mjrstar Posted September 27, 2011 Author Share Posted September 27, 2011 I decided to take the opportunity to tweak the extractors as there was the issue of them being eaten by the right hand CV joint. It should be a while before the CV chops through the exhaust now.. I also re-read the diff shimming instructions which resulted in a minor adjustment to what I had done before but not a major.. the insertion of the gasket for the idler gear shimming was also tops (around .004'' and it no-longer jams up solid. My weight watchers clutch parts.. Orange diaphragm, metro turbo plate (I think) and Swiss cheese flywheel. I had to order in new nuts for the upper balljoints, apparently they are 1/2'' Whitworth fine thread ?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjrstar Posted October 17, 2011 Author Share Posted October 17, 2011 Well the cam timing/ignition timing must not have been too bad, it fired up after some diagnosis ( I was lacking in ability to distinguish between red and blue for the distributor wiring). Still has a sweet choppy idle but seems to want to pick up revs a bit quicker (in neutral). No road test yet, I need to grab a couple of hose clips for the coolant piping. Also the carb may have a sticky float needle as it seems to be overly rich unless I unplug the fuel pump (hopefully some engine vibration sort that out) I ended up replacing one of the ball-joints since the nuts were different, man what a F%^&%$ing bastard to undo out of the hub.. think vise grips and long piece of galv pipe.. I just about lifted the car off the axle stands.. Will take a couple of snaps, but in the mean time imagine the engine above back in the car Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjrstar Posted October 17, 2011 Author Share Posted October 17, 2011 the thing has EPIC legs in 1st and reverse now... it's out of tune (static guess timing) but it seems like it's asking for a bit more fuel now.. Also i re-sealed the clutch slave cylinder and put a new hose on that, but it appears there is still some air in the lines as the clutch sucks, but happily the box doesn't really require much clutch for up-changes. throttle and clutch pedal both feel too light so I will have to do some work on them.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjrstar Posted October 21, 2011 Author Share Posted October 21, 2011 Well i took the car out for a hoon and a bit of road tuning and it became apparent I was going to have to do something about the lack of clutch pedal, so off came the slave for a stern talking to, and thankfully it's playing the game now. (fingers crossed). so the thing now has more haul-arse than it's ever had before, but sadly it's a long way off keeping up with the other machines in my garage. But the box is pretty sweet, and the motor is pulling stronger to higher RPM than it wanted to do before, i have done some minor sanding to the carb needle, but i think it would benefit from some work on the ignition curve. I'm semi tempted to lock the dizzy at 25-28 ish degrees and see how it performs, also think it'd pay to try and figure out exactly how much advance it's running. Any way enough typing nonsense.. So it's far from show spec but as it'll see some real road use there is no point on going silly... No plans to do too much more to it, probably try and track down a better air filter for it as the foam is about stuffed after 10 years of neglect, and also have a bit of a tinker with the ignition timing as mentioned above. (your thoughts please) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjrstar Posted October 22, 2011 Author Share Posted October 22, 2011 my 1st attempt at you-tubing... not too exciting but it gives a bit of an idea of what the transmission sounds like.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjrstar Posted January 26, 2012 Author Share Posted January 26, 2012 Car has had a bit of a pre-nats tidy up, including a new "S" grille for those of you who will not be attending it should be looking like this.... Also had a drama with the radiator not wanting to do the water holding thing which was mildly uncool, but it's fix up and cleaned /pressure tested now. Not ideal for a freshly cleaned engine bay... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjrstar Posted March 13, 2012 Author Share Posted March 13, 2012 so i'm not really planning on doing much more to this other than a carb upgrade, it's somly not able to get enough fuel to pull nicely past about 6500 RPM i have trimmed the needle to within an inch of it's life, but it's still asking for more fuel in the top end. my original thoughts were a pair of VTR1000 carbs on a custom manifold, bearing in mind I would like to make around 100hp at 8000rpm and the engine technically should support this with the 296 duration cam, big valves and a decent dose of compression, but remember I only have 2 inlet ports to work with.. having read a few of the bike carb threads i'm tempted to look a bit smaller in the carb department... or maybe just one from the VTR1000 which are 50mm?? Suggestions welcomed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest mjrstar Posted March 27, 2013 Share Posted March 27, 2013 So this is the trial spec carb setup - just made out of half a set of carbs which cost me $80 and bits of junk i had lying around in the shed.. if it works ok i may get around to making a nicer looking setup, then again I may not... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjrstar Posted July 9, 2013 Author Share Posted July 9, 2013 Carbs have been up and running for a few months, starts really well (now i have made a choke mechanisim) compared to how much cranking the rover v8 carb needed but need the wideband in to get a better idea of how the AFR's are looking. idle is way less lumpy (which is kind of sad) but means it does pull quite a bit better off cam.. still some work to do with the car wanting to lock the right rear brake under even fairly light braking (might be a proportioning valve??) /pictureless fail update. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjrstar Posted May 12, 2014 Author Share Posted May 12, 2014 Oh hey, I still have this macine - a dude at work has a setup to balance carbs so I gave them a hoon on the weekend.. As far as vacuum goes it was within 1 CM hg at idle but there was a bit more of a split when you blip the throttle.. Now I'm fairly convinced the ignition timing is no good (no timing marks on the engine to use a timing light) So i might have to have a do at making some decent marks I can hit with a timing light, twisting the dizzy in the slot gained a whole heap of idle RPM with about 15 degrees of additional advance... Still undecided if i should try the vacuum advance or possibly even lock the dizzy?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjrstar Posted December 8, 2014 Author Share Posted December 8, 2014 Wow - haven't used this thing properly since 2012 when it had it's tidy up for OS 4 and rotary stand.. Anyway plan is to get it legit again for summer (leaving it late huh). So before I was able to roll it out of the garage i needed to get the starlet mobile - this was a problem because the front wheels are currently the rolling stock for the Mazda.. So first i take the rear wheels off the KP and put them on the front, then take the spare mazda rims and plonk them on the rear of the KP (the joys of limited brake clearance). After that both cars fired up nicely and idled away happily.. I took it for a burn up the road on the motorbike carbs and it was evident quickly that it was running pretty lean, messed about with jets, mixtures etc but it was not feeling the carb love, so decided to revert back to trusty, but not quite so responsive HIF44. The next plan (as always with this machine) was to to a pre WOF check, this quickly showed up the fact that I had a mile of play in the front lower control arms.. like heaps.. Turns out the ployurethane bushes (much like the toe control arms did a few years ago) had turned the consistency of crayon. So had to order a new set from Auckland. (after driving in and finding the ones in Hamilton were the parallel not tapered ones) So somewhere in the waikato a little Mini waits for Bush. 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjrstar Posted December 10, 2014 Author Share Posted December 10, 2014 so chucking the new bushes in was a piece of cake.. but of course with the control arm firmed up it became apparent that i had some balljoint play.. Joy there is only one way (that i know of ) to get the balljoints off the knuckle.. anyway, this is what the balljoint technique looks like, and luckily (or maybe it was good planning) my parts stash contained a brand spanker balljoint along with some other goodies i had ordered from the UK about 3 years ago.. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjrstar Posted January 5, 2015 Author Share Posted January 5, 2015 Failed wof this morning on something loose/knocking front left.- great what a useful description, hopefully testing station guy is thinking the problem us the same as I am... also don't listen to the manual, you can get the rack out without dismantling the suspension exhaust and partial subframe removal... Hopefully installation is the reverse of removal. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjrstar Posted January 8, 2015 Author Share Posted January 8, 2015 Now when i said that you need not listen to the manual, there is a small disclaimer... I didn't know that a small piece of the casting needs to be filed down to get the passengers side to pass the top of the gearbox.. that led to a little bit of swearing and cursing as i didn't do this on the first trial install of the new rack... anyway TL:DR car is wof and rego spec now. The engine seems to be pulling well even with the tall first gear, coupled with tall diff and 13's it's not too bad to get off the line and hums along nicely. Gets up to 90mph pretty rapily (on a closed road of course) and feels like it has plenty more legs but the closed road was a bit bumpy to push on.. I suspect it's probably got 110-120MPH top speed in it.. which is pretty sliggish by todays standards but would have been pretty quick for a mini in 1971.. If you have anything to say it goes here: //oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/27468-mjrstars-garage-lurk-mini/page-3 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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