myself and a partner have a garage in the UK that specialises in Minis, the old shape ones, not the new BMW's
this is a pic of my "Italian Job" Austin Cooper S which I use as a daily runabout. Lately this car has been a "Trini Mobile" when Truetrini, Socapro, and FLi rode it in when we went to Brentford vs Port Vale, and last weekend I took Socapro and Palos to see Carlos Edwards playing for Luton against Ipswich
this car is hardly original though, here's a pic of the engine bay
the original engine would have been 1071cc pushing out about 63 horsepower. The engine above is a 1275cc unit overbored to 73.5mm which makes it 1380cc. It has a full race camshaft, full race cylinder head, high lift roller rockers, Weber 45DCOE twin choke carb, Aldon dizzy, steel crank, straight cut gearbox and straight cut drop gears, 4 pin steel diff, blah blah blah
engine has been dyno tested at 115 brake horsepower at 8,500 rpm. The brakes and suspension etc. have also been uprated accordingly. It's a quick car because it's so light, but it's a bit rough to drive as a road car. Power doesn't come on until about 3,500 rpm. It also smells a bit inside because being a race engine it runs very rich and consequently is a bit fumey. Can't be helped, it's the nature of the beast
it's not the quickest in the garage by any means, we've also built a twin-engined mini, mainly out of old parts that we had lying around. We drag race this car from time to time and results have been mixed. Car has standard 1275cc engines front and rear, both of them turbo-charged and Nitrous Oxide Injection
When it works it absolutely flys. If however one of the engines is performing a little below the other, then the car tends to bog down, especially off the start-line. At the moment this car is out of action because the last time we raced it the rear gearbox exploded
we've currently got both engines on the bench which we intend to rebuild along with both gearboxes, just a matter of finding the time...
we've also put together another Mini that's powered by a twin cam 16valve 1.6 Honda Vtec engine, with uprated camshafts. It pushes out approx 200bhp and is stupidly fast
I don't have any pics online but will take and post some when i get a chance. There's also a chance I might be traveling to Germany in this Vtec Mini for the Sweden game so if any of you guys are on the autobahn and you get overtaken by an old skool Mini doing 150+mph, you'll all know who it is