1989 Rover Mini 'Racing Green'

1989 Mini ‘Racing Green’

My Dad and I were looking for a project car. We’d always talked about getting one when I was younger, but this was 2008 and I was approaching 20 and my Dad was nearly 50. What better excuse?
Originally we were looking at mk1 Escorts, one of my Dad’s favourite cars from his early driving career. However 2008 was around the time they had started to increase in price. When I first looked into them you could get a nice 2 door mk1 for a few thousand pounds, in 2008 even rolling shells commanded this sort of cash! So I left my Dad to do some thinking about what he’d like - one of his, and I’m sure many of yours, most beloved pastimes is trawling the internet for theoretical new cars! Then one day he said to me “we should get a mini”. I thought this was a great idea, and iconic and hugely significant car (thanks to Mr.Issigonis’ ingenuity!) with Motorsport heritage to boot (thanks Mr.Cooper!). So the search began…
Then one rainy day in November I get a text. It’s from my Dad and it contains a link to an eBay ad, “check this out”. So I did… and there she was. A 1989 (same year as me!) Mini ‘Racing Green’, completely standard, British Racing Green with a white roof, 998cc of A series power, a scarcely believable 54,000 miles on the clock and a thick wad of MoTs! Then a follow up text. “I’m bidding”. It suddenly got very exciting.
As it these things sometimes go we lost the auction. Outbid in the dying moments. However, my Dad (ever the optimist), decided to contact the seller on the off-chance that the sale fell through. As luck would have it that is exactly what happened. So that weekend we hopped in the car, dragged my poor mum with us (who also owned a mini ,as her first car - a black 1275GT with white weller wheels!), and set off to Shrewsbury!
When we arrived the mini seemed to be exactly as advertised. We had a good look round and spotted a few things that needed doing, but nothing major was immediately obvious. We took a quick test drive and she ran just fine, although the steering was a little heavy (later rectified with a bit of extra psi!), We returned to the seller’s home and struck a deal. The princely sum of £1200. We had a mini! So a quick jaunt home was not without excitement… the bonnet hadn’t been closed properly after inspecting the engine bay and it flew open at 60mph! Luckily it didn’t cause any damage.
Once home I began planning the modifications. The good thing about minis as that they are exceptionally well catered for with aftermarket spares and performance modifications. You can buy a whole new shell if you need to, along with a myriad of camshafts, exhaust manifolds, cylinder heads and so on. Using a few online forums and tools available to create-your-own-mini I came up with a combination of white sportspack arches (as fitted to the rover mini coopers in the 90’s) with deep dish 12” minilite wheels. A simple Maniflow stage 1 kit was added that included a new air filter, carb needle and a full exhaust system that ended with twin central 2” upswept tail pipes - nice!
So work began in earnest on the car. We had to cut the arches to clear the wider wheels, bolt on the arches (which required fabrication of extra brackets to get a good fit) and the borrowing of one of my Dad’s friend’s garages to fit the exhaust (thanks Mike!). Along the way we started to create a list of other things the car needed; there were a few patches of rust that we needed to sort out, primarily along the bottom of the doors, under the headlights and on the A panel. We also wanted to improve the bright work so new bumpers were purchased and the chrome window surrounds were replaced front and rear. We also changed the side repeaters as they had faded, the rear brake lens and seal as it had water ingress and we fitted new Wipac headlights as the original sealed beam units aren’t the best!
Once all this was completed we got the beast through and MoT and began to enjoy driving her! But, we weren’t finished there, oh no, not by a long shot. We had plans for twin SU (HS2) carbs, custom gauges and 4 driving lamps up front! This took some time to bring together as we had to find a new inlet manifold for the twin carbs, the carbs themselves and in the end my Dad custom fabricated spacers for the inlet manifold to clear the exhaust. But we managed all this, the car was now representative of what we wanted!
Then I broke it. I couldn’t believe it. I’d just come off a roundabout and went to make a change from 2nd to 3rd… crunch! I tried 2nd again. All I could hear was the sound of metal shards swirling around inside the gearbox. Not good! I coasted to a halt by the side of the road and made one of the worst phone calls of my life. Luckily my Dad is an easy-going kind of guy. He came along an checked it out, we found that the only gear we had drive in was 4th - so at the risk of burning out the clutch (not my Dad though, too good for that!) that’s how he drove it home.
This began a long project throughout a cold winter to remove the gearbox from the engine bay. Now as you may be aware the gearbox of a mini is situated directly underneath the engine and they in fact share the same oil. So we had to lift both out together. This wasn’t too bad. Removing the flywheel was a much more difficult task however! I have a distinct memory of me lying on the floor holding the engine still while my Dad stood on a breaker bar attached to the flywheel puller jumping up and down trying to get it to crack off! It finally gave way with an almighty bang! We took a look at the gears (see the photos) to find that I had somehow managed to smash a good number of teeth between the two gears that engage the layshaft. This explained why we had 4th because it is direct drive. So Dad set about the hunt for a new gearbox…
He came up trumps with a whole 1997 1275 A series engine and gearbox for £100! So we set about getting the box off that engine, thankfully it went more smoothly. We put he two pieces together and got the engine back in. Turned her over, got oil pressure - good sign, then fired her up and she started! Great sign. Then we tried to engage first, lots of grinding and crunching noises… bad sign! So bad that we had to admit defeat. I’m still not sure what was wrong, but I suspect a mismatch between the 1275 box and the 998 engine. So, to cut our losses, we sent both the original and the new box off to a company in England that reconditions mini gearboxes. We got a nice shiny box in return! We fitted that and hey presto… she lives!
Since then we have enjoyed many fun times in the mini, including going to the mini 50 celebration in Birmingham. There’s also been more work done, including a lot of rust treatment - new doors, new rear valance, new sills etc. It’s a constant battle. However, every drive puts a smile back on your face!
This year we are embarking on a new project. Remember that 1275 engine that my Dad bought? Yeah. That’s going in! We haven’t decided a spec yet, but we are going to spend the year slowly stripping it down and checking it’s condition, then we will build it back up with some choice modifications to a fast-road spec (maybe 85-90bhp). I can’t wait for that!