My 1960's Appendix K Mini Cooper S and a bit of history.

[rustedandrotten]

Must be a genuine aeg no, aeg 648 is the blank forging and aeg 649 is the grind profile! Cam drives dizzy as well as oil pump, if genuine 510 649 or 731 it will be spider drive, dont lose the spider! if you run a dummy any old spider drive cam will do, peg drives shear at high revs! :approve:

 

[Brett]

Well the engine took a good turn last week. After lots of research and hunting down, a good cylinder head was on my lap. I soon offered it up to my short block and it all looks very promising. The head is from a Honda CBR 900 which means it has 2 cams, 16 valves and is beautifully engineered to take around 13-14,000rpm. It's massively different to the age old original mini item which only had 8 push rod operated valves and can cost £2.5k upwards for an unreliable race specced one.
The engine block will need alot of basic machining for it to fit but its all very straight forward. Nothing more than dry decking, restudding and offset boring some new liners in by about 80-90 thou which my machine shop says is very doable. The trickiest bit will be the cam timing. I was going to convert the cams and end of the head to run normal vernier pulleys but the cams are only 85mm apart from each other. Most verniers are 110mm+ diameter so im forced to run a timing chain which is a bit of a pain. It basically means I need to enclosed the whole side of the engine for lubrication which will be very time consuming to get it working and looking right. However, it will be blessed with a little more reliability hopefully. Ill put pics up later.

 

[k1ano]

Brett, if your able to swap the head for something modern, why can't you just use a motorcycle engine ? Are the rules/regs such that the engine block has to be authentic only ?

I used to run a Cooper S head on a pocketed 998 block back in the 80's ... Even then cross-flow head swaps were beginning to become popular - how things have moved on ...

All sounds good though and an interesting thread for sure :approve:

 

[Brett]

It would make more sense Martin! I can drop a Yamaha R1 straight in the front with no hastle what so ever. Infact my car did have one fitted by Jon Lee who I bought the car off originaly. He makes a fantastic kit that comes with everything you need i.e reverse, sprocketed LSD, cooling etc etc. For the race seires I want to compete in its perfectly legal. Its much much cheaper too as an engine is £5-700 and the full conversion kit around £3000. Thats pennies when you consider that gives you a near indestructable 145-150hp (300hp/ton), a 6 speed sequential gearbox and a plated LSD. It would cost well in excess of £15,000 to get a similar A seires to that level.
If the car was a typical late car from 1980on, i would probably consider it. However its a bit too modern for me. I want it to be really oldskool in the way it drives, behaves and even smells. Although the head is only 10 or so years old, its very much in keeping with what the racers were doing back in the 60's snd 70's. Something I wish i was around to have seen. Its all too easy to get caught up with modern ITB's, fully sequential ecu's, fly by wire throttle, huge wiring looms and fuel maps when tuning old cars. This will run 40dcoe webers (38's if i find some), a good old dizzy and Castrol R. I'm looking forward to something quite old, over fueled, temperamental and smelly! Lol





....reminds me of a bird I once dated saying that!



Pretty poor pic but that my car with a 4xv Yamaha engine.

 

[Brett]

Well the car has took 2 steps back but 10 steps forward in the last month or so. With trying to move the vee on abit and a busy work schedule, progress naturally slowed down. With the one off 16v head conversion shelved for a few months it gave me an opportunity to look for a few more period parts. Originally my car ran with an Arden 8 port head which at the time was the creme de le creme in cylinder heads. So much so that the BMC Works team used them in both Rallying and Touring cars. Luckily I have tracked down one of the originals with all the bells and whistles to boot. At £2k its not a bad price either as it'll save a lot of work in the long run.
However, the biggest and best find came last week. After quite literally years of searching, I found someone willing to part with the exact same injection system as the car originaly ran in the 60's. The system was made by Tecalemit Jackson and is extremely rare to see running these days. Although very crude by today's standards, it was amongst the very first after market/competition type injection systems with the likes of works Jaguars using it as well as 1 or two f1 teams.
As it stands, the car should hopefully be pretty much the exact same spec it was in its competition heyday. The only 2 differences will be the use of a later engine block and non Cooper S gearbox casing. I'm now looking forward to having a real time warp sitting in the garage.

And now that its easy to upload images, here are some pics before its strip down and resto.

These are from its retirement in 2000.

This was it in action I think in the early 70's.

 

[rustedandrotten]

Great to see you have gone with the TJ system, all adjustments with a spanner, screwdriver and feeler gauges plus possibly a high tech Gunson Colortune, not a pc in sight :ihatpcs: [smilie=yay.gif] :approve:

 

[Brett]

Haha Colour tune! The exhaust manifold will have a wideband point so am hoping to get it as good as we possibly can on the rollers at Lynx.

 

[graham]

Hello oldskoolbaby followed your thread with intrest .you know I run a weslake 8 port with tj injection with 45mm throttle bodies .done 3 track days inc mark one perf last year .6.000mile trouble free motoring .if you need any help or advice regarding injection feel free to get in touch also run a 1071s engined 1960 shell owned it for 31 years .a gtm and aquired a 1380 hill climb mini last year .keeps me out of trouble regards graham .

 

[Brett]

Hello oldskoolbaby followed your thread with intrest .you know I run a weslake 8 port with tj injection with 45mm throttle bodies .done 3 track days inc mark one perf last year .6.000mile trouble free motoring .if you need any help or advice regarding injection feel free to get in touch also run a 1071s engined 1960 shell owned it for 31 years .a gtm and aquired a 1380 hill climb mini last year .keeps me out of trouble regards graham .

Fantastic Graham. Would love to see some pics of your car or better still, the car in the flesh. I'm VERY green to all things mechanical injection. My source for a TJ system has gone cold so I'm currently considering hunting down a lucas or kungelfischer setup. Problem is I'm constantly being talked into fitting modern management which is hard to not do considering how hard it is to track TJ stuff down.

 

[graham]

Hi oldskoolbaby I'm not very good at uploading photos .go on mark fosters mini perf site put in 8 port at croft or pics at elvington that was a track day or marks site again on blyton photos or you tube entitled bvrt 8 port .it sounds rattley but it was caused by worn throttle spindles .im off to silverstone in the clio so hope to see you there regards graham .

 

[Brett]

Ohh right. I've seen that vid before. Westlakes look the part and its great to see youve put propper injection on it with the correct angle inlet tract ie straight. I'm also on the the mk1 forum. Quite helpfull most of the time. I'm pretty gutted nobody on there can help me out getting hold of Bill McGovern or have pictures/info of my car before he sold it on to the Lee family. Seems there are some very knowledgable people on there. Would love to go Blyton this year but the car won't be done.

Brett

 

[graham]

I'm off to blyton but going in the clio I've not had time to sort own cars busy putting together a mk3 s for a customer .its been off the road for 35 years .

 

[Brett]

I might pop up to Blyton regardless if the car is finished or not Graham. I'm picking up my cylinder head this week and will be ordering a cam and a set of 3 piece push rods from Minispares so the block will be coming together shortly fingers crossed. Will be put together much quicker if a friend sells me his spare 1275s motor as a donor too.

 

[rustedandrotten]

I might pop up to Blyton regardless if the car is finished or not Graham. I'm picking up my cylinder head this week and will be ordering a cam and a set of 3 piece push rods from Minispares so the block will be coming together shortly fingers crossed. Will be put together much quicker if a friend sells me his spare 1275s motor as a donor too.

Time for some update photos Brett, things must surely be moving on now!! Cant wait to see the finished article!
Need to get it on a trailer behind the Vee (L plates on of course :rofl: ) and bring it down to Goodwood for an unveiling :bow: :approve:

 

[Brett]

Will do soon Simon. Building the Jack Knight dog box first so I've got something to sit it on. Bodywork is out of my hands unfortunatly.

 

[rustedandrotten]

Will do soon Simon. Building the Jack Knight dog box first so I've got something to sit it on. Bodywork is out of my hands unfortunatly.

You must be barking, never used a dog box as a seat before :rofl: [smilie=yay.gif]

 

[Brett]

[smilie=thanks.gif]

As it stands, the engine and gearbox spec is nearly all there Simon.

4 bolt centre mains caps.
Lightened and balanced 970s crank
Fully worked 970s conrods
+20 Omega pistons
310/320 cam
Bespoke 3 piece push rods
Arden 8 port head
Titanium top caps
1.5* full roller rocker with extra post supports
Maniflow exhaust manifold

1.13 straight cut drop gears
4.13 cooper S final drive
Jack Knight Development dog box

Just a few things to get now. Thinking slide throttle bodies and mfi is next on the list.

 

[rustedandrotten]

4.11:1 diff is the diff out of the Austin/Morris 1100 or sme Mini 850 vans, 3.76:1 is Mini 850/998 and 3.44:1 is the 'S' final drive. your set up gives about 13mph /1000. Brilliant accelleration but not ideal for long hauls on the road at speed. Going to sound great with s/c 1.13:1 howlers in though :bow: LSD?

 

[Brett]

4.13 were an option for the S mate. It is geared extremely low but then its going to be revving north of 9000rpm and touching 10,000 at times. I think it'll be about 115-120mph maximum. The Guessworks calculator has helped out loads.
Not sure on LSD or not. It certainly isnt going to have enough torque to worry the slicks in the dry but then it britain which mean most meets will probably be damp.

 

[Brett]

A big jigsaw piece of the build!