846 replies to this topic

[timmy850]

Timmy, is that an oil catch can next to the wiper motor?

  
Yes that’s an in-line catch can. I’ve been trying lots of different breather setups over the years. Currently one breather has a little filter, one goes to the air filter and the last to the catch can. Once I buy another small filter I’ll probably remove the catch can and just have all atmospheric breathers

Very nice attention to detail on the screw slots circular alignment! Looks great!

Thanks Colin. You’ve gotta line up the screw heads!

[timmy850]

I picked up a refurbished Holden Gemini starter a few weeks back, and finally had some time last week to install it.


It was easy enough to remove the old one and put the new one in


As I've got a floor starter button, I just added the existing high amp cable to the + post, and looped the starter signal onto the starter post too. It works great and spins the engine over nicely. The Lucas one will get a rebuild one day as it's been a bit hit and miss recently when hot.


I've also stripped down the steering rack and cleaned it all up. I got a delivery of rebuild parts from Karcraft and so far it all looks pretty good. Next time in the shed I'll hopefully get it all back together.


I popped my head under the car too, and I found out the reason for the slop in the existing rack. The locknut (red) appears to be loose, and when I rock the wheel the ball housing (blue) has a bit of play between it and the rack. There is also some play between the tie rod (green) and the rack. The felt rack bush appears to be in decent order, I was talking to my dad about it and he said he'd replaced the felt rack bush back in the 80's. I can blame him then for the loose lock nut!

[timmy850]

Due to current "unpleasantness" we've been stuck inside for a few months. I think the last time I drove the mini it was the beginning of July when I put in the distributor, and I haven't had a chance to try out the new Moto Lita. I had a little pre-ignition when the engine was hot at around 3000rpm under load, and there has been a bit of run-on since I replaced the head gasket, so I decided to do a bit of research into spark plugs as I thought perhaps they are a bit hot. I've now got a selection of 4 sets to evaluate:
BP5ES (and a few BPR5ES) - these are the ones recommended to me by a local guy. These are the ones that were in the engine, and I think they are a bit too hot for the engine spec
BPR6ES - I believe this is the modern equivalent of the stock plug
BPR7ES - slightly cooler than stock & recommended by minispares for 10:1 to 11:1 compression engines, which is what I have
B7ES - recommended by MED for "lightly modified road cars". It is missing the "P" from the spark plug code, which means the tip doesn't project out like the usual plugs

I've installed the BPR7ES and it starts up fine cold and idles, so I'm guessing that they aren't too cold. When I finally get to drive again I'll be able to get a better idea of how they perform & try the other ones. I also want to install an O2 sensor bung into the front half of the exhaust so I can tune the idle mixture a bit better

 

Seeing as we haven't been going anywhere recently I thought it was also a good time to replace the windscreen seal. It seemed to be very old, quite possibly the original one and it still had some overspray on the seal from the respray +30 years ago. It has been letting rain in through the seal when it rained during drives, so it had stopped me from adding underlay to the floors and finishing the carpet

The old seal was really hard, and came out in chunks

I'd been putting off this job for a while as I was expecting some kind of horrific rust around the window frame & I didn't want to have to deal with that. When I got the seal out it was a bit grubby...

After cleaning off the old sealant it actually looked pretty nice - actually better than that - it looked good as new! There is a bit of an untidy edge where the top layer of paint meets the original paint, but other than that it looks great. Now I just need to finish removing the old sealant from the glass and body and I can get it all back together.

[timmy850]

After a bit more scraping and cleaning I got the window frame ready to go. Nothing sinister was spotted, which was awesome

 

And after 2 days of frustration I managed to get the window in. I don't plan on every doing that again myself, for whatever reason it was a real pain. This meant I could finally go for a drive, and according to the log book it was 3 months since I last made it off the driveway! 

 

I normally keep an eye out for a good deal, and these came up for a decent price. I'm not 100% sure if I will try and put together a megajolt style setup, or something else

[no66]

Have you taken a look at https://speeduino.com/home/

[timmy850]

Have you taken a look at https://speeduino.com/home/

I have had a quick look at them, but they seem a bit complicated for what I want to do, and I also have no experience with electronic kits. The local stockist is out of preassembled ones for the foreseeable future too.

[Clip]

Hey Tim, I think I’ve mentioned this before? But I went with the Lindsay Siebler distributor. No need for external black boxes etc. You just give him details of your engine (capacity, cam, carbs), and he custom maps it for you. He supplies the distributor, new leads and coil to suit, along with details (essential to have good earth and + feeds). He uses some clever tech. You just drop it in, set your base timing at 14-18 degrees = total 28 -32, and your off and running. Not only has it made a really significant performance improvement, but now starts really easily hot, cold and everywhere in between. Never pings, and it pulls like a maniac! Although he’s been around for a while, some of the guys in my local club are discovering Lindsay’s work, along with some of the racing guys. If you want anymore details, happy to pass them on. 

[timmy850]

Hey Tim, I think I’ve mentioned this before? But I went with the Lindsay Siebler distributor. No need for external black boxes etc. You just give him details of your engine (capacity, cam, carbs), and he custom maps it for you. He supplies the distributor, new leads and coil to suit, along with details (essential to have good earth and + feeds). He uses some clever tech. You just drop it in, set your base timing at 14-18 degrees = total 28 -32, and your off and running. Not only has it made a really significant performance improvement, but now starts really easily hot, cold and everywhere in between. Never pings, and it pulls like a maniac! Although he’s been around for a while, some of the guys in my local club are discovering Lindsay’s work, along with some of the racing guys. If you want anymore details, happy to pass them on. 

Thanks Clip. I've definitely been overthinking it at the moment as I've been stuck inside and no chance to drive the mini or work on it recently! I think the most recent lesson was that the kind of advance curve that normally works with these engines isn't suitable for my setup. I don't know if my compression ratio is too high, or some kind of other issue, but it seems to want a very soft curve. Ideally I'd work out exactly what works and get something simple curved to match. 

 

I was partway through writing up my distributor issues and in the process of doing that I think I worked out my best way forward, but I may change my mind!

 

At the moment I've got:

25D with random timing curve and points. Works well, but I think it could be better and I was getting some run-on and hard to start hot, this could have been plug heat range related but it didn't do this previously 

25D with tuned timing curve and electronic module. This is a bit aggressive at 3000rpm, so I need to dial it back a bit to find the sweet spot at 3000rpm and then get it recurved again

Accuspark blackbox. It wasn't working a few months back on points, so my friend who also has a blackbox will try it in his car to see if it still works. The best thing about this was you can just adjust it with the laptop instead of spending money and time posting it to get the springs changed

 

I was in touch with Lindsay a few months back, I think I will give my recurved 25D one more shot before I move to something new like his system. 

[timmy850]

I've been sitting at home for months looking at parts for sale and I noticed another French Moto Lita with the unusual stamping on the lower spoke. It’s a black painted 15” with plain spokes, which is also an unusual combination. It’ll need a retrim, but hard to say no at $35 (£20) after I’d sold the boss

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I also found this on eBay described as “ VINTAGE COOPER MINI S WOODEN STEERING WHEEL BARN FIND TRIUMP MG” and the description said the owner used to own minis. I looked through the wheel database on http://mk1-performan...nversions.co.uk and thought it looked like a Springall, and they were supposed to be pretty nice, so I figured it was worth a bid

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The starting price was $61.50 (£33) and I put a little higher than that on, but it ended up selling at the starting price with no other bids 

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It arrived and looks a little better than on the eBay listing. It’s still pretty rough and will need some serious attention to the wood. It’s got a 48 spline boss and appears to be the right size to suit the mini column.... I didn’t notice the faint name on the rear of the spoke until after I bought it, which validated my initial guess

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Of course the next thing to check was if the Mk1 horn fit, which it did

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It fit on the mini column too, so the wheel turned out to be a really good score 

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[Clip]

Tim if you ever want to part with that one, I’d be really happy to grab it off you 

[timmy850]

Tim if you ever want to part with that one, I’d be really happy to grab it off you 

I'll keep you in mind if I ever sell! I think like the Les Leston I bought, this might be my only chance to get a rare old interesting wheel like a Springall. 

 

Last weekend we headed off to Rylstone and did about 900km over the weekend. It was a bit later in the year than normal, but it still ended up really cold and windy . There was over 100 minis and we had a nice smooth trip (excluding the thousands of potholes). It was great to be back out in minis again, I went with my friend in his Burgundy Cooper S and it was definitely a good motivator to get my car back running how I wanted it. 

 

I'm happy to report that I've managed to sort out my ignition dilemma. I was able to find the old laptop and confirm the Accuspark Blackbox was still working fine and still had the same advance curve as last time I used it. I lock wired the spare 25D distributor and put in the blackbox, and it all worked perfectly fine. Last time I tried to use it with mechanical points the timing was retarding instead of advancing with RPM. It all seems to be fine now, which is a relief! I'm so happy it's running well again

[timmy850]

A new year update, it's been a pretty busy time over Christmas with non-mini related stuff but I managed to get a few things done

We made the most of the sunny weather around the new year and finally gave it a decent wash



The rainy day stockpile of engines increased by one with the addition of an Aussie 1098. It has a few unique Australian made parts on it, 29D distributor, timing cover, alternator bracket etc. No plans for it yet, but always handy for parts

I always wanted a Moke

It even came with a long term resident


Another set of carbs for my "to do" pile! This is an early 60's Australian manifold and twin carb setup from Peter Manton as also used in the Sports 850. It was similar to the Speedwell style kit where you bought the manifold, one carb, linkage and filters & you kept the single HS2 from the 850

I've got a set of Ramflo filters too, another Aussie made part. These will get a good clean and some new foam inserts



The linkage is there luckily

One slightly quirky feature is you need to buy two identical rebuild kits as the jets aren't mirror images like Cooper S carbs


A couple of period photos of the carb setup. They were available as a kit from two dealers, or complete on the car as the Sports 850 with the extra decals & badges



I've been investigating into my ignition pinging problem and started to notice a few little issues, so I ended up stripping down the Dellorto to check a few things. The first thing I noticed was a seal missing on the spindle bearing. When I removed the carb from the car and tested the bearing with some degreaser it was letting a lot of liquid through, so potentially a vacuum leak.

Removed and stripped for checking over

I bought a couple of new bearings and was able to separate the seals. I thought this was a simple method to check my theory rather than having to remove the spindle and replace the entire bearing

Starting to assemble. I noticed another potential vacuum leak on one of the manifold banking ports

I changed from standard paper gaskets to a Lynx soft mount kit

All back on the engine now.. So far it's all been running great, there's still a few more things to check before I think it's 100% sorted


I had the chance to test fit the H4 carbs too while the Dellorto was off. At the moment they are last in the line after the twin HS2 carbs but they still just look so good!

[timmy850]

I've driven the mini to work a couple of times now (an 80km round trip) since working on the carb, plus we had a Minis in the Gong run too. I haven't encountered any of the previous pinging that I was getting at 3000rpm. The carb has been cool to the touch when I stop even though the manifold is pretty toasty.
I think my next plan of action from here is to bump up the timing with the blackbox to similar to my recurved distributor. If the engine still runs fine I think I will swap back to the mechanical advance just to remove a potential failure point.

Here's a few photos of the MITG drive thanks to Mikey




And the view from Cambewarra Mountain Lookout after the sun came out. We had a decent turnout despite the short notice and the 4 seasons experienced during the drive!


Last year during lockdown I was working from home & spotted a job lot of parts on ebay. It got relisted a few times with no buyers so I put in a lower offer mainly as I was interested in one item, a Wibroc mirror. I sorted, cleaned & researched the remaining parts and was able to make my money back and ended up with a free mirror! I've been keeping an eye on them for a few years and they normally seem to go upwards of $100 per mirror for a decent one.


The Wibroc Panorama (with the Continental shape mirror) are my favourite for the mini as the base follows the shape of the external door hinges. I have found the BMC drawings of the metal plate & rubber gasket on the forum and they look easy enough to make. It'll need a decent clean up, but I'm happy to finally have one. The best part is it'll cover up the existing holes in the door from the old ugly mirror that was on when I got the mini.



During the last 9 years I've gone from having quite a basic simple engine bay with lots of room..

..to a pretty packed engine bay. The biggest addition was the heater, which required a few other things to be moved (horn, coil, regulator box, etc). The additional wiring, radiator tank, heater hoses & breathers also just added to the visual mass under the bonnet. I'd really like to simplify and clean up the whole area now


On the "to do" list is:
Move the ignition coil
Relocate the radiator recovery tank
Tidy up wiring
Figure out how to make the breathers look better
Remove heater or extend the heater hoses under the manifold and hide it a bit more
I was able to sort out the coil by using one of the early Australian alternator/coil brackets. Luckily the recent 1100 engine I picked up had one on it, including the coil clamp too (eagle eyed readers will spot I had one of these on the red 998 before I removed it for the other type). I had to extend some of the low tension coil wires to get them to reach, plus I needed some new plug leads as my coil lead was not long enough.


I'd ordered a new rocker cover breather takeoff on ebay a while back after I'd figured out the thread (1/4 BSP). The new one is a better match in finish & is a lot slimmer in profile than the old brass one. After photo on the top, before on the bottom


The breather filters were removed for the moment and I added breather lines to the air filter. I'd like to get a preformed hose with a 90 degree end for the flywheel breather to make the hose sit a bit lower.


Another before & after from the last week. I also trimmed some other hoses to length - fuel filter & recovery tank as they were a bit long.


I also did an oil & filter change and hopefully now I'm all ready for Minis Down Under (60 years of the mini in Australia). Just a wash and we should be there!

Edited by timmy850, 07 March 2022 - 09:19 AM.

[johnR]

looks good - not too blingy, just clean and patinated.

[timmy850]

looks good - not too blingy, just clean and patinated.

Thanks John! My main goals at the moment are reliability and simplicity/serviceability and the rest of the car is “aged” so I’m happy with it showing some patina

I did about 300km over the weekend up to the big mini show and back and everything went really well. I’ll add some photos when I get a bit of time