Welcome to FrankenMini Racing

The following is a blog by Paul Monaghan aka paulmon to highlight work in preparing a 1967 tube frame Mini Countryman (aka Estate) for SOLO2 competition in Ontario, Canada. Look here for more information on the car, you can check out my upcoming event list and don't forget the Photo Gallery. For additional information contact me.

The new carb arrived at MrMini on Thursday. Paul made the required "modifications" (needed to cut the extra part of the flange off, I'll have pictures shortly). I came in today and removed the old carb and took apart the new. We're using the #71 jets from the old carb and install the new float. I then installed the new carb on the car and set the float level. The accelerator pump issue looks like it is solved which is good. The car swings right up the rev range without a single stumble. However the car won't idle, we seem to have an air leak which is causing the car to rev without any accelerator travel. Intake manifold might be leaking air in. We dicked around with it for 20 minutes and couldn't get it to settle. Paul will take a look at it this week. I don't think I'll be making that first race on the 5th as Paul won't be around next Saturday and with that race 2 weeks away I don't think it will happen. However I won't say never, I can run so long as we sort out the carb in time. We'll see.

The dyno day that was suppose to happen today didn't. U2N Dyno had to cancel as something broke on their dyno. Still trying to reschedule; this ended up being a blessing in disguise due to the carb replacement issues.

Scanned through and found another worthy video. This shows the car actually being driven for the first time in 18 months. Also gives a good walk around the car. Off today to bleed the brakes and do the other few things to get it ready for the Southern Ontario MINI Club dyno day on the 21st.

Been doing a ton of calling a poking around for a new carb to deal with the "bobble" in acceleration. The current carb, as mentioned, is older than hell and has been hacked up and modified to the point that it's now pretty damn useless. So rebuilding wasn't really an option. Calls to local shops at the price of this carb in the $600cdn range, ouch. Found it new at Summit Racing for $409us. I ended up getting one off ebay, modified for racing, for $199+shipping. As you can see by the picture, it looks nice and shiny. Can't wait to see what impact this will have on drivability.

Update: Been doing a bunch of reading on the issue with the current carb, I'm pretty sure I know what is going on. The accelerator pump is the way fuel is fed to the engine when the throttle is abruptly opened and there is not enough airflow to pull fuel through the jets. A stumble when opening the throttle signifies that there is a lack of fuel injected by the pump. This pump is actuated by a cam on the throttle linkage and I know that the linkage on the current cam is pretty hosed; having been modified several times. I'll take a peak into the current carb on Saturday to see what is up with the squirter, it might just be blocked. Regardless, buying the new carb was the right way to go to assure things are working 100%.

Damn is this car fast, and it will only get faster! First things first however. Close inspection of the painted roof reveals a paint job that looks "good from far but far from good." It will do. Plenty of orange peel. No worries, it looks fine for what I need. I can dress it up in the winter. The first real work today was getting the driver's harness in and the driver's seat bolted in. Damn! Why do harnesses have to be so finicky. This took way longer than I was expecting. No worries, they're in. We notice the front passenger wheel isn't perfectly true (it's cast and out by fractions), so we had to sand a little off the caliper and the inside of the wheel to clearance the caliper in the wheel. I'll need to sort out a better solution to this, one option will be steel wheels. Once that was sorted we finally stripped off the protective coating on the polycarbonate windows, looks REALLY good. All of this was done in preparation for actually driving the beast. Which I did, quite briskly I might add, particularly considering there were NO brakes. They need a bleed. Now onto the driving impressions.

The car shakes less than I remember when running, I have after all driven the car once before. However that drive wasn't anything like today. The steering is improved, the effort doesn't seem all that much. The first few runs were all done nice a slow to make sure nothing was going to fall off, nothing did. Nice long brake pedal travel was the only worrying thing and I know that just needs a bleed. I slowly picked up speed, with the various folks at Mr Mini egging me on to go faster. Did a nice quick zip near the end. Have all this on video and the car sounds FANTASTIC, however I can't find my firewire cable to get the video onto the computer! Argh! The car itself has a real "bobble" when accelerating, it just doesn't do anything and then suddenly hauls ass. Very weird and our thoughts on this suck, it looks like I might need a new carb. This thing is older than me (ok, not true but not far from it), another expense I wasn't exactly counting on. So, a new Holley 350CFM 2300 carb is needed, maybe. This sucks because the car won't accelerate correctly out of a corner. Oh! And there is yet ANOTHER oil leak. I swear the oil system on this car is going to kill me.

Paul, from Breadbox Racing then took the car out for a few spins himself. However due to technical difficulties, I didn't catch him driving on video, I'm particularly disappointed as the donuts he did were priceless.

Heading back out on Saturday, my last plink ahead of the SOMC dyno day, to get the car running in time for a couple of dyno pulls. I'm hoping to also install the roll cage padding, the passenger seat, passenger harness.

Paint, I picked up the flat black to finish the body. Black with 50% flattener. We'll see how that works out. Apparently John Deere Blitz Black is the way to go these days for hot rods. If this 50:50 mix doesn't work I'll give that a try. No idea when I'll have time to give him a paint, I think I might have a bunch of people at the dyno day help me out and just get it done.

As you can see, the roof is done. New MINI Chili Red (MINI Paint Code 851). Took longer than I expected, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. It isn't some 20 coat professional show car paint job, but for a race car it will do just fine. Can see all the pictures here in the photo gallery.

Sorry for the crappy cell phone pictures, batteries died in the main camera.

Paul also managed to get the carb lifted with a small spacer, we can now turn the distributor (timing). It is crunch time. I've only got 2 or 3 more days before I'm suppose to show this off the the folks in the Southern Ontario MINI Club at our annual Tech day. We've got a dyno coming to site and I'm suppose to get dynoed too. I'm hoping for 140hp, anything more is gravy.