Mini Cooper S r56 build - Shed to hero?

[bnbrndn]

I'm a long long time lurker of this forum and recently inspired by Drgoatboys Clubman build I decided it was time to start a thread on my own project. Whilst this project is about a Mini Cooper S, it actually starts with an e36, this one specifically:



A 318is I bought over lockdown, which got out of hand very quickly and is now in a million pieces being restored - I will at some point probably start a project thread for this car but thats a good day or two's worth of work sorting all the images etc. There is currently a thread for it on Detailing world, however its very out of date and I'm not a massive fan of the updated forum over there..

The Mini comes into this in the form of my "cheap reliable" daily. I saw a very smart, well specced R56 on Dream car giveaways, listened to the video of it and thought it sounded insane. Naturally, I didn't win the car so I was straight onto Facebook marketplace. I found one local to me, that was too cheap to miss the opportunity on. It was up for £1550, if memory serves me right, I ended up paying a grand.







Hardly a show room model, eagle eyed will spot mismatched headlights and the interesting state of the bonnet. I was told one of the Xenon headlights gave up and the old boy who was selling it ordered the wrong headlight to replace it. I was also told, the heatshield on the turbo was removed which ruined the paint on the bonnet.

As mentioned, I got this for shed money and my maths was I could break it for £ if all went wrong. So I quickly insured it, got it booked in for an MOT so I could get it the 3 miles home and set off. The drive home wasn't too bad, there was some weird rubbing noises and the brake pedal was terrible but I assumed it just needed bleeding. Anyway, as I pulled into my estate the brake pedal went to the floor and I lost all braking. Thankfully I managed to handbrake/engine brake the final few hundred yards. Great.

Next day, I jacked the car up to try and figure out what went wrong - it didn't take me too long..



At a guess, the brake flexis have been replaced without removing the caliper meaning they were twisted and rubbing on the inside of the wheel.

However, this did lead me to discover the AP coilovers which I'm assuming the seller didn't realise the car had:



Decided to take advantage of the ECP sale and give it a quick service, I'd been told it had recently had a service, however this says otherwise..



But to be fair the filter looked brand new:



Overall, I was pleased for the £1000 I paid. It was an ok level of kit having the Chilli pack and was perfect for the minimal commuting I did. I thought at that time I might even be able to get it track ready reasonably cheaply being that it had a set of mid range coilovers on it.

[bnbrndn]

After finding the brake hose had split I decided to not risk it and give the brakes a bit of a check over and replace all the hoses with braided lines. Upon inspection of one of the calipers I found this:



Can you spot it yet?



How about now?



That inside pad is the wrong way round. I've heard of this before and seen it a few times on facebook posts etc, but never seen it online. Whilst it was pretty concerning for me, it was also pretty concerning because I know the old boy I bought it off also works on his own car!

Also found one of the brake caliper bolts was rounded, having had these exact same battles before with the e36 bolts I had all the tools ready to go, so a bit of fire and it was out. Also, I had previously replaced a few caliper bolts on the e36 with new items. I remember at the time of ordering them it said they also fit a mini, so when I saw these ones were rounded I had to check if the spares I had were the same..



Which they were! so thats a slight win! With the caliper bolts off I managed to wiggle the caliper off and remove the ruined brake line, heres it next to its non-leaking replacement:



Unfortunately after this I was called away, so didn't get chance to fit the rest. However I will now be ordering MTEC disks and potentially EBC pads for it. I will obviously be going over the car with a fine tooth comb having found that mistake with the brakes.

I also text the bloke I bought it off just to give him a heads up more than anything, fingers crossed his brakes are in the right way round and this was just a one off mistake!

[bnbrndn]

First thing on the list for me, was bulbs and lights etc. I'm really fussy with lights, I would never put bright LED outside lights on the e36 as its not period correct for me. But the Mini is at the age where a good set of LED bulbs outside can modernize it a lot I think. So, numberplate lights before:



pretty passed it as you can see:



To be replaced with:





Much better. Another purchase, was an Ultragauge. I always wanted one of these on my Fiesta ST but never got round to buying one. But with the Mini's lack of important dials such as engine temperature etc I decided I needed one.



No real photos of installation, as it took 2 minutes to feed the cable down behind the steering wheel and plug it into the OBD port. I will no doubt buy a proper mount for this at some point as it falls off of the sticky one provided. Really impressed with it though, it has loads of features and can be swapped around cars. Also gives me the ability to clear fault codes etc.

Onto those missmatched headlights



When I bought it, I asked the old boy about it, he said the headlight had packed up so he bought a replacement and hadn't realised he bought the wrong one. He did however include the "broken" one. After seeing his installation of the brakes I decided to find out how broken the headlight actually was..



turns out it wasn't broken..

However, I found this tucked away behind the bumper..



this looks like the line for the headlight washer jets. So I will be sorting this at some point.

Next onto the passengers side brake line. I made a slight **** up on this, whilst being lazy and not finding my brake pipe spanner I managed to do this..



Pretty annoying, so ended up fitting a new joint all together:



Currently waiting on the little clips that secure that joint however that is all of the brake lines on. (Didn't take any photos of the rear as it began to get really cold)

Still got a small pile of parts to fit, I will also be swapping out the cam cover next as the PCV valve seems to be blocked. The ultragauge is already earning its worth by giving me an error code which points to that!

[bnbrndn]

Initially, I wasn't planning on getting carried away with the mini at all. However, the very few times I managed to drive it in anger it was an incredibly fun little car. Also, quite good on fuel, reasonably comfy for longer journeys and cheap to modify.

So, I sold the wheels it came on. They were actually of an R53 and whilst fitted absolutely no problem, they didn't fill the arches enough for me.



Gave it a quick wash, mostly underneath. Took the time to snowfoam all the arches and underneath etc:



I've not heard too much about these rusting, it seems to be the subframes that rust but still wanted to give it a good clean underneath. Also had the windscreen replaced as the original had a slight crack which would of been an MOT failure:



Now, the replacement wheels:



A set of Rota Recces, I got them very cheap as they were in desperate need of a refurb and had no tyres. Now refurbed in a bronze colour with a set of Toyo Proxes on them. Its very hard to do the colour justice, but in the right light they do really pop:



Got them fitted to the car, its a little too low for me here and does scrub slightly. I intended on sorting this out however the car had other ideas. More on that shortly.



I was still under the impression the car would survive the winter at this point, so was happily buying parts for it. Picked up a JCW rear bumper and GP diffuser for a bargain:



I bought this car with the intention of having a cheap daily to run to the gym and back in. But over the winter I couldn't drag myself out into the cold to sort the brakes out. However with the recent burst of warm weather I got everything sorted and fired it through the MOT, no advisories! I ran round in the car for a few days (literally) and all seemed fine. I've had a new job recently, which means once every 2 weeks I need to go up to the Lake District. This journey is roughly 2.5 hours from where I live, so I wanted to have some confidence in the Mini!

Anyway, night before I was due to drive up in the Mini for the first time I nipped out to collect someting roughly 10 miles from where I live. Anyway, the car started misfiring near my destination and smoking quite badly..

managed to limp it to a friends garage:



Quick compression test;

• ******

Cylinder 4 was low on compression. The turbo had also gone. I had a few days to think and decide what I was going to do.

[bnbrndn]

I decided to do a "cheap" build on the car to get it back running. My man maths took over, the car owed me next to nothing and I have the ability to get hold of car parts at trade due to a business I'm involved in. My plan was, build it back up and I could probably sell it and break even or maybe make a bit of profit. Mini Cooper S's do seem to be holding value/increasing in value if anything. Those such thoughts have since vanished.

We stripped the engine;







I'm still quite impressed to this day. I've never blown an engine up before, but this one.. Diagnosis was essentially the oil pump chain snapped jamming the oil pump and starving the engine of oil. It in the process took out the chain guides which can be found in the oil pick up.

I promptly got carried away:











At around this point, I also bought a house and moved roles again to a fully remote role. So this made some sort of sense to me. As a result of moving house, I sorted a place to store the e36 and work on the Mini:

[bnbrndn]

As mentioned, I got fairly carried away. I'm very much a believer of if you're going to do something do it once and do it properly. Its also around this point things get a bit blurry as I cant remember what order some things happened.

Replacement oil and water pump. Water pumps don't seem to be a weak point on N14's but as it was apart I thought it made sense



The block was scored fairly badly, probably as a result of the low oil pressure. Standard bore on these is 77mm, however due to the bore damage I bought 77.5mm pistons. Meaning the bore needed to be slightly bored/rehoned etc. Came back as a bit of a work of art:



Hopefully won't ever have to see these again.





Onto the head:



Initially, I didn't plan on doing anything major to the head. However we found out a valve was bent. So its since had;

New valve guides
New lifters
Supertech Valves/Springs
Skimmed and pressure tested

We also found a fair bit of damage to the cams, again probably from low oil pressure/mileage



I initially looked at an upgrade, but with schrick camshafts being around a grand and not offering really any notable performance increase I decided to source a set of OEM shafts.

Still sourcing a few bits for the engine to be complete. Mostly turbo, I've gone back and forth on this a million times and spoke to various people. A garret or something along them lines would probably be the "sensible" route due to the spec of the engine. But it would involve a custome exhaust manifold and various other bits. It would then bring fueling into question. Also my goal for this car isn't ridiculous numbers. So a hybrid of some form is the best bet. The used market for turbos is a dangerous place, I've seen several people buy second hand JCW turbos etc which are promised to be in good working order only for them to be leaking/scrap. So that ruled that out. My options are a Neo brothers JCW turbo, which would see roughly 300bhp. Or a Mamba turbo which would see 300+. I'm leaning towards the mamba as I've since found out the car that made me want a Mini in the first place was running a Mamba turbo.

As mentioned, this is not an out and out numbers car, the engine is probably good for big numbers. However I would be happy with a reliable 300bhp. In something as small and lightweight as the Mini it will be more than enough. I also plan on using this as on track so I don't fancy leaving 11's out of every corner.

[ingenieur]

bnbrndn said:

First thing on the list for me, was bulbs and lights etc. I'm really fussy with lights, I would never put bright LED outside lights on the e36 as its not period correct for me. But the Mini is at the age where a good set of LED bulbs outside can modernize it a lot I think. So, numberplate lights before:



pretty passed it as you can see:



To be replaced with:





Much better. Another purchase, was an Ultragauge. I always wanted one of these on my Fiesta ST but never got round to buying one. But with the Mini's lack of important dials such as engine temperature etc I decided I needed one.



No real photos of installation, as it took 2 minutes to feed the cable down behind the steering wheel and plug it into the OBD port. I will no doubt buy a proper mount for this at some point as it falls off of the sticky one provided. Really impressed with it though, it has loads of features and can be swapped around cars. Also gives me the ability to clear fault codes etc.

Onto those missmatched headlights



When I bought it, I asked the old boy about it, he said the headlight had packed up so he bought a replacement and hadn't realised he bought the wrong one. He did however include the "broken" one. After seeing his installation of the brakes I decided to find out how broken the headlight actually was..



turns out it wasn't broken..

However, I found this tucked away behind the bumper..



this looks like the line for the headlight washer jets. So I will be sorting this at some point.

Next onto the passengers side brake line. I made a slight **** up on this, whilst being lazy and not finding my brake pipe spanner I managed to do this..



Pretty annoying, so ended up fitting a new joint all together:



Currently waiting on the little clips that secure that joint however that is all of the brake lines on. (Didn't take any photos of the rear as it began to get really cold)

Still got a small pile of parts to fit, I will also be swapping out the cam cover next as the PCV valve seems to be blocked. The ultragauge is already earning its worth by giving me an error code which points to that!

Got to be careful with the camcover on these as they are prone to cracking and expensive to replace. They are also stuck on so hard to remove without flexing.

[ingenieur]

I should have scrolled down further!

[bnbrndn]

Now, we are up to semi present day and I've almost gone full circle with this. For around 7 months I was running around in a little Renault Clio 1.2. I bought it for again, shed money. It was perfect, never caused me any issues also very good on fuel, a bit pants spec wise but still. Enter man maths, I was in need of a few bits for my Mini which were proving difficult to source, a bonnet/headlights, random clips etc. So one night I was scouring Facebook market place again and a Mini caught my eye. It'd been up for sale for a long time and reduced a fair bit.



Lets address the elephant in the room. The wheels are vile. I'm 30 years old, they're not acceptable. Anyway, I message and asked a bit about the car, by all accounts he'd run out of money and needed it gone. It was up for £1800, but as mentioned it'd been up for sale for a long time. I offered a cheeky £1000, to which he responded £1400. In the end we met in the middle at £1200. I think I listed the wheels for sale before I even set off on my journey home.

I managed to shift the wheels, without tyres, for £400! So In my head I'm in profit. I also source a set of sensible wheels for £180:



I've also returned the grille onto the car so the intercooler is no longer hanging out like some kind of weird bib. They're my only plans for the car for now, it does have cruise control and heated seats which my first Mini doesn't have. However I prefer the red interior from my first Mini. I also acquired these seats for my E36;



Which are now destined for the Mini, so I will at some point have a go at moving the heated seat element into them. It also doesn't look too difficult to move the Cruise control over. The car has a decent looking intercooler on it as you can see so I am likely to keep that (once its sprayed black). After that I will be breaking the car, the engine and gearbox are strong still so I am hoping to breaking even or maybe even sneak a profit out of that car!

[Bowser87]

Nice thread, toyed with doing something similar as I’ve got a dead R56 Cooper S sat on my drive. Decided to concentrate on other cars instead though so it needs to be scrapped in due course; have quite a few parts of you’re after anything. Just had new battery, coils, ITG filter and forge turbo hoses amongst other things.

[bnbrndn]

ingenieur said:

Got to be careful with the camcover on these as they are prone to cracking and expensive to replace. They are also stuck on so hard to remove without flexing.

I did actually replace the cam with an ebay jobby, I think it was too little too late however!

[Bowser87]

bnbrndn said:

I did actually replace the cam with an ebay jobby, I think it was too little too late however!

I also found there’s a useful heat shield that was fitted to the Peugeot cars but not R56s that somewhat protects the cam cover from the turbo heat. Worth a go for a few quid.

[ingenieur]

The other thing with these is to make sure you properly time it. i.e. setting up the chains and sprockets.

From the factory this engine (and I assume it was the same in other cars that had it?) suffers from sprockets slipping for lack of a woodruff key on the camshafts / crankshaft. So the engines get themselves out of time and that manifests in all kinds of weird faults which the diagnostics systems point to as vanos valves and that sort of thing.

There is a kit you can get for setting up the engine timing and I think it's pretty much essential if you're building one of these to set it all up using the kit or to have some other way of making sure it is right.

[ingenieur]

Bowser87 said:

bnbrndn said:

I did actually replace the cam with an ebay jobby, I think it was too little too late however!

I also found there’s a useful heat shield that was fitted to the Peugeot cars but not R56s that somewhat protects the cam cover from the turbo heat. Worth a go for a few quid.

From memory working these they are meant to have a heat shield all around the turbo. Top and back.

[bnbrndn]

ingenieur said:

From memory working these they are meant to have a heat shield all around the turbo. Top and back.

Yea, they run very hot. I've actually bought a Forge turbo heat shield for it which is a very nice piece of kit. I've also heat wrapped my downpipe and will be covering some key areas in the bay with the gold heat proof tape you see.

Bowser87 said:

I also found there’s a useful heat shield that was fitted to the Peugeot cars but not R56s that somewhat protects the cam cover from the turbo heat. Worth a go for a few quid.

Yea, as above I'll be doing my best to try and keep the heat in the right places in the bay!

ingenieur said:

The other thing with these is to make sure you properly time it. i.e. setting up the chains and sprockets.

From the factory this engine (and I assume it was the same in other cars that had it?) suffers from sprockets slipping for lack of a woodruff key on the camshafts / crankshaft. So the engines get themselves out of time and that manifests in all kinds of weird faults which the diagnostics systems point to as vanos valves and that sort of thing.

There is a kit you can get for setting up the engine timing and I think it's pretty much essential if you're building one of these to set it all up using the kit or to have some other way of making sure it is right.

Thanks for this, wasn't actually aware. The guy whos building the engine for me is fairly clued up on Minis, but definitely worth mentioning it to him!

[bnbrndn]

Bowser87 said:

Nice thread, toyed with doing something similar as I’ve got a dead R56 Cooper S sat on my drive. Decided to concentrate on other cars instead though so it needs to be scrapped in due course; have quite a few parts of you’re after anything. Just had new battery, coils, ITG filter and forge turbo hoses amongst other things.

I could be interested in the turbo hoses depending on colour!

[ingenieur]

bnbrndn said:

ingenieur said:

From memory working these they are meant to have a heat shield all around the turbo. Top and back.

Yea, they run very hot. I've actually bought a Forge turbo heat shield for it which is a very nice piece of kit. I've also heat wrapped my downpipe and will be covering some key areas in the bay with the gold heat proof tape you see.

Bowser87 said:

I also found there’s a useful heat shield that was fitted to the Peugeot cars but not R56s that somewhat protects the cam cover from the turbo heat. Worth a go for a few quid.

Yea, as above I'll be doing my best to try and keep the heat in the right places in the bay!

ingenieur said:

The other thing with these is to make sure you properly time it. i.e. setting up the chains and sprockets.

From the factory this engine (and I assume it was the same in other cars that had it?) suffers from sprockets slipping for lack of a woodruff key on the camshafts / crankshaft. So the engines get themselves out of time and that manifests in all kinds of weird faults which the diagnostics systems point to as vanos valves and that sort of thing.

There is a kit you can get for setting up the engine timing and I think it's pretty much essential if you're building one of these to set it all up using the kit or to have some other way of making sure it is right.

Thanks for this, wasn't actually aware. The guy whos building the engine for me is fairly clued up on Minis, but definitely worth mentioning it to him!

Yeah believe it or not... in the early days when these engines were still new we got an engine built for a customer by a long established engine builder with decades of experience and they got this wrong at their shop. The problem with the engine in the first place was that it was out of time. After spending hundreds of pounds on new parts like gaskets and head bolts and after honing / cleaning various parts it came back to us... was fitted back to the car and still had problems. The sorts of problems which would come up randomly and put an engine light on after a couple of weeks. Basically it was still out of time and the shop that assembled it didn't realise it was part of the build. It makes sense when you know!

[ingenieur]

Oh... and even better... it was BMW via their dealer assistance program who diagnosed (allbeit remotely) the requirement for an engine rebuild. We could have just done the timing on it and it would have been fine.

[Bowser87]

ingenieur said:

From memory working these they are meant to have a heat shield all around the turbo. Top and back.

Yep they do, this just goes a bit extra to trying stop the plastic cam cover warping so fits directly in front of that

[Bowser87]

bnbrndn said:

I could be interested in the turbo hoses depending on colour!

Just plain black, feel free to pm if interested, no worries if not!