Victoria Minis Car Club

Shown below is John's Project with a difference, 'Darwin'. 

And don't miss his later Project 'Evo'

Purchased for $700 from a 93 year old Victoria born gentleman who owned the Mini from 1974. This 1973 Mini sat for 20 years before I rescued it.  To be honest, if it hadn't have been for the 100% coverage of bondo, this car would never have lasted.

This car was rusted so badly that when I opened the doors the car sagged, so what did I do?  I cut the roof off - two Minis for the price of one!

After finishing the car, I found out the following:

It had great peformance due to domed pistons which give 13:1 compression ratio.  But it blew head gaskets like crazy.  I finally ordered a high end copper head gasket.  When it arrived, within an hour I disassembled the top end of the engine. Before I continued, I measured all the bits of the engine to find out what my mystery build is, and here is the info. The block is a 998 with the pistons over bored to the max... 0.508 over. The piston is a raised head and must be longer then the stock length of the 998 piston because the stroke is shorter. I have less than the stock 76.2 mm stroke, more like 74.5ish mm. The piston does come flush to the top of the block with the raised part maybe 2 mm above flush. 

The head is off tan 848, the intake valve is about 28 mm and the exhaust is about 25 mm the valve springs are doubled and the rockers look stock but seem shaved a bit on the valve side. The original needle jets from the twin su carbs were reduced from the stock jet length by about a half an inch or better. and the intake and carbs seemed bored large as light is visible all around the butterfly dampers and shut off causes the engine to diesel, so releasing the clutch to kill the engine is necessary.

The gears are most likely straight cut as the comments from the crowds about the funny sound of my engine were numerous, and the fact that the previous owner did 40 mph in first was mentioned a lot.  Not sure the logic for the big block and small head but the car does go like hell when running right, definitely more then the stock 50 hp, my guess is closer to 65 or 70 hp.

I figured that the guy who put this engine together previously was brilliant. OK... the head is the 848 cc because... the 1275 with the raised pistons would not work, the valves would smash the pistons. but the 848 receives less fuel into the cylinders compared to the 1275.... Unless... you keep the valves open longer, hence the weird grind on the cam. the scatter cam. That's the key. the 1275 uses hypothetically one cup of fuel in 5 minutes run time at 3000 rpm. Keep the valves of the 848 open longer and receive the same or better amount. The advantage is the engine can rev higher, like 8000 rpm, hence the lightened fly wheel with no timing marks and shortened stroke. And the shortened fuel jets compared to the longer stock ones meant he was just pouring in the fuel. thus the need to increase the intake bore. I mean wow.... I never would have thought of a build along these lines, he made a mini engine that could slap a 6 cylinder motor wild and give a V8 a good run for the money. The gear box is the next link, straight cut gears with an almost full posse diferential,  I know that because when I gun the engine, its like drivers wheel bites then passengers then drivers again. You can feel the steering wheel jump from wheel grip to wheel grip... That's just cool. But the clincher is that this was all done in 1972, because Jack the previous owner bought the car and never rebuilt the engine. My whole day was spent pondering this build, and its just blowing my mind the design is so elegant. My guess is the engine must be about 900 cc. 

Here is the project from start to finish...

Removing the interior only revealed piles of dirt packed into the Mini from rats, which also left many skeletons.

Picture 6 below shows where a tree fell onto the roof of this Mini leaving a good size dent.

I installed channels to the floor boards and then added a new floor board overtop filling all empty spaces with expanding foam. This process worked well in every part of the car as the foam would harden giving shape to the body after which I could pick off the rust and use the foam as backing for new metal.

If you look closely you can see I welded in roll cage piping every where in the interior to maintain the shape, including inside the front windshield channels.  This will give good strength to the front windshield in case of roll overs.

I soon realized after talking to Craig, that using replacement body panels would completely out of the question as there were no opportunities to attach new panels to anything existing.  So at that point I decided to eliminate all body seams, pin the panels together with light gauge galvanized metal and cover both interior and exterior seams with short strain fibreglass.

After removing pounds of caked on dirt from the rims I discovered that, although the aluminum rims were pitted badly, with some paint and elbow grease these cosmic rims were cool enough to keep.

First coat of primer reveals an insane amount of defeats, dents, and body ripples glistening in the sun.

- wee beasty with doors hung and roll cage installed, car is still too dusty to attract Anna to sit in for a photo shot.

Get styroform, add caulking, and fiberglass, and presto.. a one off mini front spoiler

Neighborhood kids are realy getting into the build, litterly...sigh...

Finally...paint.. just got it done last night, and wow... nice.. its shinny.

Anna picked the color, a cross between copper and orange.

Well done John - an incredible result!   (Webmaster, Alan)