This is going to be one seriously FAST mini
When i was about 18 years old, i bought an old austin 1800 from my dad. It was a beautifull old thing, roomy, comfy, strong & reliable
,,,a tad slow but that was a dam good thing for me at that time as i was allways getting done for speeding, running around delivering
spare parts for my dad in a fleet of red, white & blue "ReadSpeed Auto Parts" mini vans.
All 5 of them fitted out with 1415cc stroker donks & i would be caught speeding nearly every week...
so this old "Land Crab" was just the thing to keep me a little more grounded & save me some bucks in speeding
fines & fuel bills at the same time.
well,,,it wasn`t long & some dick turned in front of me & the head on collision was massive,,,I got smashed up pretty bad.
& the car was a write off,,,so the wreck was just sitting there all sad & lonely & i decided to rip her apart & get rid of the shell.
the engine was sold off & i was left with the gearbox.
Now,,,i was allready a big fan of the old Leyland 4.4litre alloy V8 powered P76,
i had bought about 18 of these engines along the way & figured that we might be able to set one up ontop of the old 1800 gearbox.
& yeah,of course, as mad as i am, we started the conversion.
Quite some time had passed & not alot was sorted but enough to keep the candle burning with a few dodgey, make shift adaptor plates
made up in ply wood just to see what was needed to make it all happen. 6mm was needed to be removed from the bottom of the Leyland
engine block to be able to use a 6mm adaptor plate between it & the 1800 gearbox,,, & another 6mm plate was all that was needed
for the rear engine plate adaptor too. SWEET!!! EASY_PEASY :-)
a little bit here & there & a bit of a fudge with a flywheel adaptor & a muck around with a starter & a decent heavy duty clutch
& it was a reality. :-)
More years had passed & i was busy with racing minis,playing squash, racing motorbike & pushbikes, girls & booze etc, so the whole project got
drawn out & all but forgotten,,,that is,,,
until i spotted Viku`s Rover V8 Mini conversion Gork Here
& then Spag`s V8 Mini Conversion in England Gork Here so i was back onto it at full steam ahead.
so with re-kindled enthusiasm, i trundled back to the pile of bits & pieces & took up where i left off,,,not much really left to do
as most of the home work was actually done 20 odd years ago & only a few fiddly things needed slight tweaking. But!!! as it happens
,,,CAMS in their wisdom decided to impliment a "weight Restriction System" into the new sports sedan regs,
which basically stuffed my whole idea of this car becoming a sports sedan as it would have meant that i`d
have to add about 400 more kgs into the car,,,BUGGA THAT!!!,,,so it`s all going into the speedway car now.
BUT WAIT!!!!!,,,,THERE~S MORE!!!!!! :-)
To add to the fun factor, we`ve decided to Turbo charge the thing :-) YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
so 350-400hp easy avaliable, with the potential for way more,, but i`m happy enough with 350hp,,,
On the dirt circuits it`s all to easy to spin up the wheels & simply go no where fast, so i`m keeping it at a reasonable 15lbs boost
& that`s about 350hp...for now :-)
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