Most liked posts in thread: Mini Ecoboost Project

Well, this project has slowly been coming back to life!

I'm in negotiations with an engine provider - and it will be an EcoBoost after all.....only they can't find me a three cylinder, so we're going with the engine out of a Focus ST - 4 cyl turbocharged with 252 HP and 195 torques, in a turn key package with the transmission (a 6 speed) and the ECU already modified to remove all the crap I don't need, so it will just be the stock engine management system - however, if I can find a tuner I can bump that up to 300 hp easily. Don't know that I'll need or even want to do that, but it's nice to know it's in there!

Cost will be close to or about what I would pay for a stock engine and trans from Mini Mania.....yes of course I can build one for less than they charge, but I'm just using them for comparison of what you get for what you spend.

This company delivers a crated engine on a pallet, ready to run. Hook up gas and a battery and turn the key and it will run on the pallet....radiator, air cleaner, intercooler etc all there and plumbed in.

Of course then the real fun begins, getting it into the back of the Mini, but I figure if MiniTec can do it with a V6 Honda motor and trans, I can do this too.

I'll let you all know what I got once negotiations are complete. Delivery could take up to 6 months as they are really backlogged with work, but that's OK. I have plenty to do to get ready before they ship the motor to me. They provide the vin of the car that the motor came from so you can look it up and prove mileage etc. They even provide pics of the car it came out of.

 

Thanks, this one should prove a challenge to say the least. It also promises to take a LONGGGG time to complete!

 

Not a lot to report on this build so far, I have the car completely stripped down to a bare shell, and I have been measuring and figuring for various parts - I reinstalled the bare front subframe for example, so I could figure out the fuel tank and radiator and A/C condenser locations and size.

I ordered a fuel tank, and the first order of panels to repair the rust in the front of the car/sills should arrive by the end of the week, according to DHL.

Just in time for typical Kansas summer weather to arrive - hot and oh so muggy! Time to switch the shop unit over from heat to A/C!

I got a small bench top media blaster at a garage sale and decided to try it out on an upper control arm - it did great, but I made the mistake of leaving the air plugged in. I was upstairs having lunch and I heard the air compressor kick on - usually it takes about a minute to recharge the tank but it seemed to go on and on, so I headed down to see why it was still running. When I opened the door to the shop the air was full of dust - the hose inside the unit had popped off and it was blowing the media around inside - forcing the dust out around the seal for the window! I popped the air off the connector and gave it an hour for the dust to settle so I could see again.....not a lot of media got out, mostly just the dust but I think in the future I will roll this thing out on my hydraulic table and use it outside!

 

Couldn't find anyone to do that, and this one was priced right at $120 including the sending unit and cap.

 

Since the big shed got finished I spent a day moving stuff into it from the small old shed, and then spent a couple of hours cleaning the mouse poop and other schmutz out of it so I could start moving car parts into it.

I still have a ways to go on that but today I wanted to get the modifications done to the gas tank. I had the end I cut off before and used it to make two panels, one to go on the end once it's all done and another to fit in the middle as a baffle.





I also had to bore a new hole for the sending unit and cut a slot in the baffle to allow the arm of the sender to swing all the way. With all that done the only thing left is to attach the pump to the pick up pipe - but to do that I had to order a couple of things.




The pipe is 1/2" OD and the nipple on the pump is a little under 3/8" I don't know of a hose that will stretch that far, so I ordered a 3/8-1/2 hose barb and a section of 1/2 fuel hose. Once those are here Sat I can shorten the pick up tube and install the fuel pump.



Once I'm done with all my mods I'll take it all over to the welder guy and he'll weld in the baffle, close off the old hole for the sending unit and weld the end cover on...that will do it for the tank and I can start figuring out how to mount it to the car/subframe.

 

Today's project was to get the engine settled on the hydraulic table and remove the engine electrical harness......which was a total PITA! But I didn't want to have it in the way when lifting the engine in and out of the car to mock up the subframe and suspension.





With that done I'll probably move back to the front subframe and build and weld in all the brackets needed to mount the fuel tank, A/C condenser and radiator. With that in place I can start thinking about how to run the pipes from the front to the back, I have some basic ideas already but I'll need to refine them as I go along. Looks like the two big hoses will be in the right place to hook them to the pipes, and I'd like to put some elbows in the front part to match up to the radiator, so all I'll need are a couple of short elbows to connect them. However, there are a couple of small bleed pipes that were attached between the coolant recovery tank and the thermostat housing, that used proprietary fittings. I'm not sure how I'm going to make those work, or even plug them off if I can't make them work as intended. Challenges....

By the way, each one of those little blue tape markers are for a sensor or control........there are a bunch of them!

 

I still haven't gotten the car out of the garage as I'm having trouble co-ordinating with strong/younger neighbors to give me a hand (one's wife had a baby this weekend so he's excused), and since a car ran over my foot at the car show last Sunday I'm not really in any shape to lift it, so I decided to get started on cutting out the old rusty floor panels and welding in new shiny ones.

I started by removing this crossmember - I noticed after drilling out a few spot welds that a LOT of big rust chunks were falling at my feet.





When I got the crossmember out, this is what I found - yes the blue paper towel was in there too - it looked like someone had closed up a hole by shoving that paper towel in there and gobbing a bunch of bathroom silicone over it.





You'll also notice there is a fairly thick sound deadening applied to these panels which I have to remove in order to get at the spot welds, and it is a royal PITA to get off of there. Sometimes if I can catch an edge I can drive a scraper under it and lift off a section, but usually I have to take my heat gun to it to get it soft enough to scrape off. PITA!

With that out of the way I dropped the new panel into place so I can start figuring out where exactly to cut out the old one and start welding in the new. I'm a little undecided about the sequence of what to cut and weld first as I'll be rebuilding the entire lower side of the car. On Binky they welded in the door step area first and I need to do that as well, so I may do that before cutting out the floor. It's a mess, no question!

 

At the car show last Sunday, some "helpers" were pushing the Innocenti back into alignment with the other cars and as I was steering it from the left side they got a little too helpful!

Finally got it out onto the drive and gave it a bath - I was tired of working in filth and vacuuming it constantly. It's a nice warm, sunny day and it only took me and one other guy to get it off the rack and outside, but I'll have a third to get it back in, there's a pretty good lip at the edge of the garage floor. With all the holes the water drained out easily!







Edit: It was surprisingly easy to get it back into the shop! Also, front coilovers came in today. now once some other bits get here I can build the front suspension and roll it around on actual wheels.

 

The parts arrived today and I spent some time familiarizing myself with the various components, then went ahead and assembled the basic framework.

Next I'll take it all apart again and start figuring out how to mount the motor.....

 

So MiniTec called me back and after a good conversation I now know what to get parts-wise to keep moving forward.

Don dropped by and helped me lift the subframe up and off the engine so I could get it up on my lift table and get started cutting off that boss to make clearance for the suspension arms to move.



Once up on the table it wasn't too hard to cut the boss off and use my angle grinder to clean up the area enough to do a test fit. Putting the subframe back in place by myself turned into a challenge, but using the engine lift and some straps and chains I managed to get it in place.

Now the axles line up nicely and there's room on both ends for the trailing arms to move without hitting anything.





I messaged my brother in England who used to work for Sanden to ask about compressors as I won't be able to use this one now that I'm using the area where it used to mount for the suspension.....he gave me a couple of leads as it's now going to turn the opposite direction - on what compressor to order and it turns out they're readily available and fairly inexpensive. Once I build the motor mounts, add the coilovers and axles, I'll be able to see where exactly I can put it and build some brackets to mount it.

I know on some of the Vtec Mini builds they mount the alternator to the frame rather than the motor - not sure that would work but it's an interesting thought anyway....I'd be concerned with vibration when it's running and how to tension the belt.

1st pic shows where I cut off the boss, second the clearance to the trailing arm and third the nice straight axle lineup.

While I had the subframe standing on its side I also found where the adjustment is for camber, it uses a large eccentric washer to move it where you want it.....simple and effective. A similar set up adjusts toe....

All of the aluminum has a lot of corrosion on it, I found some liquid spray-on stuff that's supposed to clean the corrosion off without damaging the metal......that will be one of the last jobs I do, but I'm definitely going to give it a good shot at cleaning it off. Maybe while the engine's out when the body is at paint would be a good time to tackle that......

 

I'm having fun with it, and considering I don't have any machine tools everything is pretty crude, but as long as it functions it will have to do......case in point......

After finagling the motor around in the frame a bit, I welded up the motor mount on the engine side, but ran out of back and material to finish it. Next I'll build the legs that attach it to the subframe, then switch over to the transmission end. I also need to buy some bolts and some more metal for the "legs" on both ends, plus I want to brace up the shell before I start cutting any metal out of it - it's probably only held together with the paint as it is!

This is my first effort and I'm sure I could do better, but as long as it holds, the only one who will ever see it is me!





I had a weird thing happen when I was trying to weld it up - I was just putting a couple of tacks in to see if I had the angle and spacing right, and it just would not weld. I was using a couple of very strong magnets to hold things in place, so I switched over to regular c clamps - it immediately welded up normally! I think I've run into this before, where a magnet somehow screws with the welding arc. At any rate, I'm glad I figured it out cause I was getting pretty frustrated with it!

I'm going to trim up the edges and polish off the weld splatter before I'm done with it

 

Today I finished the brackets for the engine steady..... I have the frame all marked up where I need to weld them but I may not get to that today. I also did some additional welds and clean up on the engine end, so it looks a little more presentable now - although I did that after I took these pics.





I also found the missing 2 wheel studs - Clancy had them - and got them pressed into the front hubs, so that's done and I can start building the front end once these brackets are welded on.

 

A "shocking" development! Only took 7 months to get them.....I have a feeling MiniTec "forgot" to order them......I left the springs off for now so I could measure suspension travel and get a final length for my axles. I'll ship those off with the measurements in a few days if it ever warms up. Currently -2 in KC, headed for a high of maybe 10, but it's supposed to get into the twenties and maybe even the thirties by the end of the week.





These QA1 shocks look to be a well made bit of kit, with adjustments both for compression and rebound.

I've been re-watching early episodes of Project Binky to get some ideas on brackets and bracing the shell.

 

Ok, so it's in the hole!!!



I did have to carve those rear brackets out of the way, then it went in easily and everything lines up as it should. I still have to do some small trimming here and there and clean up all the sharp edges.

Next I'll start thinking about where to start the rust repairs, I'm thinking the best place would be the rear passenger side where so much metal is missing.....

Looking at the rear panel, I bought an entire new rear panel but the only place its really bad is on the bottom edge, so taking a page out of Dan's playbook maybe I'll just replace that lower couple of inches. Of course the boot floor and lower valance also go together at the same place, and I have new pieces to go there as well. I'm thinking maybe weld those two together and put them in place, then replace that lower edge. Dunno, I'll need to think about it for a bit. There's nothing there below that edge, it all rusted away.....

 

So, big day today.....I bolted the suspension back in and fitted the rear shocks and wheels.

The suspension was a bitch kitty as it's held by heim joins that are fairly buried under the lip of the subframe, and of course they ride on shoulder bolts. That's not so bad but there are also a couple of spacer washers, and fitting the shoulder thru the bracket, thru the washer and into the joint, thru the other washer then thru the bracket - and get a nut and washer on the threads was......well, difficult and awkward.





After I managed to get the left one done I realized that If I swung the arms all the way down I had enough access that I could at least see what I was trying to do. So it's all bolted up and I took a few pics to see how the wheels would look in the openings. They're nicely centered, but it's going to sit pretty low it looks like. One pic at mid range of the suspension travel and one at full extension.





It was exciting to see it looking more like a car again!

I have some new inner wheel wells coming next week, but I may need to modify them to give more room for the tire to move up.

 

My inner wheel wells are supposed to be here tomorrow, but we had a blizzard blow thru so it won't surprise me if they're a day late - still, DHL has been pretty good about hitting their delivery dates or even being a day early. We didn't get a lot of snow, only about 2 inches, but with the cold wind it feels more like ice than snow. Lots of downed power lines, big tree branches etc. We lost power briefly several times during the night, and this morning the wind is still blowing hard.

It's interesting that we must have had enough warm days that all the concrete has not frozen over, in fact most of it is clear of ice or snow, all of that seems to be in the yards. I was concerned that the combination of ice and strong winds would down a lot more trees, and while there are some large branches down, it's not too bad.....not like storms we've had before where it sounded like shotguns going off as the trees broke.

So, back to the car......I've decided to work from the back to the front in replacing metal.....to that end I think I've figured out what to do on the wheel openings - it will require a lot of fabrication but should give me the look I'm after. Once I've got those in, I can build all the rest of the metal to them, including the rear support brackets for the subframe. According to MiniTec you're supposed to use where the original subframe bolted on at the back, but I could not get this thing to fit if those were in place, and since they were rusted down to nothing and had no strength I knew I'd be cutting them off anyway. So, I'll need to build those, but before I can I'll need to build all the sheet metal to attach them to, as there's nothing but air back there now!



I'll have to build those brackets so they can be bolted on, to let me be able to get the subframe in and out. As it sits now it goes right in with no hassle. I plan to cut the wheel openings up to within about 1/2" of the holes that the sport pak arches attach to, that should give me enough clearance for the tires. Once those are in place I can start building back all the missing sheet metal. If you look at the last pic, there's no Q panel, sill or anything attaching the inner wheel well to the rest of the car, I'll have to build all of that......there's a lot of rust right where the inner wheel well welds to the q panel, so I'll remove that in the process and I'm hopeful that I'll find good metal to weld to.

 

Today I wanted to assess my work before I did the same to the left side, so I took the springs off the shocks so I could move the trailing arms the full length of the shock travel. I put the tire back on and ran the suspension up as far as the shock would let it go. This pic shows the clearance. The holes are for the attachment points of the Sport Pak arches, so it looks like they will clear ok.



The I went to the left, unmodified side. Second and third pics show the wheel won't go all the way up without hitting the lip, so I was justified in my thinking on cutting the lips up....there was still plenty of shock travel to take up.





Lastly, today I gave the poor green Mini a bath - it hasn't been out of the garage for over three months so it was well past due for a good cleaning.

 

I've been going slow on this project, mostly because I don't really know what I'm doing!

Also, I don't want to weld something up only to have to tear it apart again, so I'm trying to make sure I'm doing this in a logical order that will all come together in the end.

So I marked where I need to drill holes to plug weld the rear panel on, basically everywhere there wasn't a spot weld from before.





Then I decided it would be a good idea to clamp up the valance panel to make sure everything was square and fit the rear panel and the rest of the body. Before I did that I decided to weld the boot floor edge on first, that stiffens up the valance panel and gives something solid to weld the back panel to.

So I drilled a million little holes to plug weld the two together, bolted them up using the bumper attachment holes and filled in the holes with plug welds. So far so good, it still fits up nicely.



Next I needed to weld in the closing panels, but first I had to modify them as they no longer can go where they did originally - I had to make room for the subframe to be able to go in and out. Once this stuff is all welded together on the car I'll build some bolt-in brackets for the lower part of the subframe to attach to these panels. One end is done and I'll get started on the other later today.



This sheet metal is pretty thin so I have to be careful welding it together that I don't blow holes in it....so far I've been lucky. Once everything is welded up on the valance I'll clean up all the welds and give it a coat of weld thru primer before I attach it to the rear panel. I also need to cut out the left side wheel opening and remove the inner wheel well.

Then the next thing will be to weld those inner wheel wells in and tie it all back to the rear panel.

From there I'll move forward to repairing the floors and sills. I've got a really long way to go on this project so I just need to get on with it!

 

Surprise! Today I got a note from MiniTec that my axles are on their way to me......they even sent a tracking number.

I have been working on the body, lots of cleanup, fitting, measuring, adjusting, more adjusting, thousands of holes drilled and swarf cleaned off but now it's all welded on again.

The back panel is done except for the c panel joint which is just tacked for now. The inner wheel wells are fitted and welded in too.





I've got the valance panel all ready to weld on but I'm not sure I can get the subframe in and out with it in place. I'm going to bolt it back on now that the back panel is solid and see what happens. I do still need to add a bracket for the inner fender brace between the wheel well and the parcel shelf panel. That will be pretty easy to weld in once I make them. Oh, and fill the fuel filler hole.....







If the subframe will clear the rear valance then I can go ahead and weld it in place then build the brackets for the lower subframe mounts. Then I'll need to grind all the nibs off and give those spots a little primer.

Next project after all this - floors and sills. before I can tackle those I need to clean all the sound deadening off the floors. I have a tool for that.....

 

Today I'm grinding all the nubs off from my welds, it takes a while as I want to be careful not to damage the adjoining panel or grind thru the lip I just welded.

Like my buddy Dan the bodyman says, 40 grit rolocs work pretty fast on them, but I just ran out so I need to find some more. I wonder if HF carries them? (Edit: Yes, they do - $4.50 for 3 in 36, 60 80 or 100 grit.)

I also got my axles today....another piece of the puzzle