Jef's Mini! Faster than the speed of sound! (well, bits of it).
Turbo Mini Forums

Bought this mini at the beginning of the year from ebay as a non running project. 1293 engine with 10cc cast omegas, piper 270, straight cut box and mirage manifold with a t2. Wasn't running, the lad I got it from thought it was a carb issue, said he'd ran it for 20 miles or so and it went pop and blew smoke out of the carb. Stripped and rebuilt the carb and found one of the dashpot screws spun in it's thread so got that helicoiled, set the timing and it started straight up.

Put an mpi interior in it and got a wideband sensor in, Steve beautifully modified a 12g940 for me so I stand less of a chance of blowing it up and that's about it really. My plans are to build the car to go hillclimbing in next year, in the Road going series production class. I'm planning on taking the engine out and building most of it into a turbo 998 to run it in the 1400cc class.

This is the beast as I got her:


I got some carbon miglia arches to replace the slightly knackered whateverwasonthereinthefirstplaces. Also got a carbon front end and roof but I can't run these in the class I want to race in.



Bigger brakes!



I'm planning on putting in a turbo from a 1.0 ford ecoboost focus. These produce 125bhp with their 3 cylinder engine so should be a good match for the 998. It'll have to be side mounted:



so I'm planning on using an mg metro turbo exhaust manifold and making a link pipe to the turbo. This things spins at 240,000rpm which is 4,000 times per second and my friend tells me the edge of the wheel/turbine moves faster than the speed of sound. Said friend is going to share the car with me when we go hillclimbing.



I'm sure I'm going to be asking tons of dumb questions but so far everyone has been so helpful.

I look forward to getting stuck into the car, I will update when I do.

a great project coming Jeff

Cheers Steve, your advice so far has been as invaluable as your work on the head. I'm going to get the turbo up and running on the 1293 before I go 998 just to check everything works as it should.

The turbo's actuator controls a valve in the exhaust side that bypasses the turbine. I think this stops overboosting at high engine speeds. Getting this working properly may be a pain. It also has CBV on the compressor side, does this mean I can do away with the dump valve? If I understand it correctly it should be slightly more economic with the air and will be set to the right psi, which I think is 22psi.

at the minuite Jeff iam not gened up about that specific turbo .......... alas 22psi seems a little optimistic 16 to 17 psi of boost sounds about right on you compression ratio, no more!

good start mate, stick a pic up of the exhaust turbine side, im curious about this wastegate business
yeah the cbv is basically a built in re-circulating dumpvalve i had one on an old car it did the business well enough

Yes i moved to the darkside

Instagram @jdm_brett

Will do tomorrow Brett, I've left the turbo on my passenger seat tonight. What compression ratio would you recommend for 22psi Steve? With a big intercooler, like.

What trubo are you using?

jeff I would stick with say 16 to 17 psi more !! than enough to grenade your ass out honest!..... any more and your engine will be more short lived buddy

Listen to steve mate 22psi is alot of boost by any standard, i doubt a 998 will get close and last for any length of time

Yes i moved to the darkside

Instagram @jdm_brett

also ,a reasonably built 998 on 22 psi would be more like 200 bhp , not 125 ,so may well exceed that turbo's air flow , over speed and exceed warp factor 9.

you then meet yourself coming the other way ,and end up wearing one of those red star trek shirts .. and you know what that means !

Edited by robert on 26th Sep, 2013.

Medusa + injection = too much torque for the dyno ..https://youtu.be/qg5o0_tJxYM

Haha consider me warned, I'll aim for a much lower psi. Turns out the wastegate works like any other, it's just I've never examined any other lol. So it's basically a straight forward turbo with a cbv that spins bloody fast, not as exotic as I initially thought.

Does anybody have any tips for designing the exhaust-manifold link pipe? I take it it's best to keep it short and avoid tight turns. Should I keep the pipe the same diameter as the ports to keep gas speed up?

id try to keep the pipe the diameter of the turbo inlet.

Medusa + injection = too much torque for the dyno ..https://youtu.be/qg5o0_tJxYM

Cheers, Anyone have a spare exhaust manifold kicking about they'd like to sell?

Just some more pictures of the turbo:

Took the rusty rear subframe off this afternoon, all the trunnion bolts came out fairly easily which is always a relief.



The radius arms need a refurb but I don't have a reamer so may have to get recon exchange ones. Irks me not being able to do the job myself though.

Sexy brass brake unions. I'll do anything to stop rust.

Built up a new rear subframe, new bushes, brand lines and bolts etc.

nice man looking good it will be good to see how the turbo goes i have allways liked side mounts altho plumbing it can be crappy haha

I'm thinking of doing a log manifold rather than a fancy collector. I'll get some hand drawn pictures up of a design soon, so everyone can tell be it's rubbish lol.

my understanding is that almost any ex manifold has the potential to make enough power to blow an engine so long as the pipe size is sufficient
the more elaborate design is about getting it to flow better and finding that pule tuning etc to get gains like early boost and more efficiency
i think the log type has been used by lots of people with good results!! its a good simple way to make things

For ease I'm thinking of doing something a little like this (modelled by a mini digger):



But in stainless and a little neater. Does anybody have any input on how this'll flow? I know it won't be as good as an equal length into collector manifold but if it'd be good enough for now I could knock it up I think.

give it a go , lots of turbo cars out there , some of them oem ,have much worse manifolds .

Medusa + injection = too much torque for the dyno ..https://youtu.be/qg5o0_tJxYM