Hi guys, the story of my car if you'd like to see.

New Wheels







17% Supercharger pulley mod







One-Ball Mod






Subwoofer enclosure for 10" Alpine Type-X












The days are over, piston rod bearings said bye to me.








Moving the car to the garage I have








Yellow brake calipers and tested my painting skillz on paper






Finally after 7 months I got the engine from machine shop.

- Machined valves + valve seats
- Ported head
- Machined and balanced crankshaft
- Ported engine block
- New piston rings
- New main bearings and rod bearings
- New gasket kit, top end and bottom end







Some cleanup in the engine bay









Checked on the clutch, it was over also, so I ordered a new one







Installed the valve cover, intake manifold and some misc parts







The clutch is here











Installed the fuel injectors, fuel rail, the supercharger and some misc parts and screws.

 

Nice epic-production post! This was very entertaining, almost like watching a TV show about my favorite car. It's nice to see somebody lovingly toil and wrench away at their pride and joy (and virtually watch them do so), without any bitter attitude toward the car or its creators, and without all the bitching and crying about lack of reliability and so forth.

A couple of things:

I wouldn't mind knowing how many miles were on that engine and clutch, and what you suspect caused the failures.

I like the rims...simple and understated.

I think you could make a few bucks if you were willing to recreate that molded sub box and sell them... Also, what else did you do with the stereo system (or, was that the furthest thing from your mind when the other stuff broke, LOL)?

 

very nice love what you have going on

 

Awesome post. Love the progress. What clutch/flywheel kit did you install?

 

that r53 is going to be SOLID

 

Thanks for the complement, ellcapitan.

The car is November 2003 model (Registered as 2004 car), and milage says 70.000 kilometers (about ~40k miles).

What caused the failure of the engine was 50% my foult, having not checked the oil enough times. (tried to check it every other week), The other 50% is related to the oil sump being designed wrong. It needs plates between each cylinder to prevent the G's to thrust the oil to one side of the sump.

I was doing long hard right turn, when it happened.


I went with stock DM flywheel and LuK clutch that is supposed to hold 285 Nm in torque.

 

Any updates?

 

get you one of these? http://www.waymotorworks.com/wmw-baf...n-r50-r53.html

 

I like your tire collection. I've always wanted a big stack of tires up to the ceiling.

 

Got the supercharger oil today, also I bought antifreeze fluid and aluminum air intake with silicon clamps for the K/N air filter.

I will try to go to the garage tonight, but my deadline is 16th December to get the car to the streets.

I also will order a private number for the car [ SOLID ] (which you can do here in Iceland ). And that is going to be the registration number of the car.

Thanks for the interest guys! more to come.

 

serious tear down. should be a beast when you get it on the road again. :D

 

Transmission on, SC on, Oil housing on, air intake element on, alternator etc.

Engine on the car tomorrow!

 

Looking good

 

very impressive!! Far more ambitious then ANY of my shade tree mechanics!

 

Thanks guys!

The engine is up and running, I had some troubles getting it to start, until I noticed I forgot to connect the earth (negative) from the body to ECU.

Next up is
- Attach axles
- Mount radiator w/ front bracket and bumper
- Fill it up with water + anti-freeze
- Bleed the clutch / brakes
- Fill up the Getrag transmission with oil

Then I'm off to registeration inspection to get my number plates

 

Few new photos

 

Glad you got her up and running again

 

Very nice! Was the engine hard to reassemble?

 

Reassembly was pretty easy with all the tools and extra hands I had

Its time for update on the Icelandic SOLID Cooper

New parts since last time:
- Dipstick (old one was broken)
- Offset stripes
- Wishbone bushings

Next up
- 450cc injects
- Some tuning







Went to the track and have some video and pictures

The video offset is pretty ****ed up anyway..








What do you recommend for a ecu upgrade here in iceland ? I have some great guys that can tune for me, but they can not crack the ecu. I need some thing else.

Is accessport map self-editing free ?

 

Sorry I cannot answer your question, but I wanted to say nice car and thanks very much for sharing this story.

Kind regards,

Charlie

 

Very impressive!

 

Some update!

Heat wrapped headers



Custom made air filter box with heat protected sheat!



Went to the track and got 14.503 best on street tires.







Got some slicks



Made them a little better











Then I ran 14.19 @ 98mph with the slicks on (I was hoping to get to 13.99)









I just got my 440cc injectors, then I have to order wideband and FullAccess R53 ecu tuning kit and start making some numbers.

Any thoughts ?

 

14.1@98mph with these mods:

» K&N Cone Air
» Cravenspeed Pulley - 17%
» One Ball Mod
» Heatwrapped headers
» Pirelli D3 slicks 195/585R15
» Heatshield air filter box

Any recommendations to get lower time ?

 

Might seem like a silly question, but with slicks, did you do some proper warm ups? What compound are the tires? While doing all that tire tape prep, a little medium to fine grit sand paper would have done wonders for all that rash, but I understand they are track beaters.

I will be interested to see the numbers after tuning. I am sure yo can pull some pretty stout numbers for the bhp/tq. What is the weight of the MINI?

 

in addition, if it is a track car/weekend warrior, you could go straight all the way from the header(w/ resonator)and all the way out. . .should free up about 8-10hp.