Bleeding + Test Run

With the engine running you wouldnt believe how excited i was to drive it. It cant be far now.

I attached the custom made driveshafts and installed the 4 pot brakes calipers. I had previously purchased some DOT3 brake fluid which will also be used for the clutch, and proceeded to bleed the clutch system first as it was a single line. Next was the brake lines, so i continued bleeding in the order of: Left-Hand Rear -> Right-Hand Rear -> Left-Hand Front -> Right-Hand Front.

It took a few tries and almost 2 bottles of brake fluid to get rid of the air in the pipes but i wasnt convinced they were completely gone. I found a link off the net on how to make your own brake bleeder for $20. All you needed was a few bits of hose, some hose fittings, a pressuried garden pump and a pressure gauge. This specific brake bleeder would pressurize the master cylinder (15psi is fine) and force fluid through the pipes, rather than relying on gravity. This worked an absolute treat! I'd definitely recommend making your own.

So finally i was able to drive the car and test out the brakes. But before i did i had to be safe, even though i am already in the wrong for driving a unlicensed car shell, i needed to install my seat belts. Quickly enough they were in and i was out the workshop going for a joy ride.

From 4EFTE Mini

The reason for wanting to drive the car was to test that everything was okay before i painted the shell and so i knew i wouldnt have to make any more modifications if something didnt work.

After driving the Mini a few times, i am rather impressed. The weight of the car is barely even felt. I did have some issues with traction though and found only the passenger side wheel spinning, which is why i ordered the Quaife LSD. Although the reason may have also came down to the car being a lot lighter than it will be once its finished or the fact that my camber was terribly out.

I did calculate the Power to Weight of this project based on standard figures:

Mini clubman. Weight 640kg
4E-FTE Engine. Power 100kw/130hp
= 156W / kg

So from Wikipedia. It has an equivalent or slightly higher Power to Weight of 2008 Subaru Impressa STi @ 150W / kg.



In the end, im pretty happy with its progress and cant wait to drive it again once its all painted and back together for the last time...

Engine start up

Ive had the engine running in the mini for awhile now but it hasnt came without its problems.

With the loom in and the engine topped up with fluids, the car cranked over just fine. I had installed my oil pressure gauge to make sure i had sufficient oil pressure before i actually started the engine. But even after getting oil pressure, it wouldnt start. It had me in pieces trying to figure out why, checking the fuel pump to make sure it was working and whether the spark plugs were giving a decent spark. I did have a friend from work watching over me at the time and he suggested i checked my earths.

I found that the casing of the ignitor needed a ground as it was originally mounted to the firewall and mine was just sitting on my car seat. I ran a wire to the car body and that basically fixed the problem. The car started up! What a huge relief that was, but then it started to hunt on idle. Long story short and after several weeks in denial of me messing up my wiring loom, it ended up being a vacuum leak.

I swear i went over my loom a hundreds times metering all the cables making sure they had the correct polarity and/or continuity. But in the end it was something i thought i had checked over properly. The car started up and ran just fine from then on.

Here is a video of the engine starting up and running... the way it should.

From 4EFTE Mini

Seams.. remove or keep?

As much as they contribute to the standard look of the mini.. they are a pain in the ass when it comes to rust. Water gets trapped and rusts the shell out. Then on the other hand its another type of pain in the ass to de-seam the mini.

I eventually went with deseaming.

I dont like fully de-seamed Minis so i went half way and only removed the front and rear corners. Again its not an enjoyable job but i was running out of motivation on certain parts of this project so i jumped to other parts. The rears were cleanded out and welded from the inside first, then i started de-seaming the Mini with the method used by everyone else:

- Cut 100mm at a time
- MIG weld
- Hammer in weld
- Grind and clean weld
- Cool with wet rag
- Then moved on to the next 100mm.

I continued doing this with the rest of the seams. 

There were rather large dents and odd shapes left in the panels from the hammering, but it was essential, because if i had removed too much of the welded seam there wouldnt of been much structural integrity left.

Moving on to body filling of the dents left by the hammering, I spent countless hours after work doing this and getting the shape just right. It really takes that long, doing layer after layer after layer.. i figured i might as well prep the rest of the shell of other imperfections while i was bogging it. I think i have done about 90% of the main body filling and figured id leave the engine bay for later because i wasnt prepared to remove the engine just yet.

So while the engine is in.. i might aswell get the engine running right?

Here are the pictures.. Probably need to finish up and put some primer on it!

The wiring loom...

This job definitely proved more difficult than i had intended. You hear many rumours about people spending countless hours into reconfiguring it and I was one, despite being an electrician by trade. I did find it quite simple as i understood electrical theory and made sure i wrote out each of my findings. The hardest part was that there wasnt a proper english wiring diagram for the EP91 4E-FTE. After gathering all the info i could i did eventually suceed.

As the Glanza was a later model version with the 4E-FTE engine it had some ancillaries that i didnt require for my mini build. These included the ABS brake system, air con and heater demister. Although i do need to modify the heater demister circuit because i wont be using the Glanza heater box but require the demister for registration.

I had already decided to keep the Glanza odometer and indicator binnacle so everything was pretty much plug and play. The modifications i did do other than the removal of the abs and air con systems were:

- Extending battery and alternator cables to allow for rear mounted battery
- Installing a water to air intercooler fan and water pump into existing relays
- Installing a 12V hair dryer as the heater demister using existing relays
- Extending and making up rear wiring loom for the fuel circuit, taillights and license plate light
- Re-configuring and extending cables to allow for only one firewall penetration
- Re-wiring of side door open switches and addition of a switched roof lamp
- Re-wiring and extending of cables for new stereo and speakers

An important note to keep in mind is that the metal body of the Ignitor MUST have a ground (-) otherwise the car itself wont start, and yes i found this out the hard way. It would be a good idea to make sure you have sufficient grounding throughout the car including a proper ground from battery to body, body to subframe and body to engine block. Also remembering there are ground cables throughout the standard wiring loom which would also prevent the car from starting or running properly. I have marked some of these in my modified wiring diagram below.

Here is the EP91 ECU pinout which should match up if you pay attention to the cable numbers.

Driveshafts

A few months back i had sorted out my driveshafts.

They consisted of mini splines at the wheel hub end and Toyota splines at the other for the inner cv joints to the gearbox. This was done with the car on the hoist and all the suspension in place. I had to cut the existing driveshafts with a fairly large overlap to allow for adjustment in order to find the right length.

You ideally want to make the driveshafts the right length so that the shaft and cv joints are as close to the gearbox as possible without the shaft bottoming out as you hit a bump in the road. What i found is that the mini suspension worked in the complete opposite to what you would think. Instead of the shafts pulling away from the gearbox as the wheels were lowered (car raised), they actually pushed them inwards. It didn't take too long to get the jist of things until i marked the two shafts, cut them and tack welded them.

Originally i had planned to take these to a shop to reproduce and to make up into single billet heat treated driveshafts, but this didnt end up happening. I spoke to John at Rotomotion who previously did this for another Ausmini build, and he told me it would cost almost $1000 to make as the cost of heat treating had gone up since then. The other option he offered me was for their boilermakers to properly pin them, weld them then have them sort of heat treated by letting them cool slowly overnight. I forget what this method was called.

When speaking to John i did ask whether this was suitable and strong enough to withstand the force from the engine, and he said that because the rest of the driveshafts were already heat treated from factory and that it was just the weld that needed treatment, it would suffice. Also that the spline of the mini hub would break before the weld would, as long as it was welded properly. I took his word for it and it cost me $250.

Sadly i dont have a picture of them at the moment. But i will update with one in the future.

Christmas in November!

Look what just came in the post....

^_^

For those who dont know.. it is a Quaife Automatic Torque Biasing LSD. This little sucker will slip right into the standard 4EFTE gearbox and comes with a lifetime warranty.. It will also help with keeping the power on the road as i may or may not of driven it.....

Fuel Setup

My mini came with a 35L tank, which wasnt very common in Minis until the 1970s. The mini had a mechanical fuel pump so the only thing attached to the fuel tank was the fuel level sender unit. I did a fair bit of studying and calculating and found that if i soldered a 200 ohm resistor in parrallel with the fuel level sender unit of the mini.. it would send almost the same resistance at high and low levels as the standard glanza fuel level sender.

I used an external bosch fuel pump rated up to 500hp to feed my 4EFTE with a low pressure fuel filter before the pump and a high pressure reusable billet aluminum fuel filter before the fuel rail. The fuel pump and LP filter were mounted in the boot. I used the standard mini fuel line as a return and ran a new 5/16" (8mm) fuel line as a supply. The standard fuel pressure regulator was used as im not planning on running higher than 12psi, but ill see how that goes in the future....

With all my other systems, i tend to paintshop pro them up for reference. Here's another.

Air Filter and Blow Off Valve

There wasnt much options when it came to the air filter as i had already taken most of the engine bay space where fresh air would enter so i went with a simple short location, right infront of the exhaust manifold. I used a dome air filter mounted to 2" pipe with 2 outlets for the stock boost controller and for the blow off valve recirculation. While on the subject of the BOV, it was mounted inbetween the heat exchanger and the intake plenum. There have been many arguments on the where abouts of where the BOV should be mounted but in the end of the day it will still do its job effectively. The BOV i went with is a Greddy RS that was given to me by a friend. I'm pretty certain it is a copy but it will suffice as not many have the option of recirculating the air back to the turbo. The recirc hose does look a little ugly in the engine bay but it is a must for the car to pass registration requirements as it was standard on the 4EFTE engine.

Brake and Clutch

Onto the brakes and clutch... This wasnt the most fun job but was still enjoyable.

To jog your memory, i will be using Minisport 4 pot calipers with vented disc brakes at the front and standard drums on the rear all fed from a brand new 'yellow tag' dual circuit master cylinder. I chose not to use a brake booster for simplicity and that i dont mind the feel of the brakes without, on the rear i have a proportioning valve that eliminates the rear brakes from locking up under hard braking. The clutch master cylinder is also brand new and is the standard mini one which from research was perfectly fine using with the clutch slave clyinder of the 4EFTE gearbox providing you used the 7/8" bore slave.

I had originally posted a topic on Ausmini.com covering a dual circuit brake master system setup as there was mixed answers on the forums from years ago. So i concluded that i would use the following and drew it up for future (now current) reference. Very simple.

You will now see my brake and clutch lines all done up and flared by me. Not 100% perfect but i think they still look nice. The most annoying part was removing the engine and ancillaries.

Here is the clutch slave piping. I purchased a custom made flexible hose from Perth Brake Parts to allow for engine movement.

Dashboard and Switch Panel

For my dash, i wanted to use the glanza cluster as it was a simple plug and play option with the wiring loom, but i wanted to retain the standard mini look. I first made up the mini dashboard from a template found on one of the mini forums using 12mm thick mdf. I modified the dashboard to fit my boost and oil gauges, a stereo unit, two 4" speakers mounted on either end and a glove box on the passenger side. The mdf was coated with fibreglass resin for a smoother surface which i had intended on painting but eventually went with vinyl wrapping. The odometer cluster was a fiddly job also as the standard cluster had a curved plastic face. I modified the stock unit to fit a flat piece of plastic.

The next part of my dash was the switch panel on which i had intended on keeping pretty stock glanza / mini looking. I used the glanza demister, hazard and low boost buttons and intergrated them into a custom switch panel which would sit where the existing mini panel sat. I also installed three switches and of coarse a cigarette lighter to charge my phone etc..  

 

Only two of the three switches are used but it is always good to have a spare. The two switches are for the water to air radiator fan override and the engine radiator fan override.

 

Mounting of the standard glanza switches werent easy. And although the demister is for the rear, i will have rewired it to the windscreen.

Lastly is the dash and switch panel temporarily installed. Its obviously missing all its ancillaries.

Radiator Fan

You would have seen from the previous post the overflow tank mounted in between the engine radiator and the w2a radiator. They are cheap chinese tanks which i will eventually replace. I dont know what i was thinking but i guess i was in a rush to get the car up and running. You will also see in the picture below the amount of room i had left for a fan to be mounted to the radiator and the new locations of the radiator inlet and outlet. You may need to look carefully as it wasnt easy to take a picture with everything installed.

Intercooler Install

Its definitely been a while again so i think im due for an update.


The 4EFTE engine came with a standard top mount intercooler. I have seen these retained by fellow Mini 4EFTE builds but i wont be going down that path. To maximize the use of a TMIC you would need a bonnet scoop and i personally dont like the look of these on a Clubman bonnet or the fact that they stick out.. it would ruin the clean look im aiming for.

I opted for a Water to Air intercooler system for the main reason that there wasnt really any place to put a front mount intercooler without hacking away at the body of the mini. The W2A system consists of a heat exchanger which the air passes through and by the use of water, cools this air. Water travels from a separate radiator and fan through a water pump to the heat exchanger, taking note* of which way the water passes through, then to an overflow tank back to the radiator. I used the largest radiator and overflow tank i could, to maximize the amount of water to cool the system. The radiator also has a thermo installed to control the radiator fan, as well as an override switch mounted inside.

*It is important to position the water feeding the heat exchanger in a 'counter-current' design.This means that cold water from the radiator should be fed into the 'cold (outlet)' end of the exchanger and the hot water that has absorbed all the exchangers heat comes out of the 'turbo end of the unit. The reason for this is that the coldest water is keeping the coolest end of the exchanger cool, and the slightly warmed water at the hot end will not actually increase the temps at the 'hot end'. If the water flow is changed to a 'concurrent' design, so the cold water cools the hot end, then like wise, the water temps will heat up, and thus the 'cold' end of the exchanger can not be any colder than the temperature of the heated water. (This info was taken from another site)

The Water to Air intercooler system was purchased from frozenboost.com.


Pictures explain better than words.

You'll find below my setup temporary installed.

The radiator mounted where the existing mini radiator once sat. Looks pretty snug to me.

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.