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