Hey Dave-
Just got the title swapped to my name today. Got a few huge boxes from mini spares with suspension bits and S brakes and fenders etc. Taking good advantage of the strong dollar.
Did lots 0f research and soul searching- here's what I'm doing: my wife wants to drive this thing around town and my daughter does too. And I've got a Norton Commando, the Midget project, and an old Airstream (and a 60 year old house with deferred maintenance) to keep up. I'm no Jay Leno, so that limits the amount of spare time I have to do a lot of fiddling. The A series is a lovely little tractor, but it's going to require fiddling.
The research led to McGhee's classic minis. They do a D-series Honda conversion that as far as I can tell is pretty straightforward. All stock mini suspension bits and the only mods are to cut the inner fenders which are already cut. Completely reversible. It will make the car usable by my family and more fun on the whole to own because I/we will use it. I ordered the kit and am hunting down a D16y8 or z6. I intend to spend about 25k on the thing painted and driving and I think this is the best way to get there.
The tone is apologetic here because I feel in a small way that I'm giving up on a cool historical car. But the truth is I'm giving this guy a better future, and we will have a huge amount of fun using it with less of idiosyncracies. As long as the wife and I are working, I'd like to tip the balance of being stranded on the side of the road toward not.
TL;DR: I've purchased a D16 kit, am sticking with 10" wheels, and am going to enjoy it.
