In 1988, a humble 1973 Mini 1000 was minding its own business somewhere in London, when along came a young Mini freak called Jason King, who wanted to change it for ever, and make it famous.

Jason persuaded the owner to take £450 for the car, and then proceeded to throw £12,000 worth of presents at it for the next 3 years.

Every minute of Jason’s spare time was spent working on his new car and every minute of his working time was spent looking for spares.  Jason, you see, works at Mini Spares, where being a Mini nut can be a real problem, it becomes impossible to resist any new product that comes through the door, and Jason’s wages usually travel about 3 feet before going straight back into the till.

While a £12,000 budget might be considered over-the-top, Jason has now got a car of which he can really be proud, and contents himself by watching the admiring glances and soaking up the praises.  After a test drive for Mini World magazine, for instance, Art Marcus describes the car as ‘Seriously WILD’.

Strangely enough, Marcus shouted ‘Seriously WILD’, immediately before shouting ‘Seriously LOUD’ – a state in which straight cut gears tend to spend most of their time.  Shouting never seems to help.

At the heart of the conversion is an all steel Oselli engine which, at 1430cc puts out a solid 112 BHP at 6500 RPM.  Carburetion is taken care of by a downdraught twin-choke Weber, with the obligatory K & N filter bursting gloriously through the bonnet.  Exhaust gases are taken away by a Maniflow large bore LCB manifold and system and the cooling suspension, brakes, wheels and tyres have all been uprated to cope with the increased power.

The best way to show the attention to detail that has been lavished on this Super Mini, is to list some of the parts that have gone into it.  (About 90% of them are available from Mini Spares).  Add to that about 2 years’ worth of man hours and you can see how easily it could be done!

BODYWORK
Deseamed Mini Spares.  Euro arches. Halogen headlamp conversion.  MK2 Cooper grille.  Sundym tinted windows.

FUEL
Twin fuel tanks.  Facet competition silver top fuel pup.  Facet filter king regulator/filter.  Monza chrome fuel caps.  Power – 112 BHP at 6500 RPM at wheels.  Speed – Top speed around 108 MPH 0-60 MPH about 5.4 seconds!  Fuel consumption – around 20 MPG.

ENGINE
Built by Oselli Engineering.  All steel, fully lightened and balanced 1430 cc.  73.5mm Omega pistons.  Race lightened Cooper ‘S’ con rods.  84mm EN408 crossdrilled steel crank.  Ultralight EN8 steel flywheel.  Race lightened steel pressure plate.  Grey clutch diaphragm.  Bonded rally/race clutch plate.  Vernier adjustable belt drive.  Kent MD290SPB Billet scatter cam.  Iskendarian cam followers.  Longman GT14 cylinder head, 11-1 compression ratio 1.5:-1 roller rockers.  4 synchro straight cut gears close ratio gearbox, central oil pickup pipe.  Jack Knight 1-1 straight cut drop gears. 3.7 crown wheel and pinion.  Aldon distributor including electronic ignition.  NGK BP7ES spark plugs.  NGK silicon leads.

COOLING
4 core radiator.  4 blade metal fan.  Thermostat blanking sleeve.  13 row oil cooler.  Braided oil cooler pipes.  High capacity water pump.  Austin 1300cc expansion tank.

BRAKES
FRONT – Metro Turbo vented discs.  Metro Turbo 4 pot calipers.  Goodridge braided brake hoses. REAR – Superfin brake drums.  VG95 brake shoe linings.  Goodridge braided brake hoses.  Adjustable brake BIAS valve.

INTERIOR
Cobra SF3C competition seats.  Full FIA roll cage, door bars and removable diagonal.  Innocenti dash, 3 point OMP harness.

SUSPENSION
Car lowered 4” all round.  FRONT – Fixed negative camber arms (giving 1”neg). Hilo adjustable trumpets.  Heavy duty adjustable tie rods. (Set standard length).  Heavy duty adjustable tie rods.  (Set standard length).  Heavy duty tie rod bushes.  Spax adjustable
 shock absorbers.  (Adjusted 6th setting).  REAR – Adjustable camber brackets.  (Giving 1” neg). Hilo adjustable trumpets.  Spax adjustable shockers.  (Adjusted 1st setting).

CARB AND EXHAUST
481DA Downdraught twin choke Weber.  K & N air filter.  Maniflow large bore LCB.  Maniflow large bore twin box exhaust system.

WHEELS AND TYRES
6X13 Revolution 5-spoke RFX wheels.  175-50-13 Yokohama A008 tyres.

FUTURE PLANS
Mini Spares five speed gearbox.  Mini Spares electronic engine management system, toothed water pump belt drive kit.  Brian Slark cylinder head.  The End!!!

EI, EFI, ECU’S AND ALL THAT!
Development work on the electronic systems disclosed in the first Mini Tech News has been progressing, albeit slowly. Unfortunately we have stumbled on a price problem.  Having originally been quoted one price at our original discussions about total market price of the package, we had one test unit produced.  Then on asking for price confirmation prior to production we get a MASSIVELY increased price quote! So the heavy discussions begin!  We’re still arguing!

Still, in the meantime the prototype was fitted to my road car.  My partner in crime on this project and I were gob-smacked when it all worked perfectly first hit of the button.  We drove up and down with the lap top plugged in and fiddled with the amount of advance and curve – which was an interesting experience.  It was actually possible to tell the performance changes when adding and subtracting degrees of advance.  I then drove it around for a few weeks to put some weather miles on it and it performed faultlessly.  The engine ran noticeably smoother, pulled cleaner under all situations and returned better mpg.  All this on a Metro Turbo engine without the Turbo that has done something like 80,000 miles, accruing these at a rate of 800 – 1000 miles per week.

The next step is to apply this to the 8 port dyno engine that has the fabricated prototype of our fuel injection system fitted.  All we then need is the new ECU to run the ignition and the injection and we’ll be testing it out on a dyno.  This, however, has been slowed up by our price dispute with the manufacturers!  Hopefully a full test report will appear in the next Mini Tech News issue.