yeah I’m going r56 trailing arms with power flex bushings and Alta rear arms. I also got a used subframe and it arrived yesterday in all its rust free goodness lol

 

Extremely nice build you got! I may have missed this but what kind of cylinder head are you rocking on your motor? In the market to rebuild my whole motor for a turbo build and not sure what to do for my cylinder head. Love the red and your extremely lucky in finding a slicktop! Been looking for 1st gen slicktop for the longest now and it seems almost impossible.

 

Thank you! If I'm being honest, I had not planned to buy a mini as a track car but it popped up on FB marketplace and since my brother owned it previously, I impulse bought it and decided it would be the next track toy. It's been a fun build so far but frustrating waiting for final pieces to come in so I can start reassembling it and get it going.

Right now I just had the stock head refreshed. New seals and guides, cleaning carbon build up out, 3 angle valve grind, truing up the surface, etc... A Thumper TPR-2 head is in my future at some point. Maybe this year or when I put the turbo on. For now the stock head is fine for the mods on the car.


As an aside for something I never updated here in the thread from a while ago, contrary to what I was told when I bought the car, it does not have a 17% pulley and 2% under drive. It had a 0% under drive and a 15% pulley. I did order a 17% Alta pulley to try experiment with since I have a ported SC, ported SC hat and ported intake manifold going on the car. Will see how the 17% affects IATs with the ported components and if they help keep them in a reasonable range. If not, I'll stick with the 15%. A WMW damper will be going on the car to replace the lightweight crank pulley as well.

 

TPR2 seems like the go to recently for many cooper owners. Seems like thats what I will do. Good luck with your project man! Can't wait to see how it turns out.

 

New goodies showed up. Found Alta adjustable rear control arms for $205 for a pair and snagged 2 sets.

 

Got my Quaife LSD installed yesterday but forgot to take pics of the install. It was really straightforward. New carrier bearings as well.

Waiting on rubber boots for the spherical rear control arms and a couple bolts and then I can assemble the rear end back together and get it on the ground.

 

R56 arms are in along with new PowerFlex black bushings, Alta rear control arms, and rubber boots for the spherical joints. New hardware throughout.

Brake calipers are all on and loaded with new Carbotech XP10/XP8 pads. New Ebrake cables going in soon. New SS rear lines to replace the rubber hoses. Front already has SS lines.

PS is all plumbed with new hoses.

Transmission has the new LSD installed, new axle seals, bushings and guide sleeve.

All 3 vibratechnics mounts are ready to go on once the engine is buttoned up and mounted to the trans.

I also started assembling the engine on the stand. New everything going on the engine. Timing kit, oil pump, Bosch 550cc injectors, belt drive items, water pump, sensors, All accessories and bits are on but I'm waiting on some new orings/sensors and such before I can get it on the hoist and put the RMS and SMF and clutch/trans back on. SC serviced, ported intake manifold and SC hat installed. New OutMotoring oil filter housing valve installed. Waiting on some ultra black sealant before I can put in the Sneed4Speed windage tray and RMW baffled oil pickup. That will officially seal up the engine.

I also ordered a XForce 4-2-1 header that showed up the other day. Need to weld the flange to the old exhaust piping. Also ordered new exhaust hangers for the center section.

Still a lot of work to do but getting there little by little.

 

Engine is back in the car with the spiffy new Vibratechnics Race mounts.

Had a total airhead moment and for some reason ordered R50 shifter cables so those came out today and ordered the correct facelift r53 cables.

Waiting on a couple cooling system fittings then that will get buttoned up and then wiring harness will be put in and fluids filled up. Working with Adrian on a base tune for the 550cc injectors and then a real tune once the motor is broken in.

Can't wait to drive this thing with all the new goodies. After all this work, it's almost a brand new car as virtually everything has been replaced/upgraded.

 

Looks like a great Mini. I have a 500+ HP Porsche Cayman GT4, and I love the Mini just as much on the track. See my thread:

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...cw-thread.html

 

Thanks! Coming from much higher horsepower cars in the past and motorcycle track days for the past several years, this will be by far be the slowest car/vehicle I've taken on track but should be a ton of fun! I'm hoping it'll be quite the terrorizer on the track to the higher horsepower cars. My good friend just picked up a 987 Cayman S last year and we'll be doing some trackdays at VIR and other nearby tracks here once I get it together.

I'll check out your thread.

 

Seems like it’s getting close but continuously finding one more thing, one more thing, one more thing.

Pulled the oil cooler to replace seals and found the coolant side was plugged. Given that and the coolant passages on the block when I tore it down, I assume this engine drank at least one bottle of stop leak or head gasket in a bottle or something.

Rather than messing with it I went ahead and got a remote oil cooler setup with an improved racing thermostat. Waiting on it to arrive as well as a couple cooling system clamps, pipes, etc before moving forward. I also ordered some 3D printed brake ducts for the front bumper from RSP Engineering which look promising.

I did get the new facelift shifter cables installed and the coolerworx dialed in. Feels great!

lastly I replaced the coil plug which was broken when I bought the car. Bought a new plug online and got it installed.

 

Big day today. Front end is on the car!

Getting close to road worthy which is exciting. It's taken a lot longer than planned with the birth of my first child in the mix but I'm thrilled to finally be getting close to driving this thing. Should be significantly different yet improved from previously.

To do list:
1. Locate oil cooler and thermostat and then measure and order AN lines and fittings
2. Cut and weld X-Force header joint to existing exhaust
3. Continue working with Adrian to get a base tune for start up
4. Install the last few items like passenger axle, intercooler, final screws on the front end
5. Drain old gas
6. Put all new fluids in the car
7. START UP! Break in engine
8. Alignment and change over the new used set of 16x8 buddyclub P1 wheels

 

Big update!

First startup happened yesterday! Adrian gave me a base tune scaled for my 550cc injectors and the car fired up. Did some ring seating and then did some coding. Few items on the to-do list before I can really drive it.

When I bought the car the abs, airbag, seatbelt, tpms, brake pad lights were all on. Did some coding in ncsexpert and they are now all off which makes me happy.

Oil cooler lines were plumbed and primed and made a mount for the thermostat.

Items before I can drive it are:

- finish burping cooling system
- bleed brakes
- rough alignment to get it to the alignment shop
- adjust coolerworx shifter as currently I can’t reach reverse. I read that moving the neutral point to the right towards the passenger side can help prevent the cables from colliding when trying to reach reverse
- test wheel speed sensors to make sure they all are working and providing data. Before the teardown, my speedo didn’t work with multiple codes for wheel speed sensors

I'm getting a 5E16 code for ABS-DSC: CAN connection to instrument cluster which I believe is causing the intermittent speedo and abs lights. Need to dig deeper into this to see what can fix it.


Will do a test at a local autox or two prior to taking it to the track.

 

I adjusted the neutral position on my coolerworx shifter more towards the right side and now the cables do not collide and I can reach the reverse gate. One more item off the list!

 

Lookin' good! Great build! Hope you can make it to VIR for Tarheel BMW's Sept. DE. I'm shaking down GP1 #0092 purchased a couple of months ago. Need to install RMW header and Milltek, then refresh tune.

 

Took the car around the block today. Alignment is scheduled for Tuesday of next week so I'll be able to drive it more after that. The shop is also going to swap a full set of Buddyclub P1 wheels onto the car (Same as on the front currently) so the car will have a matching set of wheels. Debating painting them but TBD. I need to sell my 2 other partial sets of wheels. 3x Advan RG1 and 3x SSR Integral A2 wheels as I won't be using them.

Been diagnosing a wheel speed sensor fault. Left rear side showed a fault in INPA. I swapped it to the right and now the left sensor reads data but the right doesn't. Bad sensor, so I replace it with a new Delphi sensor which also isn't reading any data. I'm assuming it's a bad sensor so going to order an OEM mini sensor and try again. That should cure my ABS/TCS lights being on after driving 40 yards or so. At least my speedo is working now!

 

Well alignment didn't go well. Turns out one of the R56 arms I bought was tweaked making the car have +1* toe in the rear driver side. Got a new arm free of charge and installed it yesterday and seems much better. During a trip around the block, I realized that my OPG is leaking which is frustrating since I put ultra black on both sides of the gasket. Will pull the pan back off to investigate and make sure the pan is flat. If not, I have a spare I'll put on. I also noted my passenger side axle seal is leaking. I thought I had knicked it when I was installing the driveshaft and clearly I was right. I guess when I do this much work, something will need to be addressed twice lol. I have another seal here that will go in. I'm heading out on a 2 week trip to Colorado next week with my old Land Cruiser so these projects get put on hold until I get back.

I signed up for a track day in September so car will need to be ready by then and hopefully I can find an autocross to do before then to shake the car down.

 

Periodically updating this for those who care to follow.

New rear trailing arm is in and car was aligned yesterday and got its track inspection done with no issues. Also swapped the two rear Advan RG1 wheels out to Buddyclub wheels to match the front so car has matching wheels on it for the first time in a long time.

Prepping the car for the first 2-day track event in September. I'm getting a persistent ABS/ASC light that pops up when the speedo drops to 0 after about 50yds of driving. Pulled data in INPA to read wheel speed sensors and although the car is telling me it's a left rear fault, the right rear sensor is reading 2-5x the speed of the other 3 wheels. I've replaced sensors with Bosch and that didn't work so I ordered some new OEM sensors to see if that fixes it.

I also had to knock the carrier bearing on the passenger drive shaft outward about 3/8" to get the axle to seat all the way into the transmission since it was leaking past the output seal even after replacing it. When I inspected the car upon purchase there was a leak gathering at the bottom of the trans and this was it. I expect this carrier bearing was misaligned when it was put in the car years and years ago so glad to have that sorted. I also have a leak from the passenger rear corner of the oil pan. Replaced the OPG thinking this was the problem but it turns out it's leaking from the oil pump mating surface...oh joy...It's a very slow leak so I'll address that later since that's not easy to do. Seems like my anaerobic sealant used on the oil pump either failed, wasn't thick enough, or got spread out upon installation leading to a leak passage.

Car runs great and no weird sounds from the new engine. Car is on a base tune from Adrian right now until I find time to get my AEM Wideband installed so we can tune the car in. Not likely I'll get to this before the track day. Bedded in the brakes the other day and they feel good. Will do one more bleed on them before the track event. Excited to get this thing on track and see how it feels!

 

In other news, my dad bought a 2003 MCS JCW new back in 03 that he drove to 140k miles or so and sold back around 2010 and that kind of brought my eye to Mini's causing me to pick this car up on a whim last year since I had always wanted one to toy with.

Well come to find out that a couple weeks ago my dad bought a 2006 MCS JCW in Purple Haze/Cordoba with 56k miles and all the goodies like aero pack, HK sound, LSD, Chrono, etc. I'm going to see it this weekend for the first time and do some NCSExpert coding for him for some custom touches he wants done. He's excited to have another R53 to toy with.

Added bonus - the car came with a Wilwood BBK that was never installed and Dad isn't going to use it so he offered it to me. Will take a look at it when I'm there but gotta love free parts!

 

Success! Replacing the rear wheel speed sensors with OEM fixed my issue and speedo/odo/trip all work now which is nice. Brake light is intermittenly coming on and off likely due to a bad switch on the ebrake handle.

Next up is installing the wideband so I can finish tuning with Adrian. Trying to figure out placement on my xforce header now. Hoping to get the car tuned prior to the track day in a couple weeks but we'll see.

Car is running strong! Took it for a drive today and really happy with it and the progress that's been made. I also got my Rennline skid plate installed which is a nice to have on track.

Dad's new mini is really nice. I feel like the JCW exhaust on it is a lot quieter than the one he had on his 2003 R53 JCW but that could be me misremembering from all those years ago. The Wilwood kit he has came home with me. It doesn't have any rotors but has the hats. I'll dig into that after the trackday.

 

Finished my first track weekend with Tarheel BMW CCA. This was the first event with BMW CCA and my first event with the car, any FWD car, and my first car track day. I've been doing motorcycle TD's for the past while but this was the first one in a car. We did VIR Full track and it was a blast. Car had some teething issues that I was addressing throughout the day and eventually broke a passenger CV coming down the back straight with caused all sorts of problems during my last session. Limped it to the pit, did some diagnosing as we didn't know it was the cv at the time. Could've sworn it was at first a flat tire, then maybe a cracked rotor, then the steering seized up in pit lane. Let it cool and all symptoms went away except a clicking in the front end so it was possibly seizing up when it got hot and not functioning as a CV anymore... I trailered it home and grabbed whatever I could find locally to replace it which turned out to be a Autozone duralast gold axle, 34 spline. Got it installed and back up to VIR the next morning after missing first session.

I started in D group as my first track day and was bumped after the 2nd session. C group was less crowded which was nice but still had fun working my way through the group. The car is having power delivery issues. It feels sluggish and I was only able to muster 113-114mph on the back straight whereas other similarly modded mini's are reaching 125-135. I need to work with Adrian to figure that out or see if it's something on my end... Regardless, I was able to put down a 2.22 timed lap and ~2.20 in the later session after making some improvements. If I can get the power delivery fixed and get some more seat time, I'm confident I can improve further. My instructor was fantastic and I learned a ton. Race line in a car is different than a bike so I was having to ignore my subconscious mental bike race line and focus on the car race line. Car felt great on track and I'm excited to get more seat time and further push the car.

Couple notes on the car for my own reference while it's fresh in my mind:

- Coolerworx is great, really happy with how it feels and the location.
- Suspension was set neutral and rear bar was in the middle setting. I wish the car would rotate a little more off throttle but I need to read up on suspension adjustments to make this happen.
- Some more front camber would be good.
- Pressures were set at 35psi hot front and 38psi hot rear. Will experiment more with pressures at future events.
- Need to change to the factory thermostat. Car isn't getting hot enough with the Mishimoto 180* thermostat. Car didn't get over 182 on track. Plugs had lots of black ash.
- Will order some driveshaft spacers from Orranje
- Brake ducts seemed to be working well. As I pushed braking zones throughout the event, I never got any fade. Granted, VIR full track isn't very brake demanding, lots of cooldown time.
- Need to address lack of power. Tune? Vacuum leak on my end? No codes.
- Car has lots of oily residue on rear bumper/hatch after the event. Burning oil maybe or way too rich. Tips are very very black.
- Need a catch can badly...lots of oil in intake tract after the first day.
- Rear hubs have 1mm or less play side to side on both sides equally. Bolts are torqued and studs are torqued. Not sure why this is...unlikely they both failed at the same time.

 

2:22 is a great time, especially for your first time. I believe I've had a 2:17, but do not have video of it. I watched a 2:23 lap, and my max speed on back straight was ~115 mph. I have a JCW. If other minis are getting 135 mph, they have had serious mods done IMO. Do you know your horsepower? How was your heel-toe? What tires are you using?

I have not had black tips. I believe mine are generally white, but it has been a while. The tips in my GT4 were white until I got an engine upgrade from 3.8L to 4.5L, and now they are brown, but the engine is running perfectly. The 4.5L uses 98 octane though, and I was using regular 93 pump gas previously.

Great work getting the car back together too!

 

Thanks! Had a blast. Back of the car was covered in oily substance.

heel toe at track pace I would say is decent. Got a lot better throughout the event. Don’t know my HP but going to have Adrian look over some logs and see if there’s anything off. @NC TRACKRAT and another local mini guy (both instructors) said they were around 130 into roller coaster. My exit from oak tree was good too.

 

Car is coming back apart for some changes before the next track day so will likely be done for the season as I really need to address these issues. Upgrading PCV system to a dual can standalone system, going to address IAT problems which is causing timing to be pulled significantly up top and will convert to an EWP. Will be back next season!

 

I like how the horizontal ones are white and the vertical ones are blue.