I had always planned to do some paint in the engine bay. I wanted to sand it down and paint it black. I was also considering painting the bottom and arches with something like LineX or Raptor Liner so maybe this is the smart time to do that. Of course depending on how extensive the repairs required are, I might need a full resort which opens me up to new color choices. Either way, I think I’m going to start shopping around for a body shop. Shi…
I’ve been preparing myself to start removing parts and today I started to set up my garage so I could jack the Mini up. I bought a QuickJack recently because it was on sale for a low price and thought I might give it a shot (I’ll give more details on this once I’ve had an opportunity to use it more). But this required me to poke around under the car to find a solid lifting point. And this is where the trouble starts. Yes, that is a large rust hole. I’m not sure if this is supposed to be a drain hole or something but it certainly is now. I always knew I had some rust on the doors but I was naively thinking I had a decent body. Unfortunately the more I poke around, the more I find. Now I wasn’t planning on doing major body repairs because A) I’m not a body man and B) that was going to require significantly more cast and time commitment. At this point however it seems foolish to proceed without addressing the body issues.
I had always planned to do some paint in the engine bay. I wanted to sand it down and paint it black. I was also considering painting the bottom and arches with something like LineX or Raptor Liner so maybe this is the smart time to do that. Of course depending on how extensive the repairs required are, I might need a full resort which opens me up to new color choices. Either way, I think I’m going to start shopping around for a body shop. Shi…
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More and more packages are starting to arrive including one of my more questionable choices: Now I say this is one of my more questionable purchases not because it’s not an excellent product; quite the opposite in fact. This may be one of the most sophisticated pieces of equipment ever to grace a 4 decade old vehicle. It’s questionable for exactly this reason. Likely the most common ECU for a Honda engine is the Hondata. Not only does it piggy back off the standard ECU so it’s pretty plug and play, but there is lots of support for it because it’s made for Honda engines. So why rock the boat?
Prices for the Hondata seemed to be in the $600+ range and what I would end up with is a 30 year old ECU. I came across this video which made a solid case for using a Haltech 550 over the Hondata. “But you didn’t buy a 550, you bought a 1500,” I can hear you say. Well I was looking for a good price for a 550 and had pretty much assumed I wasn’t going to do better than retail at around $850. Then came Black Friday and oh deal of deals: the 550 was around $650. How could I pass that up? So all prepared to order my 550, I talked to Shawn (maybe? It was Facebook Messenger) at Tuned by Shawn and he convinced me to go for the 1500 because it would add knock sense and extra levels of engine protection. Thankfully the 1500 was also on sale so although it busted the budget I had set for an ECU, I still saved about $400. But now I have to go through the extra steps of wiring a more universal ECU which I’m expecting to prove…questionable. Happy 2022 which is feeling an awful lot like 2021. But putting that aside, I'd like to talk about the mountains of parts that I'm stacking up. I've accumulated quite a large number of boxes filled with goodies from Mini Sport, Mini Spares, SpeedHut and others. I ran a price comparison for all the major suppliers in the US and UK including Mini Mania and 7 Enterprises and found that with the exchange rate and prices, Mini Sport and Mini Mania were the cheapest for these orders and probably saved well over $1,000. There's also more boxes on the way with parts from Haltech and SMCO. I've also gotten some of my conversion parts from MCM but there's still a few more pieces to arrive. So what do I have? I think the biggest and most important piece is the engine! The engine I've gone with is a D16Y8 from a 2000 Honda Civic EX. This should provide around 120hp. It might get a bit more from the intake and exhaust along with the tune. I suppose the next big piece of the puzzle is my MCM subframe. This will slot into the front end (after some minor surgery) and provide a home for my new D16. It's currently in raw metal and I'm going to send it off for powder coating along with the rear subframe and roll cage. My intake is from MCM and it is bespoke for the Mini conversion. There were a couple companies that make intakes for the Classic Mini including Potential Motorsport in the UK and Gildred Racing in California. If I'm honest, I kind of prefer the looks of these intakes as they are not so boxy and maintain and stock look. The price, however, is quite large and in the end, I decided to stick with the MCM intake since they fabricated my kit and will hopefully be able to provide support during installation if needed. I've received a few more large boxes in the mail which included a number of necessary parts for the swap and then some parts that I'm going to use to upgrade my Mini while doing the swap. The list includes:
I splashed out on a set of aluminum 4 piston calipers in Orange during Mini Sport's Black Friday sale. Orange is my oldest son's favorite color and I figured it was a bit more exciting than going with silver, grey, black or red and shouldn't clash too badly with the blue. I'm pretty excited about these too. This was another Black Friday special that I ordered from SpeedHut. They are sized so they should fit in a triple clock dashboard (something I still need to find). They are a silvery background with blue lighting at night. I'm also pretty excited about this. I pulled my shift linkage out of a car in a Pick-N-Pull in Virigia and ordered this from Aliexpress. It's a Civic Type-R knockoff and I'm blown away by the quality given the price I paid (under $2!). It's nicely machined and feels quite heavy in your hand. I don't know how it could be made for that price.
So what am I still waiting on? There's a couple big items that I have ordered but still waiting on such as my headers, engine mounts, alternator, CV joints and axels and ECU. Then there are the things that I still need to buy like the transmission, fuel line, throttle body, seats, dashboard, flywheel bolts and clutch bolts. I'm sure there are more things that I'm forgetting but I'll just have to order those as I go. Next step is to stop shopping and start wrenching. |
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