A long time ago, a friend had an classic Mini hotrod. He said that the auto trans had been modified to take more horsepower and to require that it be shifted manually. Is that a thing that can be done or did the guy who did the transmission work tell him a story?
Dave, yes all the Mini automatics can be shifted manually, as far as modifying it to take more HP - not sure. The stock trans was strong enough to handle twice the HP the early cars had, and by the end of production the factory had an updated version and those engines were making about 70 hp - vs the original 34 or so. He may have changed it over to Hardy Spicer joints instead of the original rubber ones. The only thing that killed those transmissions was lack of oil changes. Where the stock engine called for 3,000 mile intervals, the auto's needed it at 1500......and they had to use the correct oil. Later, modern oils don't play nice with the clutches and bands in one of these - I use motorcycle oil.
Absolutely! I wonder if I could have just given it a good bop on the end and not had to take it all apart, but I might have damaged something else in the process. I have now been completely thru one of these automatics - but I really don't ever want to do another...... BTW Scott, my first new MINI was an '03 electric blue JCW.....really liked that car. It had "stuff" too!
Well, my oil pressure cheat worked a treat! (I forgot I was going to video it - oh well) It went exactly like I thought - at first the drill didn't want to turn the cam as all the valves are in place so I rotated it with a wrench to an "easy" place, then the drill spun it like mad! I felt the pressure come up quickly, I doubt it took even 15 seconds on the drill before I felt it and heard the drill slow way down. I did that one more time - checked the dipstick and it was a quart and a half down, topped it off and went again but only for about 10 seconds. I didn't have any gushers but some oil did find it's way out from around the front main bearing and cam bearing - another sure sign that I have pressure, and there was oil in the top gallery too. Now when I go to start it I know it will have immediate oil pressure just as if it had already been running. I'm just waiting on a few more bits so I can button it up and put it in the stand and fire it up. Stay tuned!
Yep. Front end is all done, letting some paint dry on a bracket I missed before so I can install the radiator. Then it's pretty much ready to go into the engine stand and start it up. I think I'm going to see about installing the shifter cable and shifter so I can see if it drives. One more tiny success story....it' hasn't leaked a drop of oil yet! When you empty one of these out completely like this it take 8 quarts of oil to fill it up again, once you've recharged the torque converter and oil filter cannister.
Ready to go into the engine stand.....waiting on a distributor - yes it has one in it now, but that's an old points dizzy and I have a new electronic one on it's way. I can run it on this but I'd rather have the new one. It's also a lot easier to change it out while on the bench than when it's loaded in the test bed, but I may go ahead and drop the motor into the stand anyway. I want to hear this puppy run!
Got it loaded into the test stand, probably won't get to fire it up till Sat, my brother is coming to town for the weekend......
It's ready to run, all wired up, gassed up and so on, however I found late tonight that the choke isn't working correctly - so I guess I'll have to take the linkage apart and see what's up......I need to modify it anyway so the kick down link will work....I'm starting to wonder if this is actually the carb I sent to Joe Curto or if the reason I got such a quick turnaround is that he swapped it for one he already had done? I'll take a good hard look at it tomorrow.....
Today I fired up the 998 Automatic that's going into the Pup, I had to mess with the kickdown link quite a bit to make it bend around the header pipe and function correctly, but it came good in the end. I started this engine, let it warm up to 140* and retorqued the head and checked the valves, then fired it up again and ran it for 20 min at 2K fast idle. It sounds really smooth and idles nicely with good oil pressure. Ran cool too, only about 165 but it's only about 60* today so that probably affected it some. I'll let it cool down overnight, then retorque the head again and do a final setting of the valve lash, then fire it up again, and fine tune the timing and carb, then it will be ready to go.
Wow, hard to believe it'll be a year Nov 21st on this build. I hope I get it installed and out of my shop well before that time. This engine is going into a Mini pickup, my brief is only to install it - as in bolt it in the chassis and install the axles......no hoses, pipes, wiring or anything else, the owner of the car will be doing all of that and finishing the rest of the restoration. my understanding is the truck is in primer but has the bottom painted and the subframes and all the suspension and brakes have been done too.
It was so cool out today that the engine was dead cold this afternoon, so I checked the head torque again (it didn't pull down any further) and rechecked the valves, and found a couple of loose ones. So I fired it up again and let it warm up - put oil in the top of the carb that I had forgotten to do, then once it was fully warmed up I set the mixture a little better and it runs and idles sweetly now. Done and done. All that's left is to drain the water out.....I may let him add coolant later as I have a feeling this one might sit for a while before it's run again. Or I might go ahead and charge it with coolant......we'll see. I do need to get yet some more oil for it - there's 8 quarts in it now and I think it needs another 1 1/2!
If you all remember, I was concerned this engine might run hot because of all the debris and rust I had to dig out of the head and the block that was blocking all the water passages, luckily it looks like that won't be a concern after all, it never went above 170 on my test stand!
I had actually forgotten about all the water passages being full of rust so that has got to be a huge relief that there isn’t a cooling problem.
The Pup may be showing up this weekend if my partner can arrange his work schedule to fit, otherwise it will be at least another two weeks before I see the car.....