W1NG3D's 1965 Morris Mini Mk1

[W1NG3D]

Having owned this old mini for nearly a year, I figured it's about time I made a project post, especially since the car has recently become more of a project than a daily driver!

 

 

I bought the car on my birthday, December 29th 2013 to be exact, having seen it the night before on TradeMe and instantly decided that it was the mini I'd been searching for for so long. I accepted the fixed price offer without even going to see the car beforehand, because just from the pictures and description I could tell it was worth it - and luckily, it was! In fact I was pleasantly surprised with the condition of the car when I first saw it in person, since the auction didn't have any pictures of the engine bay and I figured that would probably look atrocious. But to my surprise, everything looked new on the car, including a very clean engine bay and no rust anywhere.
 

Not only that, but the car came with a bunch of spares which weren't even advertised with the auction - and it was lucky that we managed to fit all the stuff in to my dad's Celica which isn't exactly the most spacious car!

 

After a 2 hour drive back home, during which I had a great big grin on my face, I decided one of the first things I needed was some music. As nice as the little 850cc engine sounds, it's not geared and powered very well for motorway driving so after a while of cruising at 90kph it does get a bit tiring. In addition to a stereo, amp and two 6x9 speakers which I've mounted discreetly in the car, another couple of early purchases were two side mirrors and a roof rack - I just couldn't resist.

 

 

Since that picture was taken, I've also bought a complete 7.5" disk brake assembly kit, and Simon at Minibitz fitted it for me. That made a huge difference to the braking performance, as the old Mk1 single-leading-shoe drums were just atrocious and often quite scary to use.

 

All the stuff I'd bought for the car at that point were to improve the driveability and practicality, but the disk brakes also serve another purpose - future-proofing the car for a bigger, more powerful engine. Ever since buying the car, I've always lusted after a bit more power, since the 850 produces 34hp at the flywheel (when it's new). That makes for very slow hill climbing capability, and a 0-100 time of over 20 seconds! Although the mini isn't all about speed and more about handling and cornering, I really wanted something which was at least a bit more capable on motorways and straight bits of road. So a couple of months ago, I made my biggest mini-related purchase yet - a donor vehicle with a fully rebuilt 1293cc engine.

 

 

Again I saw this advertised on TradeMe, and the body + interior looked pretty rough. However there were receipts for thousands of dollars worth of engine work, and it actually turned out that buying this whole car was cheaper than getting an engine rebuilt - so I went for it. I had the car shipped up from Christchurch, and annoyingly the shipping company left the ignition on after they parked it up at their Auckland depot... in addition to that, the car had very little petrol in it, and I hadn't been given the key for the petrol cap!

 

Fortunately, luck was on my side when I was stuck at the petrol station, and an AA roadside assistance car pulled in for his morning coffee. He happened to have an old Mitsubishi key which fit the fuel cap perfectly, and was able to give me a badly needed jump start since the old dynamo still hadn't charged up the battery enough to re-start the car.

 

After that I drove the car for about a week, and the power & torque difference was immediately noticeable. Despite looking rough, the car drove amazingly, the engine offered great performance and the brakes and suspension were surprisingly good. With the extra "oomph" for the engine I was really enjoying driving this mini, and even managed to surprise a few boy racers at traffic lights

 

Once the rego ran out I decided it was time to take the engine out of the clubman and transplant it into the Mk1. But not before cleaning it, refurbishing some bits and painting everything in shiny red, black and silver

 

 

 

Since getting the engine to that stage, I've sold the Clubman shell to a guy who's going to restore it into an insane modified mini with a roll cage, massive spoiler, the works. Which frees up some funds for a nice exhaust

 

After that progress slowed down, so yesterday I decided to give myself a kick up the ass and dedicated my day off to removing the old 850 engine from the Mk1, swapping some shiny bits over onto the big red engine (like that nice alloy radiator), and getting it ready to install.

 

And now I'm happy to say that the time has come, and tonight I should finally have a 1293cc powered Mk1 mini!

 

[W1NG3D]

I've nearly managed to get the engine in tonight - was a bit nerve-racking trying not to scratch up the paint in the engine bay, since the back of the gearbox sticks out a fair bit! Hence the engine being at an odd angle at the moment, it was necessary for clearance in the tiny engine bay.

 

 

Now annoyingly, despite being so close to having the engine in, I've hit a rather annoying problem. Since this is an earlier Mini, it has the "crucifix" style drive shaft joints, which are joined by means of a rubber coupling. My issue is that it's damned near impossible to get that rubber coupling to sit inside the drive output on the gearbox, as it's supposed to.

 

 

I managed to just about get the driver's side one in place, but the one in the picture above is much more of a hassle, as the driveshaft is shorter and there's less space to move things around. I've tried raising the engine, lowering the engine, moving it back and forth, adjusting its angle etc etc but nothing seems to help. So after about an hour of swearing underneath the car, I think it's time for a tea break and some head-scratching to find a solution.

[W1NG3D]

Success!

 

 

 

 

[W1NG3D]

Been driving this around for over a week now and have run into a few small issues, which I've just managed to sort out

 

First of all, I was driving back from Henderson, after having a new exhaust system fitted at Minibitz (great guys by the way). As I was climbing a big hill on Waitakere Road, I heard the most horrible grinding noise so I immediately pulled over to see what was going on... I think it's easy to spot the issue in this picture:

 

 

I always carry a bungee cord or two in the car, because normally I have a roof rack fitted and they're handy for securing all sorts of junk onto the roof

This time it came in very handy, as did the over-riders and corner bars on the bumper.

 

 

Apart from that, the drive home made me very happy because the car now sounds a lot better, not too loud but the exhaust has a lovely rasp. It also made a noticeable difference to the performance, the engine felt much less restricted at higher revs than before. However, after driving it a couple more days I noticed the temperature creeping up quite high, especially while idling in traffic. It was still drivable and wasn't getting dangerously hot, but still it was too hot for my liking, so my plan was to do some investigative work with the cooling system.

 

Just a couple of nights ago though, I was on my way home from Albany in the horrible rain and the mini started running like an absolute dog. Misfiring, backfiring, and barely able to get anywhere under its own power. I just about managed to get it parked up at a petrol station, after a scary encounter with a big intersection where I very nearly ended up stalling in the middle of the road!

 

After opening up the bonnet and having a quick look around, the first thing I noticed was that the damper had somehow unscrewed itself from the dashpot - oops! That was quickly remedied and when I started the engine up again, it ran a bit better, but still very very rough. That led me to the distributor, where I noticed the clamp which stops it rotating had come a bit loose, so I figured the distributor might've rotated away from where it should be and severely retarded the timing. Unfortunately my crappy adjustable spanner couldn't tighten the clamp back up, and since it was 1am at this point, the AA wouldn't send anyone out with tools, but were willing to tow the mini back to my house so I had no choice but to wait until about 2.30 in the morning for the truck to arrive. While I was waiting I kept fiddling with the distributor to try and get it adjusted to roughly where it should be, but for some reason the engine was refusing to run properly.

 

 

I thought water might have gotten into the distributor cap seeing as it was raining so hard, and people tell me that's a very common problem with minis, but after some inspection it was clearly very dry. So I was a bit puzzled, and realised something else must be going wrong, but wasn't sure what until the next day. I decided to try swapping the distributor for the one off the old engine; this instantly fixed the problem, and not only does the engine now run much smoother, the temperature problem has disappeared too! So it would seem the distributor that was originally on this 1293 engine has been faulty all along, and just decided to crap out on me in the early hours of the morning, during horrible weather. I guess that sort of thing should be expected with a 50 year old British car

[W1NG3D]

Today I went into full-on Mr Bean mode

 

 

Drove like this all the way from Albany to Westgate, she was mint. Bungee cords are bloody handy.

 

Also went out into the paddock and took some photos the other day, turned out quite nice with the sun setting behind some trees and whatnot!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now my new years' resolution is to try and sort out the interior of the car, as it's currently a combination of black Mk1 trim (not original for the car) and some 1980's mini seats, in combination with some pretty average bluey-black carpet which looks a bit pants. New interior bits will probably just mean a lot of money though, so it might have to wait a while!

[W1NG3D]

Been a while since my last update with the mini, but it did require a bit of minor surgery recently and I was bloody lucky to not have totally destroyed my engine!

 

 

Want to see why? Well here's what happened...

 

The other week I fired up my mini to find it was only running on three cylinders... after spending ages checking all the wiring, coil, sparkplugs, distributor, carb etc, I did a compression test and found that cylinder number 3 had no compression whatsoever.. Oh dear.

 

Got the cylinder head off only to find this remarkable sight. The inlet valve, jammed open by the bolt which holds the air filter on! Somehow it managed to find its way through the carb, the inlet manifold and then into the cylinder head.

 

 

 

Safe to say that I was incredibly lucky it didn't make it into the cylinder and cause damage to the piston, nor did it cause damage to the valve or valve seat. I'll consider this a valuable lesson in making sure the air filter bolt is properly tight!