My wife owns a Blue 1988 998cc mini. She loves the car and we have decided to keep it for as long as we are around. I'm a Mechanic so working on this car is so easy but I was getting fed up with the sub standard quality of alot of mini (and triumph) parts. A month ago the mini's engine began throwing oil out as the bores were very worn. We took it off the road and I bought a second hand 998 to use while I rebuild the original to a slightly more exciting spec. However one of the upgrades I got my wife to agree to was to buy the Specialist components 5 port EFI kit as I was sick of the carb not fuelling correctly and having to mess around with it. So the day came about a month ago when a parcel arrived.
Using the check list shown above I counted the parts out and laid them on the table.
Wow his is a nice and complete kit.
Custom crank trigger wheel.
Billet alloy thermo housing with threaded hole ready for the sensor supplied.
Custom bell mounth/ air filter backing plate.
Quick release, Washable air filter.
Now here is the clever bit. The ATpower throttle body. It uses a flat throttle buttery-fly to create less turbulence and basically allows more air though and smaller throttle body. So better response but max power and torque.
It really is a very nice bit of kit that performs as well as it looks. Next up is the ECU.
This is super adaptable and can run almost any setup no matter how crazy you want to make it.
Here is the butteryfly I spoke of earlier. This one is the 45mm one thats good for 100bhp. They do a 50mm one for higher power output.
So with the engine out I fitted the crank trigger wheel and sensor. I swapped my newly rebuilt head over from the old engine and fitted the second hand unit back into the car.
Next job was to order a second hand Mini efi fuel tank. MPI or Spi either will do. However the Spi fuel pump is not powerful enough to run this system. The MPI one is but I wanted to use a new pump. So £50 off ebay.
With the in-tank pump replaced (£70 ebay with a Walbro pump) I then routed another copper fuel pipe under the car(next to the original), this being the fuel feed and the original pipe (the smaller one) being the return.I flared the ends of the pipes so that they would secure the rubber hoses better and then fitted the exhaust and inlet system. Next was the wiring harness. Then I wired the feed and switched feel power sources to the ecu. Then after fitting the ignition coil and custom bracket, I then wired the fuel pump to a relay and a power source to that relay with the ECU providing a switched earth. Will all fluid levels checked, in I jumped and vroom it started. Wow that was easy. However mapping wasn't as easy as first thought. You need a bit of tutoring to be honest and even then you are still better going to the dyno. So after a month of mapping the ECU myself with my LC1 wideband sensor I gave it to the pro's. I was having trouble ironing the smoothness out. The car was still better than on a carb but it had holes in the map. So after a 3 hr mapping session I ended up with this.
Top line is torque and bottom is power. 50.9bhp from a Worn 70,000mile standard engine with only inlet and exhaust upgrade. The car now really goes well and I'm chuffed to bits with the result. Mpg will be tested but should be better because of the little nice things EFI comes with like temperature fuelling correction, fuel cut on over run and many others. Here are some photo's of the setup in the car.
Throttle/ pressure regulator/airfilter and Fuel filter in the back ground.
Crank sensor cable. I had a miss fire that was intermittent. It turned out that this wire was too close to HT lead no.1 and this was the problem. Once moved to this position shown the fault disappeared.
Here is a nice shot of the water temp sensor and the billet housing.
Coil pack, bracket and leads that came in the kit. Had to cut the cold air inlet funnel but it still works fine.
And finally the opposite side of the Throttle body.
In a month or two I'll finish building the original engine back up. I've had the block rebored to +60thou pistons and will lighten and balance the crank and other rotating items. I then intend to fit the Mini Sport Fast road/rally cam and an uprated head. This will then allow my wife and I to stretch the legs of the new efi system a bit more as the standard lump looses puff above 5,500rpm. This should help our mini reach it's performance potential with the small cc original lump. I'll see if the wifes happy with it's performance and if she wants more then i'll super charge it.
So is it better than a carb? yes definitely. Was it alot to spend? Yes almost £2,000 all in. Was it worth it? Definitely and now it's future proof and will handle any upgrade or engine swap I could possibly dream up.
Are there any down sides??? Yes, the bell mounth is very close to the bulkhead and if you have no sound deadening then it can be loud. However I will be fitting some Dynamatt sound insulation so this should solve most of that problem.
I'm really happy with the car now and know the wife will love it even more.
Chris.
