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Hi

I'm Andy, some of you may know me from elsewhere. I thought you might be interested to see what I'm up to with my 1978 Clubman.

I bought it unseen as a rolling shell, thinking it needed a few patches and an engine dropping in. It's never the case. Here's just over 3 years of on/off work cut down to edited highlights.













































































That brings us up to last weekend. Any body want to see what's going under the bonnet??

Well done, that should've died

Absolutely! Thanks.

The way I see it as it was only a basic model, not exactly rare and it's far from original, I have free rain to do with it as I wish. For me that's a subtle modern looking clubman.

So... the engine - MPI block, centre main strap, oil galleries Drilled/Taped for threaded plugs, Oil fed thrust conversion, head and block Drilled/Taped for 11 stud, Drill/Tap for BMW under crown oil jets, dry decked. VMaxScart 274 Cam. Worked crank and rods. When I get round to it, I'll be picking up a set of 0.020" 10cc cast Omega pistons. MED stage 3 head, chambers opened to 28cc and dry decked.












Cooling - Front mount radiator with electric fan and auxiliary circulation pump




Jack Knight straight cut, close ratio box with minispares cross pin diff and 2.95:1 CWP.



Stuck on the back of the head will be a Toyota SC12 supercharger from an early MR2, with some custom manifolds.




All being well, in around a month I will be taking delivery of a Specialist Components Fuel Injection and engine management kit. That should give me the best driveablility and fuel economy possible with my setup.

10 out of 10 for effort and commitmant apbellamy, I like the idea of the oil fed thrusts, can you elaborate a little more on that, I presume the pipework at the bottom of the bores is for cooling the underside of the pistons, is there one per bore?

Does the electric pump replaces the mechanical one completely, if so you must have some sort of electrical controlling wizardry to run it?

Some good ideas I've not seen before.

Keep posting.

36inter wrote:10 out of 10 for effort and commitmant apbellamy, I like the idea of the oil fed thrusts, can you elaborate a little more on that, I presume the pipework at the bottom of the bores is for cooling the underside of the pistons, is there one per bore?

Does the electric pump replaces the mechanical one completely, if so you must have some sort of electrical controlling wizardry to run it?

Some good ideas I've not seen before.

Keep posting.

Thanks.

Oil fed thrusts:



Basically, 4 counter sunk screws (not shown) to hold the thrusts to the main cap/block and a hole directly into the oil supply for the main bearing. It allows a thin film of oil between the thrust bearing and the thrust face, to help stop the heavy pre-verto presure plates ruining the thrust bearing/face.

Under crown oil jets:





These are from some BMW or other. It's basically an M8 banjo bolt wiht a drilling through to the oil gallery, one per piston. They have a 3 bar ball/spring valve in them, so around 45 psi of oil pressure (medium rev's if all is well) they squirt a cooling oil onto the underside of the piston crown. Hopefully this will help prevent detonation.

Re-circ pump.



This is an auxilary pump as well as the mechanical pump. It will circulate the coolant between a thermostat sandwich plate and the heater return in the bottom hose (no heater). It will run on a timed realy, so it runs for 10minutes after the ignition is off. With the rad fan on a constant circuit, this should help prevent heat soak after shutdown (forced induction engines get very very hot).

I'm trying to make the engine/box as bullet proof as possible as I don't want to be pulling it back out on a regular basis.

Carl at Force Racing http://www.force-racing.co.uk/ has done most of the machining for me, allthough I'm trying to learn more as a go. I'm going to wobble up the brass dry deck plugs myself on my old lathe, how hard can it be...

I also have a set of his rather nice wheels sat waiting for it.



I also co-own a turbo charged metro van, so have learnt a lot from that. That run's around 150BHP and 170lpft, so doesn't hang round. Currently taking a small break from the mini to complete some upgrades on that, try for a little more power.

Hi AP,


That is some SERIUS panel work, you are into
Very nice

I love the small details regarding extra oil for the thrust washer & pistons

Is there a drawing for the holes in the block, where the piston coolers is to be drilled ??

Keep up the good work

Jens Christian

I like the wheels and tyres, as someone on this site said before, mini porn.

Thanks for the extra information, interesting.

Thanks for the comments.

Carl may have diagarams of where to drill, I just left that to him...

While I'm rambling...

As part of the modern look, I've had some LED bulb/light unit replacements made.










They all use less power, iluminate more quickly and the front side light/indicator units are 100g lighter than the standard ones and won't rot away, so a worth while upgrade

Made a small amount of progress...

That is sexy

Well done fantastic work and well documented, I like the silver it looks good on Mini's.

apbellamy wrote:Made a small amount of progress...

Love the understatement!

Very nice, unbelievable from what you started with........

Amazing..... More Pics!

graham in aus wrote:

apbellamy wrote:
Made a small amount of progress...

Love the understatement!

Was just thinking the same.

Thats coming on really nice, fantastic job you did

Keep the pictures coming .


Jens Christian

talk about a teaser photo!

just goes to show, even really bad shells can be repaired if you want the challange!!

Thanks chaps. Here's some more pic's.




















Had loads of crappy problems of late and have been getting nowhere fast. Hoping ot pick up the pace a little now.

apbellamy wrote:Thanks chaps. Here's some more pic's.

errr, why have you fitted the rubber cone in upside down????

Bugger. Obviously I am a buffoon....

I guess the front subframe will be coming apart in the near future.

EDIT: Thanks for pointing it out. Might have caused some interesting handling characteristics...

apbellamy wrote:
EDIT: Thanks for pointing it out. Might have caused some interesting handling characteristics...

at least it is easy to do with the engine out!!!


i have seen this done on a car before, it didnt handle very well and soon became apparent as the hilo moved around so much and the car dropped down.

its not as common as people putting fans on back to front and calipers on upside down though.

i see at least one fan a week on wrong, and about one pair of calipers a month.

a guy came to work the other week with his newly finished car that had the double wammy of fan and calipers! amazingly enough it had just passed its mot.....

I'm hoping that the MOT will be straight forward. Everything on the car is pretty much brand new, so it's just a case of me screwing it together properly...

Super job on the silver & black the finish looks great.