09 Mini Cooper S auto with blown motor, what would you do?

It's probably a matter of "Why?"

A MINI is sort of the sum of its parts and those parts are fit rather tightly into the whole. And in the end, it's not the lightest chassis around if you are looking for swap hosts. Nor is the suspension design the best in the world.

Swaps into classic Minis are common because the stock engine was both primitive and not very powerful. But the base car is really light, so a moderate Honda swap nets big benefits in HP to weight. And there's just something about driving a classic Mini that puts a stupid grin on your face. The case for swapping a different engine into the larger, heavier MINI is harder to justify.

Agreed. I think whatever I try to do other than putting a stock motor back in will result in a car less capable than stock. As fun as it sounds to make it into something else, I don't think this is the one.

captainawesome wrote:

Ian F wrote: In reply to captainawesome: Possible. Would need to measure it out. The front "horns" on a MINI are surprisingly narrow. The N14 is really stuffed in there. A V6 might fit if the fore-aft space is large enough.

I'm pretty sure those kits aren't for the r53 or r56 range.

They definitely aren't. The engine/trans/suspension in a classic Mini mounts to a sub-frame which then bolts onto the uni-body. You can remove a few bolts and drop the entire assembly out of the car. You don't even have to drain the coolant (except for the heater) as the radiator is attached to the same assembly.

The engine & trans of the newer car hangs off the uni-body structural "horns" with a sub-frame from the lower part of the suspension and struts to the body. While technically the front assembly can drop out the same way, there are about 3x as many structural bolts involved (plus about 100 non-structural ones).

oldopelguy wrote: Ls4? Maybe a v8 in the back seat turned around to drive a differential in the front? The MINI is such a great handling FWD, might as well leave it that way and move the battery and gas tank and such around to maintain the weight balance.

LOL - A V-8 in the back seat was my first thought too, but maybe a transverse RWD setup would be slightly more practical. Although a SHOgun-style V-6 back there would work too.

Honestly if you had the time and initiative the best bet would be to watch copart for a wrecked stick-shift MCS of the same year or at least generation and swap it all over into the good shell. I know, really boring, but at least you are on familiar ground and pretty likely to have a running car in the end.

Come on ! It's a parts car, dump it on Craigslist and be shut of it. There's nothing that you can do to it that wouldn't be better served with a different car as the base.

Also, if you part it out I call dibs on the front seats. More than anything I miss the seats from my 07 MCS.

crush it