For the last 18 months I have been working on restoring my 90 VW Golf and swapping in a 1.8T motor. It is still a work in progress, but the engine is in and the car runs great. A large part of the swap involved shaving and cleaning the engine bay which has it looking like this (for details click the link in my sig):

Of course all of that work meant that I had been neglecting my wife's MINI. My wife really loved what I had done with the VW's engine bay and since it has big power and it's looking good on the outside:

we decided that we needed to make the engine bay look just as hot. We really just wanted to dress up those horns, but pulling them isn't as easy as most would think. Knowing this, I decided to take care of a few things while I was in there. Ideally I would like to paint the rails since the factory paint is horrible, but that just isn't in the cards right now. So we will be pulling a bunch of parts, some will get chrome and others will get polish. We won't be deleting anything, but the wires and hoses will be tucked and hidden away as much as possible. So it began:

I actually got all of that off without removing the front end. Basically if it was made out of aluminum and it could be seen, it went to the polisher. The transmission mount was also sent out as well as the coolant overflow tank and belt tensioner. All of the bolts, hardware, and even the hood latches were sent in for chroming.
After removing the trans mount I went ahead and removed the front end to do make it easier to clean in the bay and do some work on the parts of the core support that can be seen:


Since I didn't want to remove the AC lines, I hand polished them too:


Having all of this stuff out of the way makes it real easy to get in there and clean, but since the supercharger and intake are open, I can't use water so it all has to be done by hand. I also had the wheels polished and then I polished the inside of the bolt holes:

The goal is get everything back and assembled to go to the Big SoCalEuro GTG at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego on July 30th. If your in SoCal bring your MINI out. Last show there were close to 2000 cars and it is expected to be even bigger this year:

http://big.socaleuro.com/

 

Pleasant surprise this afternoon since parts weren't supposed to be ready until Friday. Stopped by to see how the parts were doing and he had everything polished. I pick up the chrome pieces tomorrow. This MINI's future looks so bright your gonna have to wear shades :

 

Looks good.

 

wow, nice attention to detail

 

Wholly bling batman! Thats going to make one sick show ride. I will be watching.

Love the V-DUB, any more pics?

 

Thanks everybody The build is detailed from start to now here:

http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthrea...-1.8T-AWP-Swap

 

While I normally hate chrome I get what you are doing and I totally dig it. Keep it up.

 

The polished pieces look beautiful! Is there any kind of a coating on them, or are you going to have to live underneath the bonnet with a tube of Flitz to keep them looking like that?

 

Agreed, this is so "not me" but I can see how people like it and admire good workmanship...still, not my style, but it's going to look good. (plus what do I know?)

 

Funny thing is, I never was either. When I put the engine together for my VW, I had the intake manifold and valve cover done and then it just snowballed from there .

There is no coating on them. Coating tends to dull the shine of polished aluminum. I have had to maintain my VW engine bay over the last year and if you stay on it, it usually just needs a quick wipe down with Mother's Billet Aluminum Polish. Fortunately that will be my wife's dilemma since it is her car , but she is a great detailer. I got some things reassembled. Intake manifold:



Trans mount with Powerflex bushings:



and I painted the GP intercooler with some Eastwood radiator satin black paint:



Too bad most of it will be covered:

 

cant wait to see it all put back together.

 

One thing I learned from doing the engine bay on my VW was that beautiful polished parts just don't look right if they are assembled with dingy flat hardware. On this bay, as I pulled the parts, I put all of the hardware in a bag and sent it out for chroming. I picked it all up yesterday and it looks amazing:



I am still waiting on the hood latches since those went to a different place. Another trick I learned was that stainless steel acorn bolts can be used in place of nuts to hide exposed studs like I did on the three nuts on the front of this valve cover:

Before


After


Now reassembly can begin in earnest. Unfortunately I have to work this weekend so it probably won't be finished until next week.

 

Dude, you're freaking cool. Seriously.

I am going to do a similar thing here in the near future except I like color! I wish adding color to the exterior wasn't such a hip thing to do right now as I'd love to do some.

But the engine bay is going to get a bright color and everything else will be cleaned up. I'll be doing the intake manifold and horns first. How hard was it to take off?

 

Thanks. It is just like an onion, you need to just keep peeling layers. First you have to remove the intercooler and then the intake manifold. One thing that will really help out removing the intake manifold is a flex socket set for the 4 of the 13mm nuts and the fifth will need an open end:



After that it is pretty easy to figure out. I didn't even need to remove the front end.

 

That looks great, but I went with black chrome. Still alot of work to keep it up.

 

Looks great, I love the black chrome and the braided lines are hot.

 

Thanks. As you know it's alot to keep clean.

 

Done?

 

No, just got back from my National Guard weekend. Friday I managed to get this much done:





I'll get it all wrapped up tomorrow.

 

Looking premium.

 

Well it is all back together now:

















I missed about 9 bolts that I would like to have chromed, the inside of the passenger side bracket needs to be chromed, and it may be time to look into a better looking intake. I was thinking about getting the GTT coolant tank, but the polished Canton turned out great so no need for that. Down the road we would also like to get a better dipstick handle and oil cap. I still need to get the hood latches back and that should be tomorrow.

 

lookin sweet!

 

Agreed!

 

Fantastic.

 

Looks great!