Big Bore Supercharged Estate
Turbo Mini Forums

that shell looks nice with out the seams but keeping the gutter is nice

not sure on the mirror placement tho

The roof gutter is definitely going to stay. I've always thought that Minis look bald without them.

I didn't have much time to work on this evening but I thought I'd give mounting the seat sliders a go. I found some M8 threaded inserts on ebay to weld into the lower frame on the seats.


I had to drill out the original holes in the seats to 12MM and tacked the inserts on.


They all bolted up nicely with four M8 cap head bolts and slid nicely.


They look nice and tidy with the seat the right way up. Now I just need to do the other side.

Seats look great

Today's job was to get the engine bay crossmember completed starting with cutting out holes for the engine steady perches to sit in.


Then I knocked up a pair of cups to hold the bushes.




I sat the crossmember back in so I could tack the cup in place.


After that it was time to weld the whole lot together.




I also added a pair of gussets around on the back of each cup to save anything from moving.

I smoothed the welds on the crossmember of this evening and rounded the steady bar perches in. It still needs some hand finishing but it's looking good.

Very nice build thread. I too have a supercharged mini but not happy with my set up so looking to do something similar to yours. Blow through instead if suck through. Also enables me to add a cooler and to get the injectors closer to the head.
Great job so far. Do you have any updates on the engine and supercharger?

Well I'm back and I've finally solved my belt issues with a Peugeot 106 idler pulley and tensioning pulley. This should be easier to adjust than the other system I had and it looks much tidier.


I'm going to need a pretty long belt but I've got plenty of contact on all of the pulleys so it should work nicely.

Now that you've solved your belt setup, did you not consider an electric waterpump ?

Still looking mighty good !

Metric is for people who can't do fractions.

looking nice.

you can do anything if you set your mind to it...
i rather blow it up winning than keep it together losing.

finish date set for project 1... march 2018

looking good, nice to see an update!

Thanks guys, it's nice to be back on it.


I forgot to go and buy a belt at lunch so I decided to spend this evening making the tabs to mount my seats from. They're pretty simple 3MM steel with 30MM slotted holes to help get the seats centred in the car.


They'll be welded onto sections of 30MM box running from the inner sill to exhaust tunnel. (I finally found a use for lime flavoured Starburst)

The other 4 mounting tabs are done now so the seat mounting bars can go in soon.


The pedal box also need mounting so I took the air saw to the bulkhead and made some more clearance.





I knocked up a new lower dash rail from some 32MM tube with 3MM spreader plates on each end.


After a lot of measuring and repositioning I've got the pedal box to where it's comfortable. Now I just need to measure everything and figure out the mounts.

I've been making a few bits to mount the pedal box but nothing note worthy yet so until later here's a picture of the estate back on it's wheels.

I'm still yoyoing between mount the pedal and mounting the seats. This evening it was the seats turn.

I had made a set of bars between the inner sill and tunnel but they sat too low so I've gone with two tubes that are the full width of the car and notch around the exhaust tunnel.


I need to tack the mounting tabs onto the other side and straighten everything up but it works.

I took a little time to bolt my drives seat up just too make sure everything lined up.


Thankfully it all sits very nicely. I'm thinking I might be able to get a decent sized speaker under each seat as well.


Once I was happy with everything I got the other mounting tabs tacked on and then went over the whole lot with some nice wide welds.


I also linishing down to allow the seat sliders to sit flat.


The bars are both back in the car now and ready to be welded in then it's back onto mounting the pedal box.

So the seats bars are tack welded into the car and the seat are mounted. I must say it's very comfortable and luckily there's still plenty of clearance to the rear seats when they folded up.




I've reassembled the gear shifter so that I can figure out the internal gear linkage.


As the shifter will be higher and further back than standard I'm fitting a universal joint at each end of linkage. The shifter side of the linkage is tapped with a 1/2" UNF left hand thread and the engine side has a 1/2" UNF right hard thread to act as a turnbuckle for fine adjustment.


There's not much more to do on the gear linkage yet so I sorted the majority of the pedal box mount instead.


It still needs a few gussets and a bit of tinkering but for the most parts is done.

what are you going to use for engine fixing? i guess that it all has to be solid mounted if you no longer use the second bar on the linkage?

you can do anything if you set your mind to it...
i rather blow it up winning than keep it together losing.

finish date set for project 1... march 2018

Doesn't have to be solid, just secure and not flopping all over the place..

After removing the original seat cross-member and fitting the gear selector internally it became apparent I need to to shuffle the handbrake around.
I decided the simplest option was to copy the original mountings but slightly redesign them to mount the handbrake an inch higher.


It now sits around 10CM further back and is nice and high behind the gear selector.


I also finally got around the finding a drive belt the right length for the engine.


The latching mechanism for the tailgate has been bugging me so I decided to have another try using an original estate latching mechanism and my own rods.


The handle will lay flat on the inside of the tailgate and the rods will push out into the vertical section of the rear door frame. Now I just need to mount it.

I made a plate for the latch mech to bolt onto this evening and cut the tailgate frame out to fit it.


It will be flush from the interior side of the tailgate.


And the mech it's self will fit inside the frame.