clrrk
RMS Regular
- Messages
- 1,277
- Drives
- S14A
Bought this the same day as I sold my MK5 from a fella in Banbridge - 97k, full service history, stainless exhaust, 17% supercharger reduction pulley, 18" John Cooper Works alloys made by Ronal, 40 lowering springs but other than that fairly stock. I also found out a few weeks after owning it that its been looked after in the past as its been treated to some facelift projector Xenons, facelift tail lights and a face light 3 spoke steering wheel. To say it goes well its an understatement - was shocked that the new owner of my MK5 wasn't able to pull away from me on a spirited drive home despite having at least 100hp extra.
Anyhow, it all started off very sensibly - this was to be my daily, it wasn't getting modified, I was just gonna enjoy driving it and work on the MK2... well that backfired. Was working on the MK2 one Sunday, trying to put right all the faults it had failed MOT for and every time I fixed 1 thing, another broke. I was loosing the rag with it when Steven Toner called over and made the point that nearly everything I'd already bought for the MK2 would also fit on the Mini. Two hours later, the MK2 was locked walked away from and left to sit until a time that I can work on it without a deadline hanging over me.
First thing I done was to have a quick test fit of the BBS E49's that I'd bought for the MK2. At 17x7 they're a bit on the skinny side so I wanted to make sure they wouldn't look lost in the larger arches of the Mini, so they were bolted on and an unusual method of lowering was used to get a rough gauge of how they would sit...
Surprisingly they actually fill the Mini arches a lot better than the MK2 but they're gonna require some spacing and a lot more lowering.
Next on my to-do list was fixing a pet peeve of mine - the grey headliner and pillars. I can understand that some cars have them so it makes them feel more roomy, but this is a small hatch back, I want it to feel tight and enclosed so and out everything came. Rather than the traditional faux suede or alcantara I decided to go with a black two way stretch material that is usually made for dress making - again I had bought this for the MK2 as I felt it might be more period correct, but I ended up liking it more than I thought and I think it works really well in the Mini too.
While all this was happening I finally managed to get my reg legally onto a car with Neil from Rockvale making me some short plates
As you can maybe spot from the photo above my Mini, like most others, suffers from a rusty bootlid. Unfortunately there was a design fault with these cars that means that water gathers along the top of the number plate light plinth - this in turn rots the lid, mostly out of sight behind the trim until it spreads to a visible area - by this time its usually too late to save it and in my case there was a lovely big rot hole. Was searching from a replacement on eBay when I found one for sale by Ecopart at Nutts Corner - put a cheeky £50 best offer on it which was accepted and picked up the next day. Possibly the cleanest Mini bootlid in the country! Zero rot, no dents - just the wrong colour.
Anyway, with regards to getting it low I began to do some research on hydros. Niall O'Dowds sat great on them and I loved how the subframe literally slapped the ground when he dropped it. I soon realised that I was out of my depth when it came to hydros - after all this car was supposed to be a cheap project and I didn't know enough about hydros to go by a second hand set that would work for me. So with that off the cards it was time to look at something I'm more familiar with... air.
Firstly I picked up a Viair 480c compressor, then I ordered a 4 gallon Speciality Suspensions seamless tank.
While I was waiting on finding the other bits and pieces I needed I made a start on the boot build, first of all making cardboard templates and then cutting the MDF.
It was then I realised that there is no gap on the car that is as wide as the width of the car, even putting the false floor in at an angle wouldn't fit. So I had to modify my design and make it in two pieces
Under the floor I then made a mount for the business end of the air setup, using the middle seatbelt bolt as a mount to secure down a piece of mdf that would hold my compressor and management in place.
I then started to look at ways to mount the tank and how I was going to position hardlines. This is about as far as I got with it as theres some other things that will have to go in the back too.
Back to the wheels - so as you know I plan to use my E49s on the Mini, however the grey wasn't doing it for me so they were split and sent to Pete Matthews at Paintworkz for a fresh coat of BBS matte gold which I think makes the wheels look soo much better.
Unfortunately when I put them back together one of the wheels was leaking like crazy. Having spoke to the previous owner he had informed me that one of the valve holes had been drilled at a weird angle and that was causing the leak. So off they went to Dan Taylor at Wheel Unique to get the hole welded up and redrilled. When they arrived Dan noticed something that I'd missed by taking the previous owners word for it... a nasty crack.
Thankfully Dan is a man who enjoys a challenge so he's welded this for me and is currently tidying up his welds to make sure they seal perfect.
The next piece of the puzzle I picked up last weekend. Having had Airlift V2 management in my MK5 I was keen to run it again as its a system I know very well and because I knew it very well I was keen on picking up a second hand kit that had already been replaced under warranty. A lot of the early manifold had issues with leaky valves and there was also some software issues so picking up a warrantied kit meant that it was less likely to have any faults. After making a few enquiries I found one that had been fitted by Design RMC and had been warrantied with the last 9 months. So off I went, bought it and had it wired up the same day (wires have been tidied since the photo, forgot to take a new one).
This week has been a week of highs and lows. The week started well when I got a phone call to say my seats had been delivered - I'd preordered them months ago for the MK2 but again, I could make them work in the Mini. Sadly this is where things took a turn for the worse, on my way home from work as I was sat at a red light I felt a thud - a thud I'd felt before - someone had run into the back of me. This seems to be a bit of a Dubshed tradition for me as last year a week before the show someone ran into Nikkis Polo while it was parked outside my house. Anyway, I got out to survey the damage fearing the worst but thankfully this wasn't a throw back to my R plate days when the whole boot floor of my Fiesta was mangled in a similar incident. This time there was only a few stress cracks in the paint! The owner admitted that he'd saw the light for another lane change and that he'd took off without realising it was the wrong light. He's agreed to pay for the repairs and I was happy to leave it at that...
So back to the seats... Id sat in a few friends cars with Corbeau Club Sports last year and I was amazed how comfortable they are for a bucket seat, esp given that I am a larger gentleman. Other seats I'd sat in where nowhere near as comfy and for the price they were a no brainer. So Nikki picked me a set up for valentines day and I've paired them up with a set of black Takata harnesses.
They come with side mounts and runners but unfortunately the runners weren't long enough bolt into the factory Mini locations, so I made some adapters out of some aerospace grade 3/8" aluminium that I just had "lying around". This allowed me to bolt the adapter to the floor and then bolt the slider through the adapter at the front and secure it with another bolt in the adapter plate.
I've never been a huge fan of the standard Mini slatted front grilles, so picked up a set of JCW Areo grilles on eBay. While the bonnet grille bolts straight in the top bumper grille was never made to fit the standard Cooper S bumper so to make it fit I had to cut a quarter of an inch of plastic out of the back of it, while maintaining the securing tabs. The bumper also needed modification as the tabs don't line up to the same locations so I had to cut new ones with a dremmel. It's at this point I should remind everyone to wear eye protection when cutting stuff, as I soon found myself in the Ulster A&E after a piece of plastic lodged itself in my eye, leaving a nice slice in my cornea! Worth it though as the front end now looks much better...
So thats the thread up to date for now, still a lot of work to be done between now and Dubshed. Car is going in to get a load of paint work fixed up next week as theres a lot of handbag related scratches, the new bootlid needs painted and I also will be smoothing the front bumper. I'll try my best to keep this updated as we go from now on...
Anyhow, it all started off very sensibly - this was to be my daily, it wasn't getting modified, I was just gonna enjoy driving it and work on the MK2... well that backfired. Was working on the MK2 one Sunday, trying to put right all the faults it had failed MOT for and every time I fixed 1 thing, another broke. I was loosing the rag with it when Steven Toner called over and made the point that nearly everything I'd already bought for the MK2 would also fit on the Mini. Two hours later, the MK2 was locked walked away from and left to sit until a time that I can work on it without a deadline hanging over me.
First thing I done was to have a quick test fit of the BBS E49's that I'd bought for the MK2. At 17x7 they're a bit on the skinny side so I wanted to make sure they wouldn't look lost in the larger arches of the Mini, so they were bolted on and an unusual method of lowering was used to get a rough gauge of how they would sit...
Surprisingly they actually fill the Mini arches a lot better than the MK2 but they're gonna require some spacing and a lot more lowering.
Next on my to-do list was fixing a pet peeve of mine - the grey headliner and pillars. I can understand that some cars have them so it makes them feel more roomy, but this is a small hatch back, I want it to feel tight and enclosed so and out everything came. Rather than the traditional faux suede or alcantara I decided to go with a black two way stretch material that is usually made for dress making - again I had bought this for the MK2 as I felt it might be more period correct, but I ended up liking it more than I thought and I think it works really well in the Mini too.
While all this was happening I finally managed to get my reg legally onto a car with Neil from Rockvale making me some short plates
As you can maybe spot from the photo above my Mini, like most others, suffers from a rusty bootlid. Unfortunately there was a design fault with these cars that means that water gathers along the top of the number plate light plinth - this in turn rots the lid, mostly out of sight behind the trim until it spreads to a visible area - by this time its usually too late to save it and in my case there was a lovely big rot hole. Was searching from a replacement on eBay when I found one for sale by Ecopart at Nutts Corner - put a cheeky £50 best offer on it which was accepted and picked up the next day. Possibly the cleanest Mini bootlid in the country! Zero rot, no dents - just the wrong colour.
Anyway, with regards to getting it low I began to do some research on hydros. Niall O'Dowds sat great on them and I loved how the subframe literally slapped the ground when he dropped it. I soon realised that I was out of my depth when it came to hydros - after all this car was supposed to be a cheap project and I didn't know enough about hydros to go by a second hand set that would work for me. So with that off the cards it was time to look at something I'm more familiar with... air.
Firstly I picked up a Viair 480c compressor, then I ordered a 4 gallon Speciality Suspensions seamless tank.
While I was waiting on finding the other bits and pieces I needed I made a start on the boot build, first of all making cardboard templates and then cutting the MDF.
It was then I realised that there is no gap on the car that is as wide as the width of the car, even putting the false floor in at an angle wouldn't fit. So I had to modify my design and make it in two pieces
Under the floor I then made a mount for the business end of the air setup, using the middle seatbelt bolt as a mount to secure down a piece of mdf that would hold my compressor and management in place.
I then started to look at ways to mount the tank and how I was going to position hardlines. This is about as far as I got with it as theres some other things that will have to go in the back too.
Back to the wheels - so as you know I plan to use my E49s on the Mini, however the grey wasn't doing it for me so they were split and sent to Pete Matthews at Paintworkz for a fresh coat of BBS matte gold which I think makes the wheels look soo much better.
Unfortunately when I put them back together one of the wheels was leaking like crazy. Having spoke to the previous owner he had informed me that one of the valve holes had been drilled at a weird angle and that was causing the leak. So off they went to Dan Taylor at Wheel Unique to get the hole welded up and redrilled. When they arrived Dan noticed something that I'd missed by taking the previous owners word for it... a nasty crack.
Thankfully Dan is a man who enjoys a challenge so he's welded this for me and is currently tidying up his welds to make sure they seal perfect.
The next piece of the puzzle I picked up last weekend. Having had Airlift V2 management in my MK5 I was keen to run it again as its a system I know very well and because I knew it very well I was keen on picking up a second hand kit that had already been replaced under warranty. A lot of the early manifold had issues with leaky valves and there was also some software issues so picking up a warrantied kit meant that it was less likely to have any faults. After making a few enquiries I found one that had been fitted by Design RMC and had been warrantied with the last 9 months. So off I went, bought it and had it wired up the same day (wires have been tidied since the photo, forgot to take a new one).
This week has been a week of highs and lows. The week started well when I got a phone call to say my seats had been delivered - I'd preordered them months ago for the MK2 but again, I could make them work in the Mini. Sadly this is where things took a turn for the worse, on my way home from work as I was sat at a red light I felt a thud - a thud I'd felt before - someone had run into the back of me. This seems to be a bit of a Dubshed tradition for me as last year a week before the show someone ran into Nikkis Polo while it was parked outside my house. Anyway, I got out to survey the damage fearing the worst but thankfully this wasn't a throw back to my R plate days when the whole boot floor of my Fiesta was mangled in a similar incident. This time there was only a few stress cracks in the paint! The owner admitted that he'd saw the light for another lane change and that he'd took off without realising it was the wrong light. He's agreed to pay for the repairs and I was happy to leave it at that...
So back to the seats... Id sat in a few friends cars with Corbeau Club Sports last year and I was amazed how comfortable they are for a bucket seat, esp given that I am a larger gentleman. Other seats I'd sat in where nowhere near as comfy and for the price they were a no brainer. So Nikki picked me a set up for valentines day and I've paired them up with a set of black Takata harnesses.
They come with side mounts and runners but unfortunately the runners weren't long enough bolt into the factory Mini locations, so I made some adapters out of some aerospace grade 3/8" aluminium that I just had "lying around". This allowed me to bolt the adapter to the floor and then bolt the slider through the adapter at the front and secure it with another bolt in the adapter plate.
I've never been a huge fan of the standard Mini slatted front grilles, so picked up a set of JCW Areo grilles on eBay. While the bonnet grille bolts straight in the top bumper grille was never made to fit the standard Cooper S bumper so to make it fit I had to cut a quarter of an inch of plastic out of the back of it, while maintaining the securing tabs. The bumper also needed modification as the tabs don't line up to the same locations so I had to cut new ones with a dremmel. It's at this point I should remind everyone to wear eye protection when cutting stuff, as I soon found myself in the Ulster A&E after a piece of plastic lodged itself in my eye, leaving a nice slice in my cornea! Worth it though as the front end now looks much better...
So thats the thread up to date for now, still a lot of work to be done between now and Dubshed. Car is going in to get a load of paint work fixed up next week as theres a lot of handbag related scratches, the new bootlid needs painted and I also will be smoothing the front bumper. I'll try my best to keep this updated as we go from now on...
