Most liked posts in thread: Mini Innocenti 1300 Export

Houston, we no longer have a problem!

I had a spare engine lying under the workbench, so I tore it down this afternoon - amazingly, it has the correct Cooper S crank that I need and it's in excellent condition!

I'll take it up to the machinists to have it checked out thoroughly, but I think it's the one to use. I'm thinking I'll take the flywheel and pistons et all up there and have him check the balance too.

Other good news, the block is in good shape, a light hone and new rings will do it!

 

Musta been tired and not thinking, or breathed in too many solvent fumes......

There is no need to grind this crank, I'll just use the rods that fit it on the Inno pistons. I think based on wear patterns these rods are in much better shape anyway. However, I will take everything (crank, rods and pistons, front harmonic, flywheel and clutch assembly) up and have it all balanced.

Now all I have to do is wait for the block and cylinder head to be done and the new parts to come in and I can begin assembling the whole megillah.

In the meantime there are plenty of parts yet to clean and prime, and I still need to get that damn nut off in the transmission.

Or do I?

Turns out my spare transmission is also a 4 synchro remote gearbox, maybe I can do a little more mix and match - this one does not have hardy spicers, but rather the rubber donuts, but I'm pretty sure they'll just change out....have to study up on that a bit, but I can always switch out the carriers or stub axles......hmmmmm…...

 

Well, I'm down to two shops now from 3, but I'll bet that one stop does all shop isn't there any more either. Most of them in KC are simply gone, owners got old and retired or just quit.

There used to be at least 3 crankshaft shops in town here, now the only one is way out north in Claycomo…..there are still a couple of block/cylinder head shops around.....including the one I just found less than 5 miles from my house.

I don't often need crank work done, but the shop near me that does blocks and heads say they send theirs down to Chilicothe - that's about 2 1/2 hours or more from me in southern Mo!

Before I took the crank up to the cranky guy, I lapped the new flywheel onto the end of the crank and got a nice clean finish so it will fit properly when it comes back

 

The new camshaft that arrived yesterday came with the springs recommended to be used with it, so I took them down to the cylinder head guy hoping that they didn't already have it back together.....HA!

They did have it disassembled and cleaned (don't know why they felt the need to hot tank it, I had cleaned it thoroughly before I took it down there) and he said later today they would check it for cracks and tomorrow give me a list of the parts they needed - valves and seals - or whether they could use the valves in the head now. I don't know if the ones they sell at Vicky Brits will be the large 35mm intakes or the smaller ones commonly used in Sprite heads, need to find out or else there will be a further delay while I order them from Spares.

Anyway, he said they might be done with it in another 2 weeks to a month!

Yikes! Gonna make it tight for getting it back together, run in and ready for Aspen/Snowmass. I might be taking the green Mini after all.

 

Heading out of town tomorrow to meet up with a bunch of my Classic Mini buds, see you all next week!

 

Supposed to rain all day today, so we'll just hang out in the shop and do some wrenching.....

The Vtec Pup and the car with the hot rod motor I built had a drag race, the Vtec won,but the guy in the other car had a passenger....even so it was very close!

 

Parts from England made it about noon, so I ran them downtown to the Cylinder head guy, he said it would be done "sometime next week". Since I was out and about I drove further north to drop by the crankshaft guy. They had not touched it yet, but promised me it would be done "sometime next week" too.

The crankshaft place had a sign at the desk claiming that wait time for engine work was as much as 10-12 weeks out! So if I do get I next week it will have only been three weeks! I guess I should feel lucky...…

 

While not as bad as last week my back is still hurting, but I got tired of sitting on the couch and there's nothing on TV so I went down to the shop and cleaned a few bits in the solvent tank and swapped the shaft and rocker arms for the new forged ones we got.

A couple of things to note, even the *new improved* rocker arm shafts are not expensive and the wear patterns on our old one show why you always change it.



Also in the second pic you can see the wear patterns on the tips of the old rockers - note that they're offset. They are supposed to be that way, the idea is that they hit the end of the valve stem just slightly off center, which causes the valve to rotate a tiny bit each time it opens and closes, this is to make sure you get even wear and heat/cooling on the valves.



In the last pic with the new rockers you can see that a couple of them are offset just a bit, that's because the stands are not placed exactly central to the valves - I won't know for sure which one will end up where till I get the head back and set the rocker assembly on the head. It's fairly simple to slide them off and on again but a bit fiddly. Another thing you have to watch for is that the push rods don't hit the sides of the holes they go thru, this might require yet another rejigging of the rockers on the shaft.



Once the crankshaft gets back from the shop I'll install it and one rod/piston with no rings, then I can dial in the cam without the drag of all 4 pistons/rings. To get all of the measurements set up correctly I'll have the crank in and out a couple of times.

It takes a while to build one of these correctly, but the finished product is worth the extra time to get maximum performance, economy and life out of the engine.

 

One other small project I whipped up this afternoon.....

To set the timing on these early cars there's a small window on the bellhousing that you look thru to see the timing marks, back in the days of the 850 it was easy to see in there, but on later cars, especially those with a brake servo mounted over the bell housing, about the only way you can see the marks is with a mirror....it's dicey at best.

So, I made a small bracket, and once I have the crank in place and I've used a dial indicator to find TDC, I'll make a corresponding mark on the front pulley ( this pulley is from another - later - engine) to match the pointer. Then I'll have TDC, and with my fancy schmancy timing light I can easily set it to whatever I need just by using the TDC pointer and the adjustable scale knob on the timing light.

 

Ran into a snag.....as you can see in the pic above, the pistons do not come flush to the deck like they're supposed to, in fact they're 75 thou short.....that's enough to seriously affect the compression ratio.

Doing some research it all starts to come into focus......there were no small big end 1275 GT's, the crank should have had 1 3/4" rod journals.....but it has 1 5/8 - that crank has been stroked 1/8", that's why the pistons were flush with the original crank and not with this one, the new crank and rods were std.

So, I can fix it by simply decking the block.....but before I can do that I need to CC the combustion chambers so I can calculate the compression ratio. If I take it down to within 5 thou, I might wind up going too high in CR and it will ping itself to pieces or I wind up running race gas all the time. Once I know the combustion chamber volume I can determine how far I can cut the block. That will be the cheapest and easiest way to go

Or...…..I could go ahead and fix the original crank, put it and the original rods back in and have everything as it was, but I'd need a new primary gear, new rod and main bearings, and I'd have to have the rotating assembly balanced again.

Or...…...I could just buy new pistons, as when you stroke the engine you have to cut the pistons down so they don't stick over the top of the block. Then I'd have to have everything balanced again.

I'll know tomorrow after I cc the head, but I'm leaning toward simply decking the block.

 

Ha! that would raise the compression too! And of course, I'd have to have it balanced again!

I have the block all stripped down again to take to the machine shop, or for whatever we decide to do. If you look closely, you can see how the bores are offset slightly, to leave a little more meat in between them.

 

No, it would be fine with the original parts, and I think it might make a little more power, and that is one of the options I wrote above, just the most expensive one. And I would have to wait 2-3 weeks to get it in the cranky shop, and 2 weeks more for the parts - you need the new primary gear to know how far to machine the crank, then it has to be balanced.

 

Meanwhile my partner is done with the paint work, he even repainted the fuel tanks and they look terrific. He'll bring it back to my shop mid next week.

 

Lemme see if I can find a better pic, his lights do tend to wash out the color in a photo

I'll take a couple when it gets back home on Wed.....

 

I went up to the crankshaft shop yesterday afternoon and raised holy hell about my crank being there for 6 weeks and still not done, this morning at 9 am they called and said it was done....???!!!

So this afternoon I'll go get it - at last!

I leave for Colorado Sunday the 21st so I won't have a ton of time to work on it before I go, but at least I'll have most everything I need to finish. The seats are at the upholsterer's being finished and should be done by Friday.

 

As far as I know this is the ONLY crankshaft shop in the KC Metro area, which is why I drove an hour each way to use them. You're right, part of the problem is they have SO much work that they can't begin to keep up, and it's an old shop so there's a lot of just crap laying all over the shop. The crank guy himself is a consummate professional and does great work, but when I went to see him I'll bet he had 100 cranks either waiting or already done.

This is a real challenge, most of the shops that did this work are gone because newer cars don't get their engines rebuilt, they get replaced. But there's a grey area of newish cars that people can't either buy a new engine for or can't afford a new engine for, plus the guys building older stuff like me - this means as the only shop around they are inundated with work, and people who can't afford to spend a lot.

While I was there a young guy came in - he had just picked up his LS motor - they had it for 6 months - and it came back to him without the oil filter mount, since it was an LS they had plenty of them and just handed him one, but still......he had to make the trip.

I won't darken their door again if I can help it, even tho I think their work is fine - I will try and find somewhere else, but I may not have a choice.