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I love the material on those Aussie seats.

mk1 wrote:I love the material on those Aussie seats.

From the start the factory here made all the interior trim locally, and changed it every few years, so finding the right material can be a challenge.

Funny how the grass is always greener as I prefer the UK trim!

I gave the car a wash today ready for the Minis in the Gong show tomorrow

timmy 201
hi mate how did the show go today car is looking good you have a lot of room in your engine bay mine is a bit tight with the v8 in there but not as tight as the project binky car it is amazing the way they fitted it all together if you have not seen this have a look at project binky on the net 28 episodes it is incredible
we were ok with the bush fires up here in wingham how did you go
cheers roger

Hi Roger, I made it to the show today. It did end up a bit rainy during the day, not so good for running a car show but rain is always welcome at the moment!



I am south of Wollongong and we had fires around us, but our area has been safe. We did have a grass fire about 1km away, but the local RFS had it out in less than an hour. It has been really smokey outside but nothing we can complain about compared to some other people.

Here are some more photos from Minis in the Gong show and shine. Unfortunately I didn't get lots of photos this year due to the rain, although it was pretty welcome at the time






A couple of little things in the last few months.. first up was a pair of flip caps for the fuel tanks. They have a threaded collar that just presses onto the tanks. Unfortunately they leak just as bad as the stock caps!


On the plus side they look pretty cool and mean that I won’t loose the caps! It was also only 10 minutes all up to do both sides, so very quick and easy


At a recent parts sale I picked up an original green rocker cover with the alloy plates on top


After a scrub clean and a clear coat it looked like this, it's nice to have the original green colour on show


it isn't a great match for the engine colour, but it looks better in person. I've added it to the couple of rocker covers I swap between every now and then.


I thought I'd provide a bit of an update since the engine has gone in. I've done a fair bit of work changing the jets and other parts in the Dellorto to get the tune pretty close. But as much as I love the Dellorto, I've also always wanted twin HS2 carbs like a Cooper S, so I have nearly completed assembling them and hopefully I'll have them installed in the next few weeks. I have standard red springs and M needles from a Cooper S, so hopefully this will be a good staring point.


The heater was been added back into the engine bay, this also works really well to help the radiator keep the car cool - it'll stay on 80-85 degrees the whole time which is around the thermostat opening temp.

I've also added the tappet cover breather back to the engine - previously I had left it off as I was trying to fit an extra engine steady, but it was too hard to fit in with all the other parts in that area. I have also been using a catch can on the breather line to remove any contaminates before they go into the air filter. It has picked up a bit of stuff - mostly water and a little blowby.

I have been tweaking the advance curve as I was getting a bit of pinging, and I've current got the vacuum advance removed as this was adding too much timing where I didn't need it. The advance curve still needs a bit more work to get it 100%

I've now got over 1000km on the engine, so it is time for an oil change and a check over everything.

The engine has lots of grunt down low and it's really fun on the road. It will easily spin 1st and 2nd gears from a standstill and I'm even able to accelerate up hills! It could probably do with some larger chokes in the Dellorto to make the most power up top, but I like the low down grunt it has now, and it's probably good for longevity to keep the RPM down


The gearbox is a delight to use, a bit of an acquired taste, but it shifts very positively and the throw is surprisingly short and there is minimal slop to the system. It's great to have 4 working synchros and the slightly lower final drive makes it nicer on the highway. I will need to get the speedo recalibrated to match as it currently is a little out. The clutch works great with all the new parts and the pedal is pretty light, especially compared to some other blue dot diaphragms I've tried.

So overall the project was a huge success, the car drives much better than I was expecting - it's smooth and plenty of grunt and has the overall period look that I was aiming for.

So with the 1098 engine done and nearly finished I’ve dug out my 1275 stuff and I’m starting to plan ahead for the next engine build. It’ll definitely be another couple of years before I get anything done on it, but it’s nice to know what you need and pick it up when it comes up cheap. So far I’ve got a standard bore block, standard grind short stroke South African crank, standard 12G940 and some standard pistons and rods. It’ll be a short stroke, big bore 1100cc engine, so the opposite of the current engine


In the last couple of weeks the South African 12G2827 crank was dropped off to the machine shop. It was standard size on both bearing surfaces, which was a great starting point but obviously needed a regrind. It’s the one on the left in this photo, the right one is the 12G82 1098 crank that is in the current engine. It was crack checked and all ok, cleaned up and reground to 10/10 undersize.

I just love your little Min, glad to see that you are still developing it.

mk1 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 06, 2020 10:08 am I just love your little Min, glad to see that you are still developing it.

Thanks Mark! I’ve only got room/time/money for one car at the moment, so I’ll be slowly getting this one close to how I want... I’ve still got a huge list of things to do for this car!

I've finally got the Butlers spot lamps working with new H3 bulbs and I've wired them in. They'll still need to be aimed to make sure they do something

hi tim
this car is looking better all the time it is a credit to your efforts my old mini was red and white and had jelly bean mags are they still around they were a smart looking wheel for the time
cheers roger mcnab

Thanks Roger, you can still get old sets of jelly bean mags - not too popular nowadays though!

I also bought another Moto Lita on ebay - for the bargain price of $41 delivered. It has a nice patina and it came with an early MGB boss which appears to be the same as a mini splines. It looks like 14" diameter, and hopefully with a bit of love it'll come up nice




When I change to the twin SU carbs I have a couple of vacuum port spacers and my idea is to use two vacuum gauges to make sure the tune is even between the carbs. Before I put them in the car I had to make sure they were reading close to each other. Luckily I have a small vacuum pump in the garage and I was able to connect both gauges with a T-piece and they read within 1"Hg of each other, which is good.

Last week my new air fuel ratio gauge (O2 sensor) turned up. It's an Innovate MTX-L Plus with the tailpipe adapter

 
I wanted to add it to a portable box with a switch and fuse, and the power comes from the accessory/cigarette lighter port. It's not the kind of gauge you need to have in the car all the time, so having it portable means you can use it in different cars.

 
After a  few measurements and some cutting we ended up with this. I got it in the car and ran through the calibration procedure 

 
It works! I drove the car to work and checked the mixture with the Dellorto - it's still spot on
Cruise = 14.0 to 15.0
Part throttle = 13.0 to 14.0
Full throttle = 12.0 to 13.0


I had a bit of time free over the long weekend, so I thought I would get stuck into swapping the carbs


10 minutes later and the Dellorto was off. It's so easy, just fuel line, choke cable, throttle cable and the 4 manifold nuts.


Getting the HS2 carbs on was a bit of a nightmare.. it was really fiddly and not a lot of room to get your hands in. I managed to get it started, but it would idle OK for a couple of seconds and then the RPM would increase to 4000rpm with no throttle input. The pedal was strange too, not returning back properly and a bit sticky


I left it for the day and had a think about what was wrong, so:
Throttle cable was too long and hitting the exhaust manifold
Throttle cable was incorrectly adjusted and had 2cm of slack
Vacuum port was left open
Middle throttle return spring on the wrong way
No dashpot oil
Possibly the PCV was opening too much

I fixed all the issues above and bypassed the PCV and got it to run and have a nice consistent idle. The throttle response is really good, and it's a lot quieter than the Dellorto! I hooked up the PCV again and it was idling too high - about 2000rpm. I still need to do a baseline check over the linkage and set the idle mixture, then I can take it for a drive and see what it's like!

I’ve been on a bit of an SU needle adventure over the last month or so and learned (and relearned) a lot of stuff about SU carbs and PCV systems.

First up I got the car running on the M needles with red springs. This was the standard spec for the Cooper S so I thought it’d be a good starting point. These ended up being way too lean everywhere Next up I ordered some AH2 needles. They were perfect under full throttle but still very lean at cruise and part throttle. I was able to give them a couple of turns richer to make it good enough to drive around, but it made it too rich under throttle. It also just felt a bit weird, especially when cold.

At this point I started to get a bit confused as my engine seemed to want richer needles than the 1275 S “rich” needles recommend by BMC (AH2). A lot of reading about SU carbs followed for the next few days and I came up with a couple of ideas: a needle richer in the bottom end like #3 or perhaps the spring was wrong I asked for some ideas and a generous member Glen on the Ausmini forum offered to send me a couple of sets of needles to try out. He also had a look over some of my engine photos and spotted something not right. I’d suspected a leak somewhere, and previously I’d had the carbs and manifold off to check everything over and not found anything obvious. What I’d missed in the swap to the PCV system was that the only source of intake air to the crankcase should be through the proper filtered oil cap. I’d left the filter breather open to atmosphere on the flywheel housing, which mean that the PCV was now able to suck in a huge amount of air. I’ve since capped this breather off temporarily to check if it’s the problem, if successful I’ll join this to the other breather with a T piece, or possibly to the rocker cover I gave the car a test drive with HV3 needles. It ended up being a lot richer at the bottom end than the AH2, in part to fixing the big air leak at the PCV and also the different profile. I also found an air leak around the catch can, so I bypassed it too.

I’ve been driving it to work on nice days and it runs really well, the only negative is slightly too rich at cruise now (previously too lean). I’ll give the AJ needles a go, maybe they’ll be a good overall balance (or possibly with all the air leaks fixed I’ll go back to the AH2) Here’s a video of a short run around town. Hopefully soon it’ll be dialed in even better!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cAQIn_BdY8

hi tim that was a great run around town i know this a silly question but you have oil in the dash pots in another life i was a fireman in sydney and we had dennis jaguar fire engines and we were having no end of trouble with them not running properly and they would go to the workshop and come back not much better well at the beginning of the shift we were told that our engine was going to the workshop again
well that was enough so i got the engine cover of and checked the dash pots for oil and dry as so i quickly got some engine oil and a bit of kero mixed it up and put into the dash pots put the cover back on just as the motor officer arrived with the old motor for us he got in our motor and started it up and it was running perfect better than ever he wanted to know what was going on so i told him so after rousing at me he said well done i will pit that on the
service list as nobody ever checked them
may be a answer
cheers roger mcnab

Thanks Roger, I did forget the dashpot oil for the first drive around the block, but then remembered to add it in. I’ve got some Penrite SU damper oil

I’ve got Ian’s needles spreadsheet program on my laptop but it’s been out of action for a couple of weeks, so I’ve had to use the basic version on my phone

Nothing major has happened in the last month or so as I've been trying to sort out a bunch of little jobs. First up was the SU tuning. When I left off I had HV3 needles and the gauge was showing it was pretty rich, but it drove perfectly. I swapped for the AJ needles, but they were too lean, so back to the HV3.

I raised the jet a couple of flats and the AFR's were nearly spot on, although now I was getting a lot of pinging - particularly at 2-3000rpm. I reduced the timing in that area with the blackbox and no more pinging. I have to say SU tuning is much easier with an AFR gauge and a good selection to choose from, thanks again to Glenn as its saved me a bunch of time and money in picking the right needle. I'm yet to work out the fuel economy thanks to the speedo...


With the twin SU's now installed, I could now reinstall my wooden dash along with the twin vacuum gauges to help keep an eye on the carbs (one of my long term plans). They have come in handy a few times to make sure the idle settings are correct and they're also a bit of fun . Unfortunately they both rattle really bad! The wood dash also causes a squeak from the dash cards, but it all needs to come out now...

The speedo has died again. I think it's up for a 4th trip to be repaired as this time the odometer has stopped working. I have a couple of spare mph speedos to fill the hole, it's such a pain to get it in and out of the dash


Another long term project is nearly complete - the ROH Contessa/Contesta wheel caps. I was lucky enough to get 5 of them, but they needed some TLC. I gave them a clean up and polish as they were all tarnished.


My wife was able to help and redo the red lettering with some red modelling paint and they came up really nice! The next step is to clean up the wheels and two of them will need the centrebore to be opened out by a couple of mm to suit these caps. I also got some new A008 tyres as the old ones were almost gone


As always I look out for parts for sale, and I bought a crusty old Sports rocker cover for a good price. I decided to try the Dremel for polishing as I had bought a polishing kit for it and it has turned out pretty good so far! Hopefully with a little more time it'll turn out even better. I'm still trying to decide whether to paint the fins at the top or leave it bare.




Here's a few photos of the car all washed and clean for a change

I was reading up on how to stop the gear stick buzzing and there was a couple of good ideas, one being to add the lower boot to the gear stick (the round one). It fits over the retaining plate on the end of the gearbox, but turned out to be a loose fit and didn't help with the vibration. At least it'll keep the dirt out of the mechanism


The main problem is that the early type gearsticks have a full size ball on the end and have a metal on metal contact. The later ones have the nylon bush which stops this vibration (thanks to 1071bob for the photo) viewtopic.php?f=3&t=28592&start=10 The next idea was to add a rubber bush to the end of the gearstick. This adds a tiny amount of preload to the shifting rod and has completely stopped all the buzzing


I dropped the speedo off for repair and it only took 3 days! He replaced the tenth's number wheel on the right as it was stuck on 11700


I've managed to find a wood Maxrob (Australian made) steering wheel rim after looking for a couple of years. It looks to have been recently refurbished and is nicely polished and stained. The wood is a little on the red side for my taste, I'd prefer a bit more brown, but I definitely can't complain for the price




Another item that had been on the shelf for a while was this Morris 850 badge. I thought it would great on a gear knob, and had a guy handmake this one specially to suit. It looks great, and has a really nice feel in the hand too




While I love the look of the Cooper S airbox, it is really quiet and I thought I'd try something different to see if I liked it. I was looking for some period style filters, and I got these Ramflo filters from a friend. They needed new filter elements, so ordered some replacement foam inserts from UniFIlter, as these have a better reputation than the ones from Ramflo


All cleaned up here


New foam filters squeezed in


Putting them on the car is only a 5 minute job. I didn't notice much of a difference to the sound on the quick drive around the block until I was up over 4000rpm. Next time I drive the car I'll take the AFR gauge to see if the mixtures have changed at all. There is also a pair of stub stacks in the mail from the UK, but they might be a while!


Theres a quick video of the sound before and after
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oii06uMdkHs

I also finished up polishing the rocker cover and have it installed on the car now

I have the same dash in mine. If you fancy a rev counter 'Yazaki' made a small and neat one that will fit one of your existing hole. They appear on Ebay from time to time and don't cost the earth.

AndyB72 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 30, 2020 4:44 pm I have the same dash in mine. If you fancy a rev counter 'Yazaki' made a small and neat one that will fit one of your existing hole. They appear on Ebay from time to time and don't cost the earth.

Thanks Andy. I haven't put any permanent gauges in the dash as I sometimes take it out when I fancy a change. The TIM tacho suits me anyway

We had a nice run with MITG the other weekend and it was a great sunny day out! I was keeping an eye on the air fuel mixtures with the gauge and it was running really close to the ideal zone. The only area giving me issues at the moment is going up a hill at part throttle, where it would start to lean out a bit. I guess the upside is with the old engine I was always full throttle going up the same hill






The little stub stacks turned up last week and were nice and quick to install