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mmmini's 1966 Austin Mini


mmmini

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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/

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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.

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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.

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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

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