I don’t know where I first heard that saying but I think about that quote every time I think about welding. 😂

That’s sort of what I was thinking when I got this welder. Get something fairly inexpensive and see if I like it. So far (though not great at it) I’m really liking welding. Like you were saying it’s really satisfying to think up something, cut some pieces out, weld it up and see your idea become a reality. Thanks for the comment, friend.

 

Not to drag this thread horribly off track, but I once watched one of the better welders I know, grind smooth a beautiful weld and replace it with a bead of carefully applied silicone, then paint over it. Just to be obnoxious lol. How he did it didn't effect the strength any, but he thought it was so hilarious thinking someone some day might find it and freak out wondering how many of the welds were actually silicone 🤣

 

Making the engine mounts was pretty fun to do. I cut out some cardboard and bolted it to the engine to see if everything lined up.

Positioned more cardboard to place on the top of the engine mount and to connect the pieces.

Then I cut those same shapes out of 3/16ths steel

And there you have it. Some adjustment was needed to make everything fit but all in all it was a rewarding process.


By suggestion from Jerbear, I picked up a flap disc to sand down the frame welds and it worked great. Thanks for the suggestion.

Really difficult to get into the corners where I welded but this isn’t a show car so I can let it slide.

Masked off the engine bay.

Brand new velvet red layer down. I fell in love with this color all over again when I sprayed it down. It does make the other frame rail look a little faded. I guess that’s cause it is.

The engine is in the car for the final time. Hopefully. 😂 torque mount in the rear is mounted and the engine is very solid. Not going anywhere.

Not a great picture but it’s the only one I have right now. Also please excuse the anodized purple. This one was the only mount like this I could find. I might change this up in the future but for now it works and I’m going to run it.


Clutch line is connected and bled. The MINI OEM clutch line has a type of quick disconnect fitting that makes adapting it kind of difficult. The solution I found was to get a MINI clutch line off of an S MINI that has the female end of the quick disconnect, use a brake line cutter to cut the end off, slide the correct sized brake line fitting on and then flare the end. Then I basically did the same thing to the Honda side. OEM 2003 Honda Accord clutch line. Then I just joined them with a fitting

I believe this process will be different if you are working with an S MINI but throughout this build that same idea has been a reoccurring theme. Take the MINI side, Take the Honda side and figure out what middle bit you need to make them play nicely together. As long as you follow that you should be set.

I did work on adapting the throttle from drive by wire to cable but I’m still working on that right now so pictures will come later. Same with the shifter and cables.

More to come soon. Radiator fitting is next. Cheers. ✌️

 

I love CAD (cardboard aided design) 😆
I use it all the time!
Looks like its coming along nicely.



Some of my own CAD designs 😂

 

It’s time to chill out and fit the radiator. This one was a tight fit because as far as I can tell I’m the only person online that’s dumb enough to try to cram a k24 in a mini and use the stock intake manifold. Because of how low it sweeps down in the front there is barely any room for the radiator.

I’ve also had to substantially chop the front rad support. So much so this is what is left of the driver side. Practically a sheet of paper so reinforcement will be needed.


This is what I’ve come up with. Very basic and not exactly pretty but it does give enough rigidity to the rad support so I’m no longer worried about running over the radiator as it falls out the bottom of the car.

This is how I have the Yonaka rad situated. I have the radiator fan directly mounted to the back of the radiator as the supplied fan shroud is too big to fit. Now for everyone’s favorite part! The wiring!! Yaaayy

After reading some of the builds others have done I found that the simplest way to get the fan to kick on when it needs is to retain as much of the OEM mini fan control wiring as possible. What will stay the same is everything from the OEM MINI fan relay to the fan side of the OEM rad fan plug. I’ve taken about 6 to 8 inches off the OEM radiator fan plug and will splice it into the fan that came with my radiator.


Just like this. On the MINI side there are 3 wires. You’ll only need two of these so I’ve just snipped off the 3rd wire and heat shrinked it to seal it from the elements. Keep the Red and Black wires on the plug side. These will need to be connected to the blue and black wires on the fan. Red to Blue. Black to Black. Simple enough. I used the same crimpless butt connectors I used for the ecu wiring here as well.


Add some wiring loom cover and it looks pretty factory and you retain the factory plug so if you ever need to remove the radiator you can do so with out having to mess with the wiring.


The only other thing that will need to be wired is the ground trigger for the OEM MINI fan relay. From the factory the MINI ecu provides a ground signal that trips the relay when it senses the coolant has gotten to the set temperature. We will want to imitate that with the Honda ecu. I will cover all this later on but for now this is the current state of the build. Impact bar is on. Bumper is on. Fan is wired to the OEM plug. Lights are connected once again. It’s coming together slowly.

In the next installment of Mad MINIs this lil slicktop get its gears shifted. Stay tuned.

 

Every time I see this thread I have in my mind. Watch it with sound on, it sounds amazing.

Don't get me wrong, the R53 supercharger sounds awesome but vtec at almost 9k rpm is sweet.

I love this build and will continue to follow it as I can't wait to see what the end result will be.
Good job so far, really impressive.

 

Thanks, man. Next steps are the shifter box and cables. The suspension is all ready to get put back together too. Not enough time in the day to get it all done. Thanks for following this build. More to come soon.

 

Shifter is in. Make it easy on yourself and don’t try to mix and match shift boxes and cables from different Honda cars you THINK will fit. Just match whatever hybrid racing shift box and cables you need to fit the transmission you choose. In my case my transmission is a 5spd from an accord so I used the hybrid racing z3 shift box and associated cables. Not many pictures for this one since it’s pretty much as simple as that. No cutting will need to be done but a few holes will need to be drilled to mount the box. Other than that, not too bad.


On to the cable pedal conversion. You’ll need a 5 point tamper proof bit set to get the screws off of the MINI pedal box cover.

Once you get the cover off, You’ll be greeted by this. As you go there will be plastic that needs to be trimmed out so the cable can fit but it will be apparent what needs to be trimmed once you’re in there.mainly the top left section above the throttle wheel.


You’re going to want to pull the throttle wheel, take out the return springs and snip off the front most one or you could leave both springs if you want a heavier pedal feel.

Another warning, just save yourself the trouble and buy the long hybrid racing throttle cable. I bought the short one thinking it would work only to get everything together and find that the cable was probably 10 inches too short. So I’ve done this job twice now. Yay.

On the end of the throttle cable will be this metal puck. You’ll want to drill a small hole on one side.

On the throttle wheel you also want to drill a small hole at a slightly upward angle as well as a grove on the side following the same angle as the hole you just drilled. The throttle cable will sit into the groove and a cotter pin will go through both holes you’ve made in the wheel and cable end.

There should be a cap at the very top of the MINI pedal box. Just pop that out and cut a groove to slip the cable through.

Also the throttle cable will have some plastic on the cable housing that will need to be trimmed down to fit into the hole at the top of the MINI pedal box.

Just like that.

Then you can put the pedal box back together. I’ve read some claims about the MINI pedal throw not being enough to fully open the Honda throttle body but I’m going to run this and see how it goes. More modification may be necessary. Just word of warning. Also when reassembling add some of you favorite all purpose lube on the inside of the box where the cable moves. Makes everything nice and smooth.


And this is how it sits currently. Suspension was put back together. I didn’t cover that because there isn’t anything different from OEM. Also I think I’ll be able to use my Injen intake I had previously had on the W10 engine. We’re in the final stages. All that is left is exhaust, intake modification, charge harness, adding fluids and tuning the ECU. Hopefully next post it will be running. Cheers everyone.until next time.

 

So close man! Awesome job! Really makes me regret buying an R53 instead of K swapping my R50.

 

And with an R50 you get the benefit of a spare tire. I will have to get a S hood but I’ve wanted to swap that for a while anyway.

Is there any room in your life for another r50 k swap project?😁

 

@VRNate, I'm now infatuated with the Red Velvet color, who's the mfg?

 

the velvet red colors was an OEM MINI color for the 2003 model year and r50 model only. No other year had it and no S models had it. I think it was introduced to commemorate a year mile stone in the MINI brand. Not sure though.

It’s my favorite color of MINI. It looks red in the light with gold fleck and in the shade it’s so dark it looks purple or black sometimes. Such a great color deserves some great performance too. I’m putting the last touches on the build before I start it as I type this. Wish me luck.

 

My son had a 2002 R50 that was Velvet Red. So at least two model years - 2002 and 2003.

 

oh sweet. I didn’t know that. Thanks for the info. I’ve only ever seen maybe two driving around. Always love when I see one.

 

Since I already have 6 vehicles, 3 of them being projects, I'd say no lol.

 

Thanks, completely missed that color, I can grab some at the local paint store that way.

 

I believe the OEM paint code is 903. Hope that helps.

 

Big update, and a big hangup. Everything is back together. Fluids are in, wiring is connected and nothing is burning. Yay 😁 the ECU has been tuned and the engine cranks. The bad news is… I believe the BCM is freaking out and not allowing me to start the car. More specifically, the fuel pump will not prime and the radiator fan, fog lights and hazards are always on.

@Kr4nG Did you run into any problems like this when you did your build? If it is a problem with the bcm is there anyway to trick it to thinking it’s ok or would a work around need to be made? Thanks in advance.

The problem doesn’t seem to be fuse or relay related as I swear I’ve pulley every last fuse and relay and they all seem fine. If anyone else has any info on this it would be greatly appreciated.

 

To put it short...No I did not have any BCM issues. The BCM has no idea what engine or engine ecu is in the car. Now your statement is a bit confusing. "The engine cranks but not allowing me to start the car". So if you got the starter signal wire to send 12volts that means you are past the BCM security. The engine ecu will take over and start the car. My mini ecu is out of the car and my mini BCM is not touched. Im using Kpro with a ktuned any chassis harness to integrate the signals. To get the fans to run, the signal is ground. So find the original mini relay and connect the ground signal from the ecu to get the relay to trigger the 12v original fan harness. Do not wire anything to the MINI BCM or ECU plugs.

 

Sorry for the confusion. This is my assumption that the BCM is putting the car into some safety mode where it won’t allow the fuel pump to prime. Not sure if this is actually what’s happening or not.

In my build here the MINI ECU is removed, I have not touched the MINI BCM, I am using a KTuner End User board and a Hybrid racing universal Kswap harness. The KTuner ECU has been flashed with a basemap and everything on the Honda side seems to be working fine. Engine cranks just fine when the key is turned all the way but the fuel pump is not running at all. This along with all the other symptoms like the hazards and rad fan always on makes me think it’s a car protection mode or something but that’s just a guess on my part. You would probably know better than me on this.

 

Check your grounds. The Land Rover did some crazy $=!+ when I swapped the motor and it turned out to be a ground harness was left unplugged. By crazy I mean the wipers would run whenever I cranked it over just for one example.

Electrical gremlins are about the worst after a project like this so sorry to hear that. Giod luck and keep us posted.

 

I’ll check those as well. Thanks. Right now I have the battery disconnected to try and reset the BCM and see if it will fix some of the lighting issues. I have an idea of what might be wrong with the fuel system. I will keep you posted.

 

I know nothing about engine swaps but '04+ Mini engine mounts have a groundwire going from the the mount to the chassis leg. Since you have fabricated your own mount, is there a replacement somewhere?

 

What you are doing seems to be correct. The Mini will not stop the fuel pump from turning on. If you have the + wire correctly attached to the fuel pump then the Ktuner will handle the signal to turn on the pump. Go into Ktuner and verify that the immobilizer has not been enabled. Check all Mini grounds the BCM should not be freaking out or preventing the fuel pump from activating. White wire with blue line is the positive wire that needs to be sent to the fuel pump. If you cut that and feed 12V towards the pump the pump will turn on right away. Also data log to make sure you have a RPM signal since you changed out the crank sensors from k24 to k20.

 

It’s ALIVE!!!

I finally got the engine to start and idle after some fussing around and in the spirit of honesty on the internet I’ll tell you where I went wrong.

the problem was that I had made mistakes while ordering the parts for this build. The problem was electrical. You need 3 main electrical parts the Swap harness, the ECU and the Engine harness. The hybrid racing universal harness is wired to only work with 02-04 RSX wiring. I made a mistake in that I bought an 05 RAD Accord ECU and a 05-06 RSX engine harness.
To put it simply the 02-04 wiring is different than 05-06. Specifically the pinouts on the ECUs are almost entirely in different locations. To remedy this I had to get a different ECU and engine harness. A very expensive mistake so don’t be like me and learn from what I have gone through 😂

So now I am running a Hondata Kpro V4 for the build and sure enough I plug it in and the fuel pump primes and I hit the key and it starts.

i did run into some other hangups though. The idle air control valve was completely frozen and wasn’t moving so I cleaned that up and got it to spin freely.

then the engine would idle but very erratically. The rpm would slowly climb and often tried to idle at 2K rpm or better. I had to fuss with the idle a bit, tweaking the duty cycle of that IACV and also let the computer learn what its true idle was set at and how it needed to adjust to maintain it. Currently it idles at around 1K. Still a little high for my liking but there’s still some tuning that needs to be done.

but that’s a big win!! Especially after getting everything back together, turning the key and not getting anything in return the first time.

in other news. I picked up an S hood because I won’t be able to fit the base hood on the car and still get it to close. WARNING!!…. The worst color combo you’ve ever seen is incoming

picked it up from AllMag. Very surprise but there are no dents. Very faded but I shouldn’t need to fill anything in with bondo so I’m happy with that. I’ll get to painting this weekend.

that’s all for now with still more to come.
thanks everyone.