Everyone loves a mini!

Minor win today. When I first got it running I did a quick light check to make sure all the right bits lit up when required. After sorting a front bulb holder I thought all was bueno. A few times at stop lights I had folks telling me I didn't have brake lights, yet when I would check they would be fine.  Then one evening I noticed the dash lights coming on when I pressed the brakes. Further inspection revealed the front parking lights also lit up with the brakes.  

I dove in today and found a mess in the trunk with wires scabbed in from right to left. After cutting out everything that shouldn't have been there and hooking up one wire that was dangling behind the gas tank all was bueno. Someone couldn't see that loose brake light wire and jumpered it to the other side but used the tail light filament of the bulb instead allowing the brake light circuit to feed in to the tail light circuit.  Hooray for the easy fix and once again proving most electrical problems are due to previous "repairs". 

I mounted a VW backup light as well but the switch on the shifter appears to be buggered so I will need to get it on the lift to sort that out.

So here is a dirty mini arse with a non functioning, but stylish backup lamp.

Also I managed to fix the window regulator in the avalanche I'm 10 minutes for free so that goes into the win category as well. 

Here is the part of the build thread where you all get to marvel at me making a ridiculous mistake that cost me a lot of time and frustration.

A few pages back I mentioned running the setup through WinSU and ordering the recommended spring and needle combo. Well, that didn't work. It spectacularly didn't work with fouled plugs, and major bogging,  terrible performance.... It was undriveable. I checked fuel pressure and float level, i swapped out the carb. I begged, borrowed and pilfered any needles I could get my hands on and kept swapping them until it worked. I don't remember what needle I wound up with but it was one of the leanest available.  It still went rich at high rpm but was no longer misfiring and I was frustrated so I gave up. Why wasn't the motor requiring fuel?  I  went so far as to pull the head twice to check things over.  Hell I pulled the drivetrain so I could put a degree wheel on it to verify cam timing . I even swapped out the entire ignition system, TWICE!

I convinced myself the engine was running as well as it should and was conent to be underwhelmed by the motor i had just spent 2500 on. Hence the G13b swap.

Fast forward to yesterday and I wanted to plumb the crankcase vents into the intake as the heater draws engine bay air into the cabin and I was tired of the stink. While I had the cone filter off and in my hand I spotted some K&N cleaner on the shelf and thought, why not. Well that brownish purple K&N color gave way to a bright red color and the muck in the sink was appalling.  

Thinking nothing of it I left the shop and the car barely made it around the block. I dug the wideband display out from under the seat where it had migrated I saw afr's in the 25:1 range and then it hit me like a wrecking ball. I got back to the shop with judicious use of the choke and sprinted towards the toolbox where that needle was and slapped it in, set the idle afr and headed out again.

HOLY FRICKIN BALLS!!!! It is a totally different car.  Like I disconnected the trailer from it and released the parking brake. It rips through the revs and where it used to peter out around 3500, it now pulls hard to 5500. This is the motor i thought I was building. A high compression,  big valve headed screamer. 

All because of a filthy air cleaner. 

I bought one of those cute pancake filters but it hit the firewall so I put the one the P.O. had back on it. Come to think of it, he stopped driving the car because it went way down on power and pulled the head to inspect!

Anyway. I feel stupid, delighted and victorious all at the same time.

So here it is getting ready to do burnouts out that bay door.

In reply to Jumper K Balls (Trent) :

That’s awesome news...at least in the fact it didn’t cost you any significant money to correct. Any vids of it ripping through the gears?

In reply to Jumper K Balls (Trent) :

Dude we’ve all been there. I’ve just about thrown in the towel because I was timing off the wrong cylinder. For a week. Awesome job getting it straightened out!

Fine work! It happens to us all.

i had same problem with my E12 back in 2014.  Things like this reinforce for us all:   always check the easy stuff first!

This thing can berkeley right off.

Apparently it is a Mico lever lock. And it was pointed out to me earlier in the thread that it was a hydraulic parking brake.  It was causing random rear brake lockups. Sometimes it would drag a little off and on but today i had to drag both rears half a block to get the car out of traffic.

New hard line from the master to the rear subframe and the car is back in business. 

Also we are a two mini family now. A 2008 clubman S found its way into our hearts and wallet. Now to sell the avalanche.  

In reply to Jumper K Balls (Trent) :

It might just be the perspective, but they don’t look much different in size lined up nose-to-nose like that. 

It’s completely the perspective. 

In reply to Pete Gossett :

Sitting at a stop sign in my customer's '66 Cooper S and a newish Clubman pulled up on my right side, windows down. I yelled "Giant" it looked so big. Driver laughed so hard he nearly pulled out in front of oncoming traffic.

Jumper K Balls (Trent) said:

Here is the part of the build thread where you all get to marvel at me making a ridiculous mistake that cost me a lot of time and frustration.

 

A few pages back I mentioned running the setup through WinSU and ordering the recommended spring and needle combo. Well, that didn't work. It spectacularly didn't work with fouled plugs, and major bogging,  terrible performance.... It was undriveable. I checked fuel pressure and float level, i swapped out the carb. I begged, borrowed and pilfered any needles I could get my hands on and kept swapping them until it worked. I don't remember what needle I wound up with but it was one of the leanest available.  It still went rich at high rpm but was no longer misfiring and I was frustrated so I gave up. Why wasn't the motor requiring fuel?  I  went so far as to pull the head twice to check things over.  Hell I pulled the drivetrain so I could put a degree wheel on it to verify cam timing . I even swapped out the entire ignition system, TWICE!

I convinced myself the engine was running as well as it should and was conent to be underwhelmed by the motor i had just spent 2500 on. Hence the G13b swap.

Fast forward to yesterday and I wanted to plumb the crankcase vents into the intake as the heater draws engine bay air into the cabin and I was tired of the stink. While I had the cone filter off and in my hand I spotted some K&N cleaner on the shelf and thought, why not. Well that brownish purple K&N color gave way to a bright red color and the muck in the sink was appalling.  

Thinking nothing of it I left the shop and the car barely made it around the block. I dug the wideband display out from under the seat where it had migrated I saw afr's in the 25:1 range and then it hit me like a wrecking ball. I got back to the shop with judicious use of the choke and sprinted towards the toolbox where that needle was and slapped it in, set the idle afr and headed out again.

HOLY FRICKIN BALLS!!!! It is a totally different car.  Like I disconnected the trailer from it and released the parking brake. It rips through the revs and where it used to peter out around 3500, it now pulls hard to 5500. This is the motor i thought I was building. A high compression,  big valve headed screamer. 

All because of a filthy air cleaner. 

I bought one of those cute pancake filters but it hit the firewall so I put the one the P.O. had back on it. Come to think of it, he stopped driving the car because it went way down on power and pulled the head to inspect!

Anyway. I feel stupid, delighted and victorious all at the same time.

So here it is getting ready to do burnouts out that bay door.

I'm so stoked to read this! Please tell me you will leave this engine in, rather than rip it out and put something else in.

The A series is staying! The G13B is going to be rebuilt and used in the next iteration of my crazy Fiat 850. 

Of course the 998 will be changed over time. The call of EFI is hard to resist, especially hard considering all the bits (MS, Wideband, TBI unit, harness) are sitting on my projects shelf ready to be used.

We have a TV car show style ridiculous deadline project right now so my personal stuff will go slow until Monterey car week. Then I can really start in.

I’m happy you got this figured out, I wasn’t a fan of the packaging pics of the swap

Consider this an update to the build thread and an extension to the seat heaters thread.

I love seat heaters. I don't understand why they are not top priority on a vintage car. I love the crisp air, open windows or top down driving while still being warm. 

Seats. The mini seats are awkward. The seating position is abnormal. Anyone who sits down in it immediately reaches for the non existent back adjustment.  I have been searching high and low for some seats that are

1. small enough to not seem out of place

2.  have back angle adjustment

3. supportive

4. look appropriately vintage.

Short of paying through the nose for some 95 M miata seats and having them recovered in a more vintage style I have come up with nothing.  I do still have the surfboard NA miata seats from the 850 in storage but I remember them being particularly unsupportive with the sedan seating position and frankly, hideous.  Also in storage were a set of low back 124 spider seats I was saving in hopes of reupholstering them in red for the Fiat. They look a lot like the Ferrari 250gte seats I fell in love with during that restoration. I decided to use them in the mini at least temporarily. Then the seat warmer thread happened and reminded me that it was on my must have list.

So here is the passenger seat. These were reupholstered in the past. I took them from a car with terminal rust. The covers are crooked, the frames seem bent the rails are lackluster. So the perfect starting point, right?

One Amazon sourced seat heater kit

$45 hard earned American dollars worth.

Small round switches should be easy to install or hide, simple cables with relays. Haven't looked to see if there is just a resistor inline for the low heat setting. 

The heater matrix is in 3 pieces. According to the instructions is says to cut them to length but not width. It should be obvious why.

Tools and supplies needed. Hog rings and pliers

The groove in the foam for the listing happens to line up perfectly with a gap in the matrix so I punched a hole for the springs that hold the listing in the bottom cushion and adhered it to the foam.

And then I reapplied the upholstery. There is a little steel basket  that is on the underside of the foam that the upholstery is hog ringed to. Bottom cushion was super easy. Like less than a half hour.

Sorted!

Now for the back.  A fair bit more complicated and then I made it worse!

Repairs to the foam. Looks like someone tried to add material where the bolstering was collapsed and that material just smooshed out.

Making for a wider back than the seat base and a general mushroomed appearance. 

Taking cues from the seats in the Mk1 Lotus Cortina I had to repair last year I copied the Lotus method

Bent some half inch tubing X4

And welded to the seat back

From there I made a groove in the bolster foam for the tubing to fit into and lashed the backing and foam into place. Fitted the heater matrix using the same gap for the listing groove. 

These listings had to be sewn in place. A strong piece of cord and a big upholstery needle were required.

Then pulling and stretching the cover in place and gluing it with contact cement.

Not perfect. The back portion isn't flared/flattened out anymore. I think one hinge is off one click from the other so I need to adjust that.  I also put it on a Sparco slider I had laying around.  Certainly good enough for the likes of me though. Initial sitting on the floor of the shop tests says it is pretty cozy. 

First seat probably took a solid 6 hours of work. The second will likely be half of that.  Had I just installed the heaters in the mini seats with no listings it would have been a 20 minute job. Getting the listings right is the hardest part.

I also still need to make seat rail adapters for the mini, install the wiring harnesses and while I am at it finally pull the carpet and install the padding I forgot when I put the carpet in. That will make it easier to hide the heater wiring.

Cool!

What are listing?

I had to look up listing, too. Looks like it's the use of a sleeve/loop sewn in which you can pass a wire through so you can pull the upholstery into concave areas.

There's a reference/description of one guy's take about 2/3 of the way down this page:

http://www.monkeyfighter.com/autoseats.html

The Mk3 grill started breaking rivets and tearing itself apart so I am playing with a Mk1 moustache and the black grill that came with the car. All pieces are bent and damaged to various degrees so it looks a bit off but I am sold on the early grill look. The British field meet in Portland is celebrating 60 years of the mini in a few months and I now have a swap meet shopping list.

The car needs another muffler or two. It is too loud inside and the missus won't ride in it. I have an over complicated and convoluted plan though. 

Quieting the mini step one. Install the carpet underlayment pads that have been sitting on the shelf for about a year.  The floors had 3M sound deadening tiles but adding this seems to have helped a lot.

Also whipped up some quick and dirty seat relocation brackets out of 1/4" aluminum. 

I had been avoiding doing this because I wasn't planning on keeping these seats but the task of making adapter rails just keeps getting put off and the seats were already out and the aluminum was laying there. 10 minutes later it is a totally different driving position in a very positive way. 

Did you get the Fiat seats installed and the heaters wired up?

Scope creep at its worst. The story of every project of mine.

I really have to install new front subframe bushings.  To do so properly means I have to pull the engine so I have been putting it off. This means I haven't been driving it much for fear of tearing the firewall up. 

Well if the engine has to come out again I'd better put in the taller final drive while it's out, but that will make it less peppy. ........

I do have that "big" bottom end sitting around,  I should probably see what it needs and then the next thing you know

Dialing in the new minispares evolution 001 cam in a 1380cc bottom end. It is a 1275 block offset bored out. The biggest you can go in an A series without a stroker crank.  

Now I just have to figure out how to fuel it

The torqueier engine and taller final drive should be a lot to help with interior noise.

The big one is blocking off that giant hole in the middle of the firewall where the speedometer goes.

In reply to Ian F (Forum Supporter) :

My buddy bought one of those Japanese spec mini firewall blanking plate/seals. It seems like a nice piece and would be pretty easy to replicate. 

Most minis I have seen have towels stuffed into that hole but the quietest mini I have ever been in was a 90's car that didn't have that hole in the firewall. Sadly that car also had a slow ratio steering rack and a few other modern things that killed the magic.

Love that you are staying A series. Any thoughts on making those turbo bits work on it soon?

It seems the mini guys stay with the smaller engines much more willingly, the spridget guys go straight for the 1275. (Of course I'm one to talk, mine came with a 1275 and I have a spare 1275 engine, trans, and rear that I got for $250.)

The BMW k head is intriguing... Would love more details about that. Cost and actual work required.

In reply to Jumper K Balls (Trent) :

I was a Suzuki tech back when the Swift GTI came out & loved them but they have a very narrow power band & required more shifting than most people are used to. This isn't necessarily a problem unless you've spent weeks of time & acres of money to build something you're not happy with.

I actually completely remade the turbo setup for the 998 last summer. I was shooting for just enough boost to make ~90 horsepower fueled with a Tempo/Taurus TBI unit

It got put on the shelf when I mothballed the car for the winter

To use this on the 1380 it would have to be scrapped and redone again.  This motor should make 90hp at the crank NA and that turbo is too tiny and the single Taurus injector is only good for about 110hp.

If the 1380 makes what I am told it will I think I will be super happy. It should feel like a rabbit GTI after a 500lb weight loss. It should be genuinely rapid.

Also, this isn't supposed to be my fast car. The 850 will scratch that itch. Shooting for over 200hp with that one