Friday 4 May 2018

A change of performance

I took the car off for another tune in the hope that I would be able to close the book on the engine for a while as I have had enough

Here is a photo of the build with the new charge cooler on top and at the front


On the way to the dyno
The supercharged engine made 275whp and was defiantly more derivable, however a few days later I needed to move the car and with a cold engine there was still an idle issue which made me confirm that I have had enough of throwing money at the blower conversion and I was going to go down a simple route of adding a turbo


Car strapped down to the dyno and the main issue being that the IAT would rise to 120 degrees C in less than 10 seconds of hard boost but would drop down as quickly when lifted off so this was the main issue


 With the car back I set about removing the blower and all the parts that went with it. As I have decided to put a turbo on and run with it.
I decided that I would use one of my R50s I have laying about for parts so went and grabbed the coolant pump, alternator, hoses and front panel.
The blower was removed, battery taken off and relocated the battery back to the boot as I had relocated it to the engine bay. Further more I also took the crash panel from the cooper as I had cut the last one up to accept the radiator and I wanted this one to take the intercooler cut out


New radiator in place, crash beam and radiator support and fan. I am aware that the cooper front panel is different to the S I plan to trim it down a little in the future


I have been advised that the 2.5" exhaust should be changer out to a 3" so I set about building a new exhaust with a 200 cell cat


I machined a plate up to accept the throttle on the inlet manifold and welded it on to the original manifold


New front mount roughly in place with the new oil cooler. From there the power steering tank and coolant tank were relocated to allow Ronr for the manifold and down pipe


With all the old supercharger equipment removed the car was then ready for the turbo system.
I've decided to go with a side winder style turbo setup commonly used on Honda's and having seen it on a few minis I thought I like what's been done and it's so simple.



Still got a lot of work to do but shouldn't take too long and then once the manifolds done I've still got to do the oil lines and return