mmmini

I ditched the Honda seats so needed a decent drivers seat. I came upon an oldschool NZ made Autosport bucket set. I’m guessing it’s 80’s or 80’s vintage as it was a hideous brown vinyl, so I recoloured it Black with grey center. I managed to fit it onto a Cobra sliding subframe which fits the original mounts so technically it shouldn’t need certifying. I’ve ditched the original peashooter exhaust and cast iron manifold. I’ve now fitted a Maniflow stainless Cooper style 3into1 manifold and big bore 2 box center exit exhaust. It had a tiny 1.25inch SU carb on it so I’ve upgraded that to a massive 1.5” SU , also fitted a Minispares Torquemaster inlet manifold, upgraded needle, and modified late model air box. She now breathes a whole lot better and sounds pretty sweet. Not quite as ear bleeding as an LCB but still pretty loud.

It’s been a while since my last update and have made a few period style mods. Have cut the trumpets down and rebuilt the front suspension with new rubber donuts, 1.5degree negative camber arms, and heavy duty adjustable tie bars. I wanted some fatter feet but didn’t want to fit flares, so running 4.5j Dunlop LP918 reverse rims with 165’s - as I’m still on drums all round the offset keeps them just within the arch. I wanted to make a few performance mods so have upgraded the single leading shoe front brakes to the later model twin leading shoe. They’re still a bit iffy and don’t give you much confidence when pushing it so may look to upgrade to 7.5inch discs.

Hey yoeddynz, yeah I think they are either prelude or crx seats. They have been installed quite well and the last owner told me that they were WOF compliant however the wof guys at my local garage said they won't pass it until I replace them (or show them I have alternatives to fit). I have one good original seat but want to get myself a decent period drivers bucket seat for it so will replace the passenger seat to get through this WOF and then sort something out for the drivers seat. Yeah would like to respray in original blue however will be a while before I have the coinage for that so just going to make do with the brg - may look at getting some sort of old school 60's decals for it to try and make it look a bit better.

The motolita is a fair bit smaller than the original bus wheel.

Failed my wof due to a dodgy steering rack so ordered a new one from the UK, added a few wee shiny bits onto the order to make the shipping charge worthwhil, a bullet wing mirror to replace the horrible plastic mirror a previous owner had fitted, and a 13inch Motolita steering wheel which I’d been lusting after for a long time. Had to sell off a few parts that I had sitting around (1275 Cooper s head, and twin carbs) to raise the dough for it all.

Discussion thread can be found here: So I sold the last of my Minis back in 2016 thinking that I would be better off selling it (and all my remaining sweet cooper bits) as I wasn't using it, then after about 3 months of contemplation, I pretty much regretted it and couldn't understand what I'd done. Only took 3 years or so to save the money back up and justify splashing out instead of buying the kids some new school shoes (priorities right?) and now I'm back on the mini band wagon. She's a 1964 Morris Mini Minor with a pretty good history, and around 105k miles on the clock. This is my 15th Mini so I think I've gotten pretty familiar with them and think I know what I'm looking for. I had been looking for a project - a rolling body and engine in bits, however this complete wof'd and rego'd wee beastie came up in my price bracket and I couldn't pass it up as it meant I could drive her straight away and add my finishing touches as I found the time/budget. This bad boy is about as original as you'd get with a car that's 55 years old, and was rebuilt/reregistered in 1994, with a new goldseal engine and rebuilt mechanicals. I think it was the original owner that did the 1994 rebuild/re rego and I've been provided a note of all the work done then. She appears to have original floor pans, original sills and jacking points and even has one of the plugs that goes into the jacking point (if you know what I'm talking about). All the panels seem to be as per factory, no funky bog filled panels or ill fitting panels and the doors are rust free. That was at 91600k miles and she's now sitting on around 106k miles so has only done 14,000miles since having a new engine and gearbox 25 years ago! The bugbears are that it has a goldseal 998cc engine instead of its matching number 848cc, and the paint job is a bit funky - the A panels that are a little thicker down the bottom by the chrome trim so I'm thinking there is some bog hiding there, and the overall paint job lets it down. I guess it's maybe british racing green and I'm thinking was done in 1994. Then at some stage it for some reason from the coach line down in a slightly different variation of BRG. To "disguise" the difference someone ran some late model bronze pinstripes down the side. I've pulled those off now as they looked terrible on a mk1 but removing them has left a bit of a crater as whoever did it actually did a pretty good job of painting right up to them so now theres a ridge in the paintwork with out them, excellent stuff! The paint quality isn't the best and seems to have faded/aged alot in some place. The original paint was a kind of turquoise blue, it's still visible in the wheel arches where some of the green has peeled off, and is also under the headlining so at least it's an easy way of telling what original panels are on it. Personally I don't think the BRG or whatever it is suits a standard mk1, and to carry it off she needs some flares and or decent 165 tyres and wide wheels so I may have to do something there to rectify her stance. The white roof is also a bit shite and has oxidised really badly (and they've painted the gutters instead of just the roof which is just stupid!). I've cut and polished it but it's still shite so will just have to put up with it until i respray it. Interestingly it had a quick release grille fitted so I've replaced the original pressed metal grille (which looks like poo) with an morris cooper 7 slat grille which I had lying around (as you do). I've got a few period mods I want to do so will post pics as I do that.

Discussion thread for

Cheers miniman. Yeah bit unsure about selling. Kinda swore I'd never sell her and figured I'd be buried with it however I don't use her as much as I'd like to and wouldn't mind a new project. Testing the waters on trademe though not much interest yet. Still got a few things to finish off yet so will post those up if/when I get them done.

Here's a pic of my other project - I do a little bit of trolley derby racing

Discussion here....build thread here //oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/48496-mmminis-1966-austin-mini/

She's got adjustable Spax dampers all round however because she's running so low I was a bit concered that the dampers would get a bit stuffed so I've fitted Spax lowered dampers to the front, plus fitted lowered suspension front top mount - which is a higher mounting point for the damper - it's the black one in the photo vs the standard one which is red. So that gives a few extra inches of travel and should mean the dampers not getting compressed too much

I've fitted a Smiths Telemetrix electronic speedo and am in the throes of fitting an electronic speedo which is working out to be a bit of a pain to figure out what to take the speedo pickup off. Apparently you can take a pickup off the driveshaft bolts however I've got the later model pot joints so not sure what to do - I'm thinking I may just fit a hose clip onto one of the driveshafts and pint the pickup at that.

Here's some pics of what it looked like before I painted it Matte Black, the top image shows off the tubbed arches pretty well as it's had a good few inches cut out of the panel giving heaps of clearance bewteen the tyre and the arch. I think I had the car lowered to around 12cm of clearance between the ground and the bottom of the rear subframe in that photo.

I've been a bit of an on and off again lurker for a few years now and figure I should post up my project. I've been working on her since around 1998 and had it on and off the road in a few different forms. She's a bit of a mongrel as it's several Mini's pieced together. Currently she's my version of a Britax Cooper Replica, running a (pretty tame) 1275 Allegro motor, with a Weber/LCB extractors & S/S big bore exhaust. I did have a full monty 1330 in it that I had built up in 2004 however it never really ran as good as it should of and lost compression on one cylinder so I pulled that out last year. She's registered as a 1966 Austin though I purchased the bare/prepared shell in 1998 and it didn't have any ID tags on it. The guy I bought it off said it was a 62 shell and was prepping it for Mini7's racing so he'd done heaps of work on it. He'd chemical dipped it and replaced the sills, had new metal welded in where ever they had to remve rust, fitted replacement hinge panels and maybe a new floor. He also seam welded it, cut an airbox out, lightened it but cutting off any extra steel bits inlcuding the rear storage bins (PITA as he removed the upper engine steady bracket and internal rear window hinge brackets), plus tubbed the rear arches and trimmed the front arches. That means it has to be run as low as possible otherwise it looks a bit spaz. She's pretty much a few mm's off the front bumpstops and as low as I can legally go at the rear. I've toyed with the idea of putting on deeper offset wheels which would mean I could run bigger arches and hcne make the arch and tyre gap a lot better however can't justify the expense quite yet. It was painted metallic blue originally and wasn't a bad paint job however I've never been a fan of metallic paint jobs on classic cars to Matte blacked it last year (not that Matte black is that traditional for a mini). I purchased a registered 1966 rolling shell in 2000 which I transferred the ID and rego over onto the bare shell. When I purchased the bare shell in 98 I also purchased a worn out Clubman rally car that I pinched all the go fast bits off and transferred some of those to the shell including Minifin rear drums. I also purchased another 1976 Mini Clubman that had been hit in the side and got the ROH Contessa mags off it, pulled the wiring loom/interior, brakes, and 1100cc engine and then transferred that into the shell, so when I first got her on the road she was just running the 1100 with drums all round. In 2004 I finally got around to rebuilding the engine out of the rally mini - the engine had a Cooper S 11 stud head, old school 649 full race cam, lightened flywheel and Cooper S Crank. It had a SCCR gearbox but that was fecked so just banged in a reco-ed 1300 box. After I had it rebuilt I went overseas for a year so it sat on the floor of my garage for a good 18months before I finally got around to fitting it and firing it up, at the same time I fitted some Cooper S Discs to it to make sure she'd be able to stop as well as go. I'm not sure if the rings ever bedded in right as it had heaps of pressure in the crank case and always blew oil. I took it out on Puke and down to Taupo once or twice for a bit of a fang as my mate had a sweet Anglia at the time that he was club racing in so I'd occasionally take the Minge out at the same time. She went pretty well and could handle around 7500rpm however oiled up the clutch pretty bad so the clucth started slipping and blew oil all over the LCB's. She ran alright on the road as long as I didn't try and thrash her too much however eventually she started smking pretty bad. I tested the compression and she was down on one cylinder so I pulled that engine last year. I found an allegro 1275 which I've put in for the meantime, the internals are unknown though I'm guessing just standard. It could possibly have a Straight cut box or straight cut drop gears as she is a bit whiney however could just be a bad bearing in the box. Discussion thread is here //oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/48497-mmminis-1966-austin-mini-discussion/