I cry for hytech

I got the hytech headers today ( good thing they were so gentle with them during shipping ) and we bolted them onto the motor. Holy crap they're gorgeous. Holy crap they will NEVER fit on this kit. Fuck. So if anybody wants some sweet headers for a B-series honda motor ... I've got one for sale. Sadly, I didn't get a photo of them on the motor - I wasn't thinking.

The rear shocks did come from mini spares, so I've got a glamour shot of those for you.

Say hello to tow vehicle

This is my new Toyota FJ Cruiser. It has a 5000 lb towing capacity, 239hp, 278tq, and a shit ton of foglights. I love foglights, I can't help it.



The interior is pretty sweet -- it's got no carpet, just plastic. And the fabric of the seats is water resistant, so you can practically hose it down when you throw up inside.

KAD WTF?

I'm going to start by reporting some awesome progress. Nick is doing a kick ass job rewiring the car with the new harness. He's making it super clean and well organized. He also finished wiring the bonnet section up, including a kick ass single connector which goes to the lights and horn that stay attached to the bonnet when it's removed. It's looking awesome. Then Alex welded the actual bonnet onto the front portion of the car that we cut off, so it's going to be one solid piece. He did it in a clever way that prevented any exterior paint from being affected by the weld, so I don't have to repaint the whole frigg'n car. Yays!

Also, Bill is working on wiring the steering column and dash. It's a serious team effort and they are making it so dreamy. Like Marty McFly. I needed a Hazard switch so I went to a VW dealer to get one. Ended up with a nice square switch from a '08 Jetta. Funtimes!

The rear brake kit went in looking beautiful, but we ran into some snags which I have posted at Mini Mania for help. The rear sway bar isn't fitting right, and we're not sure the new brake hose coupling will fuse well with the stock hose. And the lug nutz feel funny.

Test fit ... check!

A bunch of work has been done while I've been sitting behind a desk. The motor has been test fit - it needs a little adjustment: the intake manifold, despite being shortened, is hitting the firewall. And the alternator is also hitting the firewall.



After seeing the motor in and checking out the clearences, I'm guessing the Headers I bought are not going to fit, so those'll probably be up for sale on EBay as soon as they arrive.

I removed the pedal box so I could send it out to get it modified and turned into this:



And a fair amount of work has been done to rewire the car using modern electronics. Check it out, the fuse box is going to be on the dash. Bad ass!

More goodies...

Ordered some hytech replica 4-2-2-1 headers for the VTEC motor, figured that'd be a good place to start with performance upgrades.



Also the KAD stuff I ordered arrived; mostly I'm excited about the sweet rear disc brake conversion:



Also included in that order is a sway bar, adjustable rear camber plates, and handbrake quadrants (kinda silly).

In other news, I bought a tow vehicle, which I will post pictures of as soon as I take delivery - which should be tonight. WEEEE!

Today I just painted a lot.

Nothing mechanically exciting. I just spent all day preparing surfaces, grinding metal to smoothness, sanding shit down, priming, and applying POR-15. Not exactly thrilling, but the results are satisfying. Look how clean that shit looks! It's like a brand new car or something!






Also, I sold the original A+ motor today, and gave away a bunch of parts with it. It felt cathartic to see it all go, though a little sad. Good bye bacon!

No snoot!

A TON of progress has been made. Let's see:

Mini motor pulled.
Exhaust removed.
Mini subframe removed.
Front of the car cut off.
All crappy old Lucas electronics removed.
Everything removed from firewall, including brake and clutch hard lines.
Holes drilled for new subframe in floor pan.
New seats purchased.
Window net purchased.
Old seats removed.
Carpeting removed.
Heater and other useless interior things removed.
Remaining sound deadening removed (my first time with an angle grinder yay!).
New wiring harness purchased.

It's pretty exciting to see this all coming together. Or rather, I suppose I should say coming apart.

Unsettling findings, but good progress.

So I had Wednesday off work, so I went down to the shop and spent the day working on the car. Yay! We worked on that stupid bolt that was stuck:







And upon finally releasing it (it wouldn't break, it just slowly came undone with a ton of effort) found that it had indeed been stripped and also seemed to have been too long when installed, so it mushroomed at the end and was therefore REALLY tough to pull out:







With that done we pulled the motor out of the subframe, and removed the transmission to find that the clutch, pressure plate and flywheel were a rusted mess of toast:







So I bought a new clutch to go with the new flywheel. I think it was an ACT HDSS, but I don't remember at the moment. Basically at a standstill with the VTEC motor, I started disassembling the engine bay of the mini. Started with draining the oil and coolant, then removed the radiator, coil, intake manifold, carb, and a bunch of wires and crap. And that's about as far as I got. Overall a pretty productive day! yay!

Today I started doing stuff.

I dropped the car off at the garage today, and tried to get started with the conversion. There wasn't a whole lot I could do, because there wasn't yet space in the garage to bring in the Mini, so I started working on the VTEC kit. I have an Integra Type R Limited Slip, and an ACT Prolight flywheel which need installing. So after asking Bill how the hell I should get started, I removed the radiator and cooling hoses from the motor, and started dismantling the suspension. But there was one bolt holding a coilover on that I just couldn't undo. I'll figure that out later when the kit's not in the corner and we can use a long ass bar to bust that bolt off.

But I have to say, MAN it felt good to get dirty and start tooling on this thing.

Hello VTEC!

Today was a wonderful day. Kate came home from Japan! Plus, my motor and kit arrived at DSG! Holy bazangas! I got the call at noonish and left work. I couldn't help it.

The motor is a 100% JDM B16A. It's so pretty. The suspension setup is sick, and the brakes are bananas. Check the custom intake manifold and rad alternator bracket (yeah, I said rad). There's a whole bunch more images here.

Hooray!

Side note - Kate wrote: Adam's butt is hot

2 things

1:
I totally forgot to write that I took 1st place in my class at the Okemo I Hillclimb! What's up! I'm the champion of S2!

2:
That VTEC kit that I ordered should be shipping this week, and arriving next week. I am pretty frigg'n excited, I'm not going to lie.

Do you hear that?

The deep rumbling of the earth as it shakes. The glow of the heat as the surface cracks. The sky darkens. I can feel it in my very core.

The monster approaches.



210100 HONDA B16 VTEC ENGINE KIT
530000 MTB2 KIT
511200 COIL-OVER SHOCK KIT
220000 B2 ALUMINUM RADIATOR KIT
351100 BRAKE SETUP KIT
310000 SUPERBRAKE KIT
250100 CHIPPED ECU
250410 CONVERTED WIRING HARNESS
230210 LIMITED SLIP DIFFERENTIAL

The order has been placed. Money has changed hands. Assembly of the above has begun.

Oh and the NHIS track day footage!

Here's some in-car video of the track day at NHIS:

Okemo Hillclimb!

So I finally got to compete in the mini. Was it everything I ever wanted it to be? In a way. The car handles and drives absolutely brilliantly. The steering and feel is incredible. The power delivery is smooth. Although, when going up a hill ... there isn't really any power. This thing was downright SLOW going up the mountain. Through the curves though, it was a blast; I didn't ever really need to lift, except for the hairpins.

Here's an in car video of the poor thing struggling against gravity for 3 minutes and 15 seconds.

A dash of salt, a dash of pepper...

A dash of STACK!

All but the wheel speed sensor is connected to this thing of beauty. I wanted it mounted sorta high so I wouldn't have to take my eyes off the road too much. Can't wait to get into it and actually have a functioning tach and speedo.

I stopped by the garage before it was mounted, but after the sensors were installed, and turned the key to see the lights come on and the tach react to the gas pedal, and all sorts of voltage and oil warnings go off. It was pretty awesome, despite the fact that the cluster was dangling over the steering wheel. Good times.

Maybe some good news ...

I post this holding my breath, whatever that means.
After getting some advice from the guys at The Forums I went and checked the connections on the distributor, and made sure the choke wasn't stuck, and then turned on the car.

It started right up, and then idled beautifully. What's up!

I let her idle for a good long while just listening, waiting for something to go wrong. But it never did. So I went inside and put on some shoes and took her for a spin.

She drives amazingly well. No more hesitation in 2nd gear WOT. If this thing feels like it did today when I go to the track I'll be thrilled. I have to say, it's funny to have a car with such variable driving characteristics. Fickle old thing.

Another point of virtue, which I'm not sure if I should point out or not, is that it was over 90 degrees today. I drove around the block like 4 times, at pretty good revs and the temp. needle didn't even go north of NORMAL until I stopped and parked in the driveway, and then it just barely went up.

I'm thinking the coolant system flush and descaling I did made a difference and it's now working as it should.

Either that or I just didn't drive it long enough to overheat. We'll see.

Double you tee eff.

Have you ever seen that movie, "the money pit"? This little car I think is very much like the mansion in that movie -- including all the over the top humorous parts where you're like "that would never happen!"

I got the car back from the garage yesterday, where it had been determined that I'm a big idiot and that the problem I was experiencing where the car wouldn't start was because two wires fell off the coil. In my defense, there are 3 wires coming off the coil on one side and two on the other side, and two from the 3 wire side had fallen off and only if I had been particularly observant previously would I have known that those wires belonged there. Or if I knew a little bit more about "stuff." But anyway, the car was fixed yesterday.

Then I brought it to get inspected today after a joyous drive to work. It passed with flying colors. ( "Do all your lights work?" -- "Yes" -- "Here's a sticker." )

On the way out of the inspection joint the thing started idling REALLY rough and then it just died. And wouldn't start again.

Realized it was flooded with gas, let it sit, eventually it started. But it's driving like SHIT and if I sit for too long at a light or something it dies, and then requires a couple minutes of sitting to start up again.

Seriously -- can I have the car in good driving condition for more than a day before something goes wrong again? Please?

VTEC, take me away!!

Am I ever going to drive this stupid thing?

So yesterday morning after feeling great about completing my cooling system flush / backflush / descaling / etc. I was excited to git 'er goin' and see if it had any effect on the cooling issues the car was having on hot days, and would presumably have during track days / hillclimbs.

And then it wouldn't start. Rarararararararararara said the starter motor.

What the crap.

So I don't know what's wrong with it, I'm trying to figure it out, but I'm missing the hillclimb and I'm pissed.

I need to save some dollars and get a nice, reliable honda conversion kit, or sell the car and get something that's not going to let me down when I need it the most.

Or just learn how to fix old british cars, I guess would be another good alternative.

Prep for the Hillclimb

Let's see, what have we been up to ...
Last night Tristan and I drained the coolant and flushed the system and put in some descaler which I'm going to drain again tonight and clean out and replace with water and coolant and water wetter. Although it might all drain by itself because it looks like we didn't secure the bottom hose to the radiator well enough because it drips for quite a bit after driving. Awesome.

On a brighter note, the car had some electrical siezure action earlier this morning; driving along Storrow Drive and it just stopped. It was in gear and I didn't have the reaction time or presence of mind to put in the clutch that quickly because it bucked like crazy and then just died, but then there was no power anywhere on the car (except the horn! WTF!). So I sat there with cars whizzing by fiddling under the hood with connections, and eventually it just started again. God I love electrical Gremlins.

So now I have no faith in the car's reliability so I ordered an "Auto Transporter" from UHaul for the weekend, and Paul is going to be a dear and help me tow the car up and back with his F150. Sweet Cuppin' Cakes! We'll see how this goes.

PS - Richened the mixture in the Carb a bit and now the car's driving a bit better. Yay!

New Mini Photos

This is totally a photo post:

Yarrowsport Primer

I've never really been to a get together before, or a "GTG" as they call them in hip mechanonerd spheres. Some guys from work were going to this VW / Audi one, so I figured I'd bring the green monster and see what there is to see. There were some sweet rides, and I was too awed by most of them to get photos of 'em, but I took a couple snaps. Check 'em out in the media section. PS - on the way home from the "Primer" I drove like an idiot with an STi and a G35 and it felt good to feel sporty and behave like a jackass in public. It wasn't any dangerous driving though (disclaimer).

On another note, I totally forgot to post that I bought new Harnesses and installed them yesterday. I drove up to HMS Motorsport and bought 'em and brought 'em home and ripped out the old crappy ones and installed the new lovely 4 point modern style ones. They rock. It makes such a huge difference to be able to adjust your harnesses on the fly. I know, it seems like something one should expect from something as important as a seat belt. But neither of the harnesses installed on the blue mini or on the green one were any good. So now I'm comfy and strappable like you want me.

Hello mister fixit.

So the bulk of the work on the green monster has been done by the guys at DSG. Today, however, after being inspired by the bout of shit that got done when Tristan was here, I rolled up my sleeves and dismantled the passenger side door. The forecast called for rain, but the driveway was sunny and gorgeous, and it was a perfect day to install the new window holder thingies. Which I did. Sweet! I still don't know if I did it well enough, I imagine they should be tighter than they are, but we'll see. They haven't rattled out yet. I'm hoping that the pressure of gravity and repeated rolling up and down will actually press them in to the proper tightness. I've left the inside skin of the door off temporarily so I can gain instant access just in case something goes awry.

I bought some doohickeys and gunk to put in the cooling system to clean it out. Prestone branded everything. I was going to do that today but then the rain started. Lame. Maybe tomorrow will be less wet.

But yay for doing it myself!

A little more work to do.

So I ordered a car cover that doesn't fit. I'd be really annoyed by this, but I'm actually a little proud -- the reason it doesn't fit is that the cover is for a typical 1971 Morris 1000, but mine has had its stance widened by a couple inches ... bad ass! Frustrating though, so we'll see if the car cover company hooks me up with an alteration or replacement or something.


In other news, my passenger side window fell out of the thingies that hold it and carry it up and down with the winding mechanism. I pulled them out and they are rusted to hell. So I ordered new ones and will try to install them this weekend, though it might be raining all weekend.

Also, Tristan and I adjusted the seating position of the driver's seat by pulling out spacers and buying longer bolts and screwing. And we spend hours trying to figure out how to drain the cooling system only to find later that my motor never had the drain plug bored ( no wonder we couldn't find it! ), so I'll just have to
disconnect the hoses and let it rain.

I'm going to ask the MIT solar powered racing team to put one of those crazy bendie joints in my steering column so I can make the wheel angle less like a bus, and more like NASCAR!@!!111!!eleven I just want to say the car has SOMEthing to do with MIT racing because that's bad ass and nerdy at the same time.

Day 1 with the daily driven Green Monster

Last night Kate and I fetched little green from the garage and it spent its first night in our parking lot in Cambridge outside the house. It looked cute next to John's BMW.

This morning I stuck the EZPass in there, and applied the AAA sticker to the rear bumper (gotta have frigg'n AAA with this thing) and affixed some Magic Robots stickers to the windows and body. Why the fuck not. I need some DSG stickers and then a giant number sticker and then I should be good. I usually hate stickers and crap, but for some reason I feel like this car is so over the top that trying to keep it mellow is like trying to stick a cork in a Metallica concert. Maybe not that extreme but whatever. It's a race car. How many cupholders does it have? None.

The car drives wonderfully. It needs some serious tuning--it lags quite a bit in 2nd and 3rd gear. The gearbox is solid as hell though, and sounds absolutely fierce. Handles like a dream, of course, although going over the teeniest of bumps sends it into the stratosphere. BOING!

I got a thumbs up from a guy driving a Porsche Carrera in the Starbuck's parking lot, and another from a guy in a gorgeous Jag E-Type. Hello!

Now it's sitting cheerily in the office parking lot. Must sign up for track days. Hillclimbs. Anything.

Incoming!

Just bought a STACK ST8130 Instrument cluster. I've always thought the dash in the mini sucked, and it sucked even more when most of the guages didn't even work. So upgrading to 21st century tech for the display seemed like an awesome idea. I can't wait to install it!

Side Note

So, I've been thinking about this for quite some time. If money was no object, what would be my dream car. I'm not going to say the Bugatti Veyron, though that would be pretty sweet. Perhaps something in the Lotus family?

How about a delorean, reskinned in Titanium, with a lightened chassis, with a custom AWD system (perhaps from a Skyline?) driven by like ... 4 souped up harley davidson motors. And then the interior would be something like that of the Jaguar F-Type Concept. I think the whole thing would cost at least 100k, for all the custom work. Plus Sheet Titanium can't be cheap. Okay, it'd probably be more than that then. But seriously; what's more original than an AWD Delorean driven by Harley motors?!

I think that would be sweet.

The bits are arriving.

So I spent thousands of dollars on parts a couple months ago ... it was a strangely surreal experience, shelling out over 2k for a gearbox that MiniSport would build in england and ship over. And then almost another 2k on a rollcage that would magically appear from overseas in a similar fashion. After a couple delays, I forgot about the money I spent and forgot about the parts I'd bought. But now, things are different. The cage appeared at DSG earlier this week, and I'm excited to tell you that there are a TON OF TUBES.
And checking my tracking number for "Parcelforce" (how british is that!) I see that my gearbox has indeed been shipped, and is going through customs in NYC. I'm fucking pumped! The bits come together! And by the time it's warm enough to drive her, she'll be back together and better than ever. Pumped.

News from the front

2 things:

1) Ordered a rollcage for the Mini this morning. Historic T45 cage from Custom Cages. It's lighter and stronger than ... the other stainless they use, so that's awesome. I figure safety's important, especially in such a teeny, vulnerable car, so I'll spend money on it. It's a pretty sweet cage; way better than that safety devices thang I had in the other car.

b) Updated to Blogger 2.0 or whatever, so if you see any problems, blame Google. And tell me so I can fix it: adam ( @ ) magicrobots ( dot ) com. Thanks!