My sons mini.

[nomis36]

He bought this neon last year when he was still 16 with the idea of having it as his first car but insurance company’s have a different idea so now he’s passed his test he’s had to buy an UP! And have a horrible black box fitted. I’m insured for the mini so we are treating it as a bit of fun to do jobs on and learn how cars work for him. I’ve been a home mechanic all my life so am reasonably competent but never did the mini thing as a lad, like RWD too much. Over the Christmas break we fitted a stage one kit, inlet manifold, carb needle, 4 branch exhaust manifold and a larger bore twin box exhaust. The results are not huge but it definitely has free’d up the breathing so revs out more eagerly. Next job is to get some bucket seats in there. All this is being done for the day when he can get insured on it for a sensible amount of money.

[CarsOrBikes]

that's mad, can't get insurance on an old Mini? I guess it wasn't standard? Tried Adrian Flux? By the time he gets cover otherwise, he'll be too used to things like the Up and won't want the old Mini when he goes back to try and drive it

[Lotobear]

...3 branch manifold

[nomis36]

To be honest we didn’t try too hard to find reasonable insurance because we decided using it as a daily would probably spoil it so keeping it for occasional run outs and going to shows would be better and have a more modern practical car for day to day use would be better. He is like me in loving old cars so he’ll never not want to drive the mini, he loves it! He’s doing engineering at college so it’s been great for teaching him about mechanical things and how to ‘do spannering’.

[nomis36]

Lotobear said:

...3 branch manifold

Yeah, 3 branch haha. It was a very tight fit getting the down pipe down past the drive shaft but a lot of swearing seemed to help do the trick lol.

[kilarney]

Same issue with my lad he has a mini mk1 cooper replica we built together since he was 14 but is learning in a citigo although Im not keen on the mini as a daily anyway.
So finding that keeping it 998 cc didnt really help we are just swapping a 1310cc in as it has and issue on one cylinder.. The 998 has a cooper head and mg cam plus 23 branch etc and goes quite nicely but a bit more torque to pull the 3.1 fd would be nice.

Edited by kilarney on Sunday 7th January 16:53

[Dinlowgoon]

Brilliant work there,looks a peach. Your son SHOULD have been made up !!
The way to go invisible insurance wise is take a 1098 and bore it out to +80 or +100 which brings you out to about 1200cc. Put a 12g295 head on,decent cam that delivers low revs. (SW05 or Cooper 997 cam). Best with twin HS2's but a single HS4 will do.
From outside it looks identical to a 998,but the long stroke makes for a great torquey road engine.
Experience gained since the 80's ;-)

Edited by Dinlowgoon on Thursday 11th January 20:47