Dan Boughton says :
> Minis will also chew up most cars in an autocross but you can't drive them
> with the top down on a nice summer day. Naturally the solution is to own
> both a sprite and a mini.
You could get a convertible mini, but with the best intentions in the
world they still look like bathtubs.
> A guy in the Mini club here wants to drag race his car and is looking for
> information on hot setups. The consensus in the club is he's going to need
> a good gearbox and a lotus 1600cc engine. Anyone have any more info? How
> about some of the crazies from OZ?
Ummm, would that include me? (probably)
Drag racing is a little out of my line, but I can appreciate the
need for more power. Fitting a Twin-Cam to the Mini drivetrain is
difficult (read: not cheap), and the only place that I knew of that
did it was Richard Longman in the UK. I rang them one day and the
owner himself said that they didn't really have a kit or set of
plans, but more or less made them up on the spot. Obviously though,
someone is still doing it, because they still keep appearing.
The best bet towards finding a place to do it is to ask at some of
the more weel-known UK places, like Oselli, Howley, Mini Spares (a
T-shirt of whom I'm wearing at work today), Minisprint etc. In the
US you could ask at Mini-Mania or other places.
Alternatives to the Twin-Cam (which are unlikely to give as much power
but from all reports are not far behind) are a supercharger, or the
twin-cam head from Kent Engine Developments (I think). They aren't
cheap either, but can be run with twin Webers, or a fool injection/engine
management system. In conjunction with a 1400/1480 Mini, this would
fly. In fact, an ordinary 1480 will make it fly anyway - bored out
to 74.0mm (+0.133), and stroked to 85mm, even with a standard 5-port
head (worked a bit) you should see 125+bhp with a roadable cam. With
a race cam you should get 140bhp+. And with the twin-cam head you
should get 160-180bhp. The only problem with an engine like that is
that it shakes rather more than normal road motors, and you'd need
to use the Metro turbo centre main bearing.
With this much power the problem is going to be to get it to the ground.
And that's really out of range of my experience.
Now a report on my own car ;^)
The rebuild of the Clubman is proceeding, at a cost of some scarred
hands, and sore lower back muscles.
I got all the bits back from the machinist on the Friday, spent the
weekend fiddling about moving stuff and getting a newish subframe
which I'd had for a few years hidden away.
I then decided to actually go and get the engine stand I'd always
wanted (as pod@softway is going to buy it from me later) so did that,
except they didn't have long enough bolts to attach the motor to the
stand. Oh. (superglue?) So I went down to the fastener place and got
4x3" 5/16th UNF bolts, and went back to the shop and found they were
.5" too short. Damn. So went back to the fastener store which was
closed. Double damn. Went back to the other store, bought the stand
anyway and took it home. The next day I went back to the fastener store
and bought 4x4" bolts, only to find that these were $4.41 EACH! (compared
to the <$2 of the previous set. Oh well.
Put the block on the stand, put the rings on the pistons, put the
pistons in the block and then the crank. (The knee-bones connected
to the leg-bone, etc.) So by Saturday, I had the crankcase assembled,
by Saturday night I had the engine on the gearbox. Sunday morning
I whacked on the clutch/flywheel, and a few other things, Sunday about
2pm Greg turned up and helped me fiddle with things. We were just about
to lift the engine into the subframe (sans head) when he looked at
the subframe and said 'Have you go the driveshafts in the right way?'
Now, this subframe was assembled over 3 years ago, and has sat gathering
dust until now, so I don't know how I decided what driveshaft to put
where. But, looking at it, it was obvious that the driveshafts were on
the wrong side, so we took off the uprights, and swapped them bodily
from side to side. Then we found that left the steering arms on the
bottom, of the uprights instead of the top (duh!) and so we swapped
them back and took out the driveshafts themselves. That sorted out
we put the motor in the subframe, and dropped the mini onto the subframe,
so now it has the motor back in. I had a rest at this point.
On Monday I went into work late as I had to replace an oil filter
housing I fractured when trying to hammer the old filter off (it just
didn't want to go), and I put the head on.
Hopefully, it should be ready for a Thursday or Friday startup, but
I gotta clean out the carbies before then, and work out the front
subframe mounts (which were jury-rigged by a mechanic I know, in a
totally non-obvious way)..
The problem I now have is that I don't want to sell it, but I really
do need the money for travelling. I've decided to keep it and travel
on my savings until either 1) I need the money, so I'll send back
word to sell it; or 2) I get a job in the UK in which case I won't
need the money and will keep it.
And it's so nice to work on a clean engine/engine bay.
regards,
--
thos cohen ,not a typo |Softway Pty Ltd
"It's not so bad to be a lair but a conniving |ACSnet: thos@softway.oz
egomaniac is not really that socially accept- |UUCP: ...!uunet!softway.oz!thos
able." SMH, 2 Nov 92, P. Keating vs J. Hewson|Internet: thos@softway.oz.au
|