of it is), so there were no ready bits. However, while putting things in, I realized that the previous owner must have had a radio in. There was a hole for the antenae (which needed to be enlarged), and there was a +12V from the ACC/ignition which was not connected to anything.
There is no point in showing the wireing here. The box was attached by two screwes by drilling small holes in the metal of the parcel shelf, and simply screwing it in. The trick was to move it as close to the center as possible (so that my wife could reach it), and yet far enough for the demistifier pipe to fit by (it will have to be replaced by a longer one though).
The cabling was done in a modular fashion. I.e. I purchased a ISO-standard cable set, so that if I ever replaced the radio, all I would need to do is plug different cable in. The cableset cost 50 FIM from a local car-radio-installation-company.
The project isin't finished yet. The speakers will need to be installed. They are 16cm round type, and will be going onto the rear parcel shelf. Will need to hack a bit of metal there, so I am waiting to do it at the same time as replacing the rear window seal (as you can see from the pictures, its split).
There is a whole series on building the actual box which I will put in later.