Oil Filter Relocation Kit

Quick update.

The oil relocation kit was purchased at a bargain price for $85 a few months ago from someone in the eastern states. It was the only one left. The hose and AN-10 fittings i purchased were from Summit Racing in the US as i mentioned in the previous blog. The filter was suppose to be a starlet one but after trail fitting one at Supercheapauto it was clear that the adapter had a different thread. The starlet/glanza thread is 3/4" where my relocation kit had a M20 thread on the filter side. It was pretty easy finding a filter with a different thread which ended up being almost the exact same size.

You'll see from the photos that i had to cut a entrance hole for the fittings in the body of the mini. I originally planned to have the filter side of the relocation kit installed inside the engine bay near the master cylinders but routing the hoses up there wasnt going to be pretty. I ended up mounting it on the subframe inside the wheel well behind the right side indicator.

 

 

Dump pipe and the rest of the Exhaust System

While i was mounting up the radiator i was a little bit worried about the clearance between the dump pipe so it was imperative that i had to install the dump pipe to be sure. I had originally intended using one made by Speedvisions in the US but after receiving it and trying to fit it, it was obvious that it wasnt going to fit, fouling on the mini body and front spar. So it was my only option to make up the dump pipe. My mate Alan was having some flanges cut up so i quickly jumped on that train.

The next part was buying the steel pipe which i found was cheapest from Undacarparts in Welshpool. I ended up buying nine 45degree bends in 2.25" for roughly $16 each, that would do the whole exhaust the way i was planning to run it. My exhaust system was going to be 2.25" straight through. I dont really like loud exhausts, and from reading a few starlet forums, 2.25" was the happy medium.

The pipe mounting to the flange was cut up and tacked, while i played around with the angle of the pipe and the distance from the gearbox for a few hours. It was one of the jobs where you look at it for ages figuring out the best way it could be done. I opted for two 45degree bends over one 90degree bend as the elbow coming down the front to the bottom of the engine because it would give the full exhaust a much cleaner look - It was an idea my mate from work showed me one afternoon so i went with it. The dump underneath would then have to avoid the rear gearbox mount with which i used more of the 45degree bends and a 3 bolt flange welded on the end.

The dump was TIG welded by another mate at work. Cheers Karl.

Underneath.

Dump height with radiator mounted.

Here is the clearance i ended up with between the dump and the radiator.A lot closer than i wanted but I am planning to have the dump ceramic coated just in case. It may be a little overkill but theres no harm in doing so.

While making up the dump pipe i had ordered and waited for some exhaust parts from Summit Racing in the US. Reason being its a whole lot cheaper there for the same muffler or catalytic converter here. You compare $250 here vs $100ish over there. The shipping does bump it up a bit more but i ended up purchasing some AN-10 fittings and hose for my oil relocation kit as well. The exhaust was going to consist of a 6" stainless steel flexible bellow, to allow for movement of the engine, followed by a spun type catalytic converter, super clean looking, and finished off with a magnaflow muffler and stainless steel tip.

With the work hoist being unavailable to someone elses project car, my next option was raise the mini and slide under. Two metal horses, a fork light and an overhead crane later i had it almost floating.

Playing around holding the exhaust up and making tacks here and there, i had only finished half of it. Fitting the muffler and making up a bracket to hold the rubber exhaust mount was again even harder. Took all afternoon getting it right, but she ended up looking pretty nice and snug.

Ignore the tape on the muffler, it was to protect the stainless steel from being scratched up.

Radiator Mounting

With the engine now in and the installation of new engine mount bushings thanks to my mate Alan, it was time to move onto the ancillaries. But quickly to note, the engine mounts are polyurethane bushings made by Powerflex.

The radiator i opted for was the EK civic half size radiator which many other people doing the same build on Ausmini have used quite successfully. It was a rather tight fit. I had to cut little parts of the body here and there to make it nice and snug, but nothing very important. Lucky for me my front spar was just the right height to have the radiator sitting on top of it and still clear the bonnet.

The issues i found with fitment were basically the height of the radiator, the location of the bottom water outlet, the wrong size outlets and the dump pipe clearance which i would soon find out. I removed the bottom outlet as i am planning to TIG weld sum new outlets anyway. The starlet outlets are a weird 28mm and the civic radiator was 32mm, if i purchased 32mm radiator hose it would fit just fine but since i was relocating the bottom outlet i might as well change them to the correct size and purchase some 28mm hose later.

Moving on. I made a small tab at the bottom, off the front spar which bolts to one of the standard civic mounting points. The top was fixed by making up a little bracket that is bolted off the side of the engine bay body.

Indicator Binnacle Install

So its been a fair while since ive updated but i havent stopped working on the mini.
 

My next installment is incorporating the indicator binnacle and the ignition barrel from the starlet onto the mini steering column. The reason for using the these is for the simplicity of installing the wiring loom. Its much easier to plug in all the current connections straight into each other rather than having to cut and splice wires,although in saying that you still have to mount the indicator binnacle and ignition barrel somehow.

So before i could install the steering column i had to install the steering rack. This was going to be annoying having to remove the engine and subframe, but while i was at it i figured i might as well rebuild the steering rack with parts from the Mini King in NSW. The parts cost me around $90 including new bearings, gaiters and what not.

The first part of installing the binnacle was removing the bracket that holds it, but be sure to measure the distance between the ignition barrel and the bracket as the plastic shroud mounts over the top. What i ended up with was a pipe that was slightly larger than the steering column that would slide over the top. This would mount the ignition barrel as well as clamping the bracket to the column, and the indicator binnacle bracket would be welded to the top of the pipe. I'm not sure where i had read this but i think it was from another persons build on Ausmini, but it was said that the engineer told them that they werent allowed to weld anything to the steering column, hence the removable pipe bracket.

Here is the bracket alone.

There is a tab on the ignition barrel for the steering lock. This obviously doesnt fit on the mini so i took to a die grinder and got rid of it.

Mounted on steering column.

And this is the final result.

 

Rebuilt Subframe Pictures Found!!

I was going through my old documents and found some old digicam photos. By old I mean October last year.

Around that time I had purchased a bunch of mini parts from Huddersfield Minispares, which consisted of brand new bushings, fully adjustable suspension, hi-lows, red dot rubber cones and some GAZ adjustable shocks. I got my subframe sandblasted and powder coated a weird berry grey that sort of looked like primer.... Hmmm don't know what I was thinking.

The subframes were completely rebuild, painting all the parts with POR15 and re-doing some of the brake lines. The rear brake master cylinders were replaced with new 5/8" ones and the rear proportioning valve was rebuild by Perth Brake Parts.

Here is a picture of the mini pre-sandblasted with some tidy Group 6 arches.

Main Belt Tensioner

The main belt tensioner was an idea I grabbed off a member on the Ausmini forums. What people had done previously was purchase a belt that would fit around the main crank and the water pump and slip it on, meaning it wasn't easy to get on or off. The pulley used by the Ausmini member Amos is from the AE92 Toyota Corolla's air con, but after calling up several wreckers who weren't interested in small business, I was informed by my friend Alan that the idler pulley from the Nissan SR20 engine was the same 4pk belt.

Once purchasing one of these from KYP in Welshpool for $15 I took it back to trial fit it. The bad news was that the pulley was definitely too big (close to 90mm) for the space I had to work with, although the AE92 Corolla used a smaller 69mm pulley. So I ended up ordering a brand new AE92 Nuline replacement pulley with bearing from Coventrys which sat perfectly in the idler bracket from the SR20. The good news was that KYP had sold me the idler pulley and whole bracket that it was attached to. I was able to cut the tensioning part off with a grinder and use that instead of recreating something else.

The next part was attaching the bracket to the block of the engine. This was simply done by using the two bolts on the back of the block where the layshaft bracket was mounted and just bolting on top of it. I did think of welding it to the layshaft bracket but it would be more convenient having them separate. After I held the pulley bracket in place with an old Glanza belt, I could line up the 3 pulleys (main crank, water pump, idler tensioner) and tack weld the brackets together.

With the bracket attached and self supporting I tested out the tensioning of the idler pulley which didn't work as well without having a belt that fit. To measure which belt would work I used a piece of string around all pulleys with the idler at its minimum to maximize the tensioning of the idler pulley. The belt I think ill be using is a 4PK0705, but I'm yet to try this as I'm working away at the moment.

This is what was created, but still needs to be cut down and properly welded.

Alternator Install & Cleaning up Subframe

Ok! So before I started the alternator I figured it was time to finish the majority of the subframe. This included properly welding the main engine mount and installing gussets or plates to give the subframe a little more strength, not that it needs it. I forget in which order these were done amongst creating the centre spars, making up the alternator brackets and remaking the front spar. You can see the end results through the pictures anyway.

Now on to the alternator. I had purchased a smaller alternator from a Daihatsu Charade G100 which is one of the smallest alternators available, producing 45A. This should suffice for my project as there isn't a lot of electrical accessories other than the motor, lights and of coarse, stereo system. I was still contemplating using the standard Glanza alternator but after holding it in the position it was going to sit, which is behind the right hand headlight, it looked a little bit big and protrusive. At least compared to the Charade alternator.

Since the pulley off the Charade alternator was a single V belt type compared to the 4PK one of the Glanza, it was simply swapped but the face of the Glanza's pulley had to be lathed down (already pre-done in the above photo). With the actual alternator bracket, I first made up the plate that would bolt onto the engine's block using the existing cast iron block bracket that used to be mounted there as a template. Some left over 20mm OD pipe was then used for the main alternator mount. I cut up some little brackets that would sit on the mounting pipe and bolt through the main alternator mounting hole, and with one of the old Glanza A/C belts I aligned the alternator up with the crank pulley. From here it was simply tack welded to the bracket.

The only option in regards to the tensioning of the alternator was to use the existing tensioning bracket from the Glanza and mount that off the main engine mount. So with a bit of messing around I created the tensioning bracket.

The last step was to purchase a belt that would suit this application. An easy way of doing this is using a piece of string and wrapping it around both pulleys, or in my case, I marked the existing belt then rolled it out onto the floor. Sure enough I drove down to SuperCheapAuto and picked up 2 belts on either end of my measurement and returned the one that didn't fit. A Bosch 4PK0875 was the perfect belt.

Centre Support Spars and Strengthening

I had a bit more time than I originally thought before I flew out next and I really wanted to nail these centre support spars. It was a lot harder of a task than it seemed to be as a lot of thinking took place. I wanted to keep the spars to look clean without any protruding joins and match the rest of the subframe so I opted for 20mm OD pipe with a 1.6mm thickness as this could be easily bent with a conduit pipe bender we had floating around a work. The thing that worried me the most was where would I have these spars mount on the rear of the subframe and to make sure that the point at which they mounted was structurally strong enough. So before I started on the centre spars I had to weld in some plates which wasn't a bad idea as it made the whole underside of the towers quite robust.

Here is what was done:

After that was complete I made up some removable brackets that the spars would be welded to so that they could be removed at any time if needed. Amongst all this the front spar I previously had was scrapped and had to be redone using different mounting brackets than previously. I used 25mm OD 2mm thick pipe for this.

Now back to the centre spars. I decided to go through the centre near the exhaust rather than around the side because of where I mounted the front brackets and I figured it may be a better spot for its intended use - restricting flex down the centre of the subframe. Getting the bends at the right angles on a singular piece of tube wouldn't be very easy so another idea was making up a few bends then welding them together. I really didn't to lose any structural strength when doing this so a mate from work handed me a piece of lathed down pipe that would fit inside the spar pipe. This made aligning the pipe ends together a cinch and also made for a better weld over the normal butt weld.

This is what was done.

So after a few hours of messing around grinding and twisting the pipes into position, started to tack welding the pipes and brackets to each other. I was almost finished doing the centre spars, all that was left was to finish the welds in the welding bay and clean up. One thing I would of done differently was doing these whilst inside the car, because I did find that my left mount spar was slightly out by 2mm due to the overheating when welding the strengthening spar. So this could of been avoided but it was as simple as the welder was in a different location. Not a big problem though as I could still mount the subframe inside the engine bay no worries, a little bit of TLC does the trick.