Stay classy! 998 turbo
Turbo Mini Forums

It's been a busy few weeks for us. FINALLY RESPRAYED THE MINI! A lot of people were asking 'why you even respraying it?' well, this is why! It had an incredibly awfu respray the first time around. How you can get paint runs in some places and then have primer showing in others I'll never know. Not to mention the orange peel!





Another reason I wanted to strip the paint was a few areas were starting to look a bit suspect, the worst was my passanger wing which is still original and I wanted to fill in the aerial hole as I don't really use it so it's just extra weight! We just flat it back with some 800grit which was fine on most of the car apart from the new wing because it had only been blown over with a coat of primer and colour as I went straight through to metal with zero effort! We found out that the roof had been resprayed too at some point! I had no idea because I've got no reciptes or anything for body work other than some new sills back in the 90s. Found some weird reaction that had just been painted over while we were flatting it back too!





After doing most of the hard work myself Carl came out to play and worked his magic!



Just to get a quick idea of how it will be looking I did a small section on my scuttle with 1000, 1500 then gave it a quick compound on the DA and it came up like this which is such a massive improvement from before! Wet sand was a complete no go before due to the paint being so uneven!


Sooooooo, TONS of wet sanding and polishing ahead of me the next few weeks but I do quite enjoying it so it's not too much of a proble :). But we will be rocking MITP pretty much all satin blue with no bumpers and half an interior

They don't die, they just get faster!

Impressive!!!! Cheeky way of excuse to weigh less for the strip lol

I love wet sanding and polishing!!!! Its the ultimate in 'before n after' i once saw a program where they shew one guys job at lamborghini and he has like 6 days to wet sand polish to perfection! Everyone was like how boring... whereas i was like i want that job.. c u on the strip...

Haha I've not really has the time to do any serious weight loss since retroshow! I can see why people hate it, it's very time consuming but it's very rewarding :) I can't wait for it to be all shiney and back to looking like himself!

They don't die, they just get faster!

I saw this on YouTube recently and thought it was impressive:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k7CBDrl77IA

Aw thank you, I'm glad I didn't do awful on my first time taking it down! I messed up the start because I wasn't paying enough attention haha!

On 15th Aug, 2015 Jay#2 said:
I saw this on YouTube recently and thought it was impressive:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k7CBDrl77IA

They don't die, they just get faster!

Had a good weekend at Pod, I couldn't get a clean run most of the day but got a new PB of 17.9 going over the line at 78mhp which I'm happy about! Definitely need to get some wider wheels on for next time because we really are struggling to get off to a good start but the mini ran awesome until it got too warm for both of us at around 14:00, think we got about 10 runs in even though I had quite a few breaks in the morning!
Some subtle modifications coming while I put it back together properly over the next few weeks (NOT the genuine carbon bumper Carl was walking around with Sunday!)

They don't die, they just get faster!

Video of my only decent run! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSpKpD1BIJw

Got this photo too because Simons in front of me kicking butts!

They don't die, they just get faster!

Thats a good photo!

Do you know what else is a good photo... the one used in the 'editors welcome' of octobers miniworld

I know, I couldn't belive it when someone tagged me on instagram in it! Of all the minis there I'm surprised they picked mine, still chuffed none the less! Spotted Simon and Jonny in the MITP write up too :)

On 11th Sep, 2015 D4VE said:
Do you know what else is a good photo... the one used in the 'editors welcome' of octobers miniworld

They don't die, they just get faster!

Was going to mention this.

Good to see you going down the strip (Y)

question is now when you upping the boost and bringing those times down ;D

She did!? :-S .... then ^^^ @ mitp

Sorry guys, I've only just seen this! Yeah, I was running 10psi at MITP but I wasn't running very well all day to be honest. We already know the slower time is due to to skinny tyres getting no grip but we haven't know what power it was actually producing until this afternoon I got the chance to take it for a power run. 82bhp/117ftlb @ 10psi compared to 74bhp/76ftlb @ 8psi. I was not expecting that sort of increas in the torque at all!


But to answer your questions Chalkie, he's having a chilled out winter while I finish the paint then engines coming out next year.. Maybe there's room for an intercooler.. Maybe !

Edited by Shauna on 3rd Oct, 2015.

They don't die, they just get faster!

Caught this just in time! Hopefully it's just down to a pants gasket :( still gutted none the less, he's done well to last the twelve months though!

Edited by Shauna on 9th Oct, 2015.

They don't die, they just get faster!

Good! Hopefully be joining you with my 998 next year aslong all goes to plan

But good luck getting it going again

Good! Hopefully be joining you with my 998 next year aslong all goes to plan

But good luck getting it going again

On 9th Oct, 2015 Shauna said:
Caught this just in time!

Yes i moved to the darkside

Instagram @jdm_brett

Does it count if there's no break in thethe gasket?!

On 9th Oct, 2015 Brett said:

On 9th Oct, 2015 Shauna said:
Caught this just in time!

?? eh? looks blown to me

They don't die, they just get faster!

a break in the gasket is well past blown and probably in the block / head damaged territory

a gasket leak like yours is difficult to detect as it might not give other symptoms such as rocker mayo, or pressureised breather system initially a small power drop may be felt, as it progresses you might notice it dropping a cylinder at light load, at full power it will make the engine beat sound a little off, and can cause starting problems such as kick backs or generally cranking longer before firing up
regular spark plug checks and compression tests can catch stuff like this loong before causing a problem
dont forget your probably running %50 over stock power, in anyones book thats quite alot more for an engine to handle
i know yours is a road car so not as practical to do what i did, but mine had a compression test after every run out, its certainly something i would do with the weekly checks

Yes i moved to the darkside

Instagram @jdm_brett

To be honest, it's not started properly for a while, probably six months plus but it's been on the rollers 5/6 times since and down the strip on two different occasions. If you gave it a slight bit of throttle it would fire right away so we haven't really thought much of it. It's been running fine until last weekend so I'd say it might have been the rolling road that really helped it but it has done 300 miles this week (not a biggie as it does that milage in a weekend at least once a month) where the water hasn't dropped in forever but yesterday it lost a lot and Carl said it started smoking on the way back from work. It did start dropping out every so often at idle but I've only been driving it to and from work this week where it barely gets off choke. Neither of us thought we would get a year out of the first gasket but it's just one of those things!

They don't die, they just get faster!

maybe some one else can chip in too, but i think you could try a little more torque on the head studs, once they start to leak past the fire rings its only a matter of time, it looks as iff it could have been under torqued maybe from the off,

Yes i moved to the darkside

Instagram @jdm_brett

Always torque them to 55ftlbs, so just a wank gasket imo.

Unless the wrench isn't calibrated! We have got two different ones today so we can check it's not due to under torquing. I should have said it's probably done about 10k this year so if it did go for that reason he's done really well! I'm glad we've caught it before it did any other damage :).
Do you guys recommend the copper or composite gasket? I did buy a copper one separate from the kit but a few people have said they've had problems with them?

They don't die, they just get faster!

I wouldnt know what to recomend for a 998
Do they do a bk450 equivalent?

Yes i moved to the darkside

Instagram @jdm_brett