Craig's mini engine Re-build. 1380 NA this time!
Turbo Mini Forums

Hello again TM'ers, so its been a while since I have been active on here.

I finished building the turbo engine but it smoked like a pig the whole time, a compression test showed 60psi on 3 cylinders and 57 on the other. I couldn't afford to spend any more money on the engine considering I spent best part of £5k in 3 months and ran up a debt doing it. I put the mini to rest at my parents house for about a year whilst I finished uni.

I bought a little renault clio 16v with a blown lump for £275 and thats been my daily ever since, however after crashing that and blowing up the second engine it got a little more expensive than finishing the mini in the first place lol.

Build thread on the clio is here if your interested in that:

http://www.obsessiveperformancedisorder.co...hp?f=19&t=17601

Anyway back to the mini,

So a friend of mine got a unit 10 minutes down the road and I didn't want to leave the mini on my dads drive rotting away soo a deal was concluded and it now lives there like so, however the handbrake was stuck on, on the passenger side so we loosened it off and used the clio to pull the car out of its old resting home:







I started to collect mini parts recently.

I agree'd to buy a 1380cc off a friend, the 1380 has a kent 286, lightened flywheel, ported and polished and skimmed head by AC Dodd.



Don't worry my friend designed the engine to look shit on purpose lol.

I went to Sommerford mini a couple weeks ago as they are 15 mins down the road, I got a Maniflow LCB, Maniflow 1 7/8" twinbox side exit with fitting kit, full engine gasket set and oil seals.









I got the oil off of ebay:



I then found a weber DCOE on ebay, it was simply advertised as "carb for a mini" and didnt really describe which size weber it was or anything. A cheeky bid won it for £113!



I started stripping the carb down this last week as it was sat for about 9 years this is how dirty I found it:







Pair of calipers showed that it is a weber 48 DCOE:



More stripping pictures:





































I managed to borrow an ultra sonic cleaner today and sooo got the weber and its bits in there, as its one designed for jewellery its not hugely strong so I'll be leaving it all in a bath of petrol for like a week afterwards:



After like 42 minutes:



After the first bath of 69 minutes:



Small bits in for the second bath:



All clean:



And the big bits put in for the third bath:



That's literally cleaning as I type this :)

In the mean time, Got the LCB painted in Hammerite High Temp paint as it's mild steel:















Hopefully over the next few months I should get it all assembled and back on the road, now I'm not using the mini as a daily Its going to take a more track day focus :) I'm going t be looking at making a rollcage for it soon enough. My dad has since setup his own custom car/bike/concept business and has a professional pipe bender so will be looking at that soon enough :)

Thanks for reading guys, I hope to finally meet most of you guys next season :)

Good luck with it

Thanks :)

Tenner on it that by the time it's back in you will be looking to whack a turbo on it.......just don't look at anybody else's build threads or you will be sucked in!

haha, we will see. I always wanted a b18c4 powered mini, I built the turbo engine as a 'cheap power upgrade to last me till I could afford the honda build' It ended up costing me the same as the honda lol.

Im just going to get it back on the road then when Im in a better financial position start hording honda parts tbh

good to see you back. pity your dropping the Turbo power but I can understand why you've gone down that route.

Thanks Rob, it might go turbo again in the future, but right now I can have this up and running for around £1200 in total, I have a much better idea of how much this sort of thing costs now so can budget better for it in the future :)

pitty about the turbo build, should see good power from the motor you have there and should be able to use most of it too.

look forward to the build

What the mind can conceive the mini can achieve
MITP 2012 17.01 seconds 1/4 mile against "The Don"
MITP 2013 16.83 seconds 1/4 mile

Good look mate not tempted with the stage 3 manifold?

Lol the weber says it a 48 on it

i run a 45 on my mini and was choked down to 38mm

On 27th Nov, 2013 Cables69 said:
Good look mate not tempted with the stage 3 manifold?

Lol the weber says it a 48 on it

What the mind can conceive the mini can achieve
MITP 2012 17.01 seconds 1/4 mile against "The Don"
MITP 2013 16.83 seconds 1/4 mile

good luck. shame about the turbo. the plan for me for a series turbo was a cheap power ubgrade intil I went with a b18 type r lump. got most of the parts here for that.

but....

once you eventually do go turbo a series you will never go back

I built a cheap as chips motor to start with, to make sure I could get it all to go, and to keep within a low budget for the car build.

then built a more powerful motor (still on a budget). needless to say I can never see me using the Honda stuff!

this might be the ideal stop gap to get the car up and running, as said, you will feel the need to turbo eventually!

time is the best thing with a turbo build, if you gather the parts over a long period there are some great bargains to be had!

good luck

Its actually been stamped twice, one of them is 45dcoe and the other I think is 48dcoe but looks more like 40dcoe.

Im just trying to build this one cheaply and get it running :)

On 27th Nov, 2013 Cables69 said:
Good look mate not tempted with the stage 3 manifold?

Lol the weber says it a 48 on it

On 27th Nov, 2013 lee.pb said:
i run a 45 on my mini and was choked down to 38mm

On 27th Nov, 2013 Cables69 said:
Good look mate not tempted with the stage 3 manifold?

Lol the weber says it a 48 on it

So the cleaning processes completed and this is how the weber came out:







































So the weber is SOO much better however its not perfectly clean just yet so its currently sat in a box of petrol like so:





I've since found the carb is choked down to 40mm, I'm actually glad because I have been told the 48 size will be way to big for my application.

More updates soon :)

Cheers!

If you do it, they are a work of art, but make nearly every job in that area a pita, I've got 10mm clearance to the bulkhead on mine

i must admit i'm going to miss my weber but turbo is calling my name.

i found i had a flat spot around 2.5k which was really annoying as the mini chocked back and forward but other than that everything was great witht he weber.

What the mind can conceive the mini can achieve
MITP 2012 17.01 seconds 1/4 mile against "The Don"
MITP 2013 16.83 seconds 1/4 mile

We will see how this one runs, but its going to be using the aldon yellow dizzy map enless I can find the red dizzy map lol

Either way im only going to be using it as a daily while the clio gets its rear archs and sills replaced :)

mine was running a standard electronic dizzy before converting to MJ. you should see about 100 bannana's which is good for a n/a

What the mind can conceive the mini can achieve
MITP 2012 17.01 seconds 1/4 mile against "The Don"
MITP 2013 16.83 seconds 1/4 mile

You measured the wrong end of the Weber, check the butterfly end, I reckon its a 45

I seriously doubt it!

I second this as you can also see it says 45doce on the top plate.

Drives
-Ford S-max Mk2 Ecoboost
-Rover 100 VVC #2 - track project

Searching is all you need on TurboMinis

I measured both it is 48 on each, its been stamped on the top twice as well, will give it another go when its out of the petrol :)

So finally got the weber finished and back together:















Trying to find an engine crane I can use down here as I don't want to ask my neighbour for his for various reasons haha, I may just buy one on payday - but I kinda wanted the engine out and stripped/built by then

Cheers

Edited by Craigie-B on 10th Dec, 2013.

If it really is a 48, that's a lot of work on something that's totally useless for your engine......

I assume your not looking at running the choke mechanisum?

I found two pumps of the throttle enougth before cranking to get it started BUT was a nightmare in winter to start.

Hope the mini produces the power you are looking for.

What the mind can conceive the mini can achieve
MITP 2012 17.01 seconds 1/4 mile against "The Don"
MITP 2013 16.83 seconds 1/4 mile

are you planing to rev the nuts of this thing?
perhaps a super long intake manifold would give a nice ram charge to help things flow in the right direction? tho not grate for rpm!
the thing should scream if the head flow matches that carb!
i see that u have a 286 cam? my understanding is those are good mid to top end mostly running like 3-8K?
perhaps some one has ran a big ass carb on your spec and could comment?
ive only ever ran the 1098 with 1.5" single su on a stock 202 head it had nice low mid but the stock head made it choke bad!
grate looking car by the way love the style im sure you will get a good out come what ever way you chose to go

im loving that DIY sandblast cabinet!