847 replies to this topic

[timmy850]

 

 

Great find on those seat covers! I really like that steering wheel too 

The steering wheel might be available, I can let you know 

Cool 

 

The seats came out nice! Much better when the pattern/material matches.

 

The steering wheel has been sent on to Guam now, it is the original style for an Aussie Clubman GT that's made it's way over there.

 

Just read this whole thread from start to finish, and have to say that i utterly adore your Mini Timmy. So many little touches that make it perfect.

 

by the way, did you have any more info/photos of the mounts for the Subaru seats? They look good in there and subbie seats are plentiful around here.

Thanks Kelvin! I've been following your blog for a while after discovering it on retro-rides and I'm jealous of all the cars you've had

 

I'll send you some photos of how I did the brackets. I thought about how to do the brackets for a couple of months and ended up with something pretty simple.

[kws]

Thanks. The front mounts i can kinda guess (but probably wrong) but not sure how the rear is done. I keep seeing you pop up on Instagram, but until i read this thread i didnt realise how cool your car actually is.

 

Im jealous of your used parts supply over there. Our used parts supply seems to be average at best; you cant even get a decent set of wheels here and heaven forbid you want something like a set of cooper steels

[timmy850]

Thanks. The front mounts i can kinda guess (but probably wrong) but not sure how the rear is done. I keep seeing you pop up on Instagram, but until i read this thread i didnt realise how cool your car actually is.
 
Im jealous of your used parts supply over there. Our used parts supply seems to be average at best; you cant even get a decent set of wheels here and heaven forbid you want something like a set of cooper steels

We have a pretty good parts supply here, although most of it comes in a minispares bag with a good markup on it! NZ has more relaxed rules regarding car imports though, so I always see all types of Japanese cars in photos over there. Grass is always greener

So recently I've been messing around with a couple of things. One of them was the breather setup and catch can. Originally the car had the rocker cover breather and tappet cover breather connected via a T piece to the HS2 air filter housing. This was the factory setup for the 998 engine as far as I can tell.


When I installed the stage one kit and larger HS4 carb I also swapped to an alloy rocker cover without the breather. I had a simple hose from the breather to the air filter housing. This is when I ended up with a bunch of oil and blowby ending up in the air filter housing.


With the catch can setup now I've got the exit of the catch can going into the crankcase breather port on the carb. I hadn't realised previously how much air is being sucked through the carb port, so now it's sucking much more of the blowby gases through the engine. I've also been experimenting with a PCV in the system to try and reduce the volume of air being sucked through at idle. With the port on the carb now connected it makes a significant reduction to the idle speed as it's not sucking through as much unmetered air.

 

You can tell it's working well when all this ends up being caught before going through the engine

I decided to review and adjust the timing using the programmable Blackbox. It's always fun plugging a 10 year old computer (the program doesn't work with newer versions of Windows) into a 50+ year old car to tune it! As always it takes longer to figure out how to connect it than to do the actual tuning...


I needed to lower the RPM limiter as I was running into valve bounce before the limiter was kicking in. Previously it was set at 5200RPM and I've lowered it now to 5000RPM. I've also added some timing across the board, with a max now of 30 degrees. The RPM limiter has been checked and confirmed it's working too!


We've also had a couple of runs recently up through the National Park for a coffee and then lunch

[kws]

Interesting, the later plastic HS4 air filter housing like I have on mine has that little breather port you're connected to in photo two blocked off. Breather pipe goes direct from tappet chest cover to carb port.

 

Its hard to see in the photo, but whats in the catch can? Looks like a lot of moisture and only some oil? Better in the can than in the engine for sure!

[timmy850]

Interesting, the later plastic HS4 air filter housing like I have on mine has that little breather port you're connected to in photo two blocked off. Breather pipe goes direct from tappet chest cover to carb port.

 

Its hard to see in the photo, but whats in the catch can? Looks like a lot of moisture and only some oil? Better in the can than in the engine for sure!

 

They did seem to change the breathing and emissions every couple of years. First you think that they were the same over the 40+ year production run, but once you get further in you realise how many changes they did make!

 

The first couple of weeks it was mainly oil, but as the weather has got colder it seems to be more water vapour. I've done an oil change this week and cleaned out the catch can, so it'll be interesting to see how it goes after this. I'm trying a Penrite HPR30 oil this time, it's 20W/60 with "full zinc" (~1600ppm). 

Edited by timmy850, 14 July 2018 - 10:59 AM.

[Jared Mk3]

The steering wheel has been sent on to Guam now, it is the original style for an Aussie Clubman GT that's made it's way over there.

 

I'm glad it went to a good home 

[kws]

HPR30 is good stuff, i run it in my Mini and SD1

[timmy850]

I've had a few days of busted knuckles and I've made some progress.. 

 

The old battery had been a bit weak in starting recently, so I had it checked out at the local battery shop. It was down to 220 CCA (Cold cranking amps) from the original 260CCA. It had gone flat a few times and is on the small side. I decided to buy a nice big one that'll fill up the battery box. The new one is 560CCA, so more than double the power of the old one.

I also bought an extra ground cable and installed a battery disconnect switch to easily isolate the battery when it's parked. 

 

I've also been working on the under bonnet heater. It needed to be connected through the firewall, to get hot air to the passengers and to the windscreen. This turned out to be a really big job:

The oil pressure and temp gauges had to be disconnected

Drain the coolant

Replace the thermostat

Remove the dash panels

Modify the vents

Remove distributor

Relocate the horn

Etc

 

These are late plastic Clubman dash vents. They didn't end up fitting in the factory orientation as on a Clubman they point inwards and go through holes in the centre of the dash. On my car they need to go through holes on the outside of the dash

I cut the RHS vent short and swapped them from side to side. 

RHS vent is now installed 

It's all hidden behind the stock dash which I'm really happy with. The LHS is still to be finished

 

The fresh air intake hose is installed in the engine bay. I've got an idea of how to connect the air to inside..

I gave the engine a quick start to make sure it was all working OK and it blew out the oil pressure line on the block. I ended up having to remove the distributor to fix up the connection.

 

I'm still to finish the LHS vent, install the hotter thermostat (82 instead of 74) and fill it up with coolant. I've also been messing around with getting the horn working on a new/old steering wheel I picked up at a swap meet..

[timmy850]

The LHS duct is now all sorted

Here is my universal heater ducting kit! The grey water tubing is for the demisting vents, the other assorted plumbing parts were to connect everything together

I found this diverter valve which I thought would work to direct the air to the windscreen or to the floor

This is version 1. I wanted to see how it all worked and if it needed a fan to get the air flowing

On the test drive it gave lots of nice warm air on my feet! Now the concept is working I can tidy it up and make it look better

[Vinay-RS]

Loving this diy heater build! It's such an awesome thing to fit to the mk1 and it will definitely help for cold mornings when the windscreen frosts up. (not sure how much of a problem that is in Australia). 

[timmy850]

We had a (mild) frost this morning actually! We only get them a couple of mornings a year.

The mini lives in the garage so it’s normally not a problem for me. We do an overnight trip to Rylstone each year and have always had a big frost, but once we park in the sun for an hour during breakfast it’s all good to go

The 82C thermostat has made a big difference too. I had installed the previous 74C thermostat when I’d had some overheating problems (before I’d installed the heater) and since installing the heater (which works as an auxiliary radiator) the car had been running too cool! The gauge was reading as low as 60C on downhill sections and not holding a consistent temp. I checked out the 74C thermostat using some boiling water and a thermometer and it wasn’t closing fully until 65C. Now it’s on a steady 80C on the gauge

I’ve got to finish up with the service items before the big 3 day Rylstone trip next month.

[ddutch]

Great thread and nice story about a very beautiful car! Nice that it has been in your family for so long and that you seem to take very good care of it. In the start of this thread you've got a number of different engine blocks. On page 5 you've posted this picture; https://farm4.static...bf893d1bc_o.jpg

 

Based on the color this looks like a Goldseal engine. These engine are know to be official BMC replacement engines and seem to be made with more care and to higher specs than the engines they installed in the factory. Might be an interesting thing to find out;

http://www.theminifo...ngine/?p=532004

 

You might find some useful info about engine numbers here;

http://members.home....ni/goldseal.htm

Edited by ddutch, 25 July 2018 - 12:47 AM.

[timmy850]

Great thread and nice story about a very beautiful car! Nice that it has been in your family for so long and that you seem to take very good care of it. In the start of this thread you've got a number of different engine blocks. On page 5 you've posted this picture; https://farm4.static...bf893d1bc_o.jpg

 

Based on the color this looks like a Goldseal engine. These engine are know to be official BMC replacement engines and seem to be made with more care and to higher specs than the engines they installed in the factory. Might be an interesting thing to find out;

http://www.theminifo...ngine/?p=532004

 

You might find some useful info about engine numbers here;

http://members.home....ni/goldseal.htm

Thanks for the message. I don't think that one was a gold seal engine. Our factory painted a lot of engines gold, and that one had an engine number from a late emissions spec Clubman. It also had a matching gold painted 12G295 head on it which obviously wasn't original. I'm not sure if I still have that engine or it's gone now..

 

I made up a new boot board this morning from some 12mm plywood. I made a cutout in the corner for the battery switch and stuck on some foam tape to stop rattles and protect the fuel tanks.

It fits in perfectly!

[timmy850]

I found this on eBay for really cheap (under $100) with one small grainy photo. It was previously bought and never used so it has a couple of small marks that aren’t really noticeable.


It looked pretty nice when it turned up! It’s 14” diameter and uses a Nardi bolt pattern. I’ve always liked this style of wheel, but the Nardi ones are always outside my budget


Of course for a new steering wheel you need a new boss kit. This is a nice looking tulip style boss and is double drilled for MOMO and Nardi bolt patterns.


On the car now!



Currently I have a black plastic horn button, I’ve found some Nardi style buttons which look a lot nicer, so I’ll order one soon

[buznout]

That is a really nice wheel. Mine came from Japan with one but I sold it and fitted the airbag steering wheel as I thought it would fail the pink slip without it....