R53 Cooper S to tinker with ...
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So, big update time!
Last Tuesday I spent the day at 1320 Mini getting a few bits & bobs fitted.
Lots of mini’s, all in various states of brokenness/turbodness:
The turbo’d car that my facelift box/quaife came out of:
Apparently it was in a black turbo’d mini before that as well, so hopefully its not so fussed about my lack of power/torque lol.
Time to pull it apart!
Yeah, wouldn’t have fancied doing this on the driveway!!
Gearbox off, & the clutch release bearing wasn’t where it was supposed to be I don’t think:
Apparently that (or something else) had been rattling around inside the gearbox, making a bit of a mess:
New clutch to go in, old one was fine, but for the sake of £200 in parts, it might as well be changed.
At that point, I lifted up the standard dual mass and was amazed by its weight!! Flipping heavy, so I enquired as to whether 1320 had any single mass lightweight ones floating about, they did … £400. Gave Thomas/Scott’s minis a little rev in the car park, then bought one haha.
All mounted back up
Once that was all put back on, it was time to move onto the subframe to check everything over, steering has been a little wobbly ass of late … and the culprit? Knackered Powerflex wishbone bushes, naturally these aren’t supposed to be rounded on the inside:
They are supposed to be more like this:
So in some Superpro ones (£100 or so) go instead, problem solved.
After that everything was put back together while I kicked around my old bushes with Alan:
Then for a quick test drive. Genuinely its like a different car!! Gearbox ratios are better, the actual change is smoother, the diff is just weird, more power & it drags you towards the apex, cannot wait to try it out on track!! Steering is far better with the new bushes and the engine revs far more cleanly with the new flywheel, I did stall it though when turning around so it’ll take a little time to adjust to it no doubt. The flywheel also rattles a bit at low revs, so i can understand that would be a little irritating on a daily, as a "fun" car though it just adds to the drama/fun of the car i think! Essentially it feels like the GP used to, but with a bit more power, its a lot more extreme, but then again, my GP was standard, this has had £5k chucked at it, & that’s only since Ive owned it, god only knows what Richard put in …
Unfortunately I went to drive it work the next day & I couldnt get any gears FFS. Quick call to Thomas and after much apologising (it was perfectly fine when I lefts theirs, after test drive etc) it seems that the clutch probably needed bleeding, bit of a ball ache, but I said id give it a go on Saturday - which I then did, in the cold/wind/rain!! 2 Litres of Castrol React later I now have gears again, pedal is a little soft for the first half, but engages gears perfectly fine on the 2nd half. Will do the trackday at Bedford then re-bleed it all again after that, will probably be time to flush the brake fluid through as well by then anyways (same fluid/reservoir).
All in all, very happy, Also very poor
Last Tuesday I spent the day at 1320 Mini getting a few bits & bobs fitted.
Lots of mini’s, all in various states of brokenness/turbodness:
The turbo’d car that my facelift box/quaife came out of:
Apparently it was in a black turbo’d mini before that as well, so hopefully its not so fussed about my lack of power/torque lol.
Time to pull it apart!
Yeah, wouldn’t have fancied doing this on the driveway!!
Gearbox off, & the clutch release bearing wasn’t where it was supposed to be I don’t think:
Apparently that (or something else) had been rattling around inside the gearbox, making a bit of a mess:
New clutch to go in, old one was fine, but for the sake of £200 in parts, it might as well be changed.
At that point, I lifted up the standard dual mass and was amazed by its weight!! Flipping heavy, so I enquired as to whether 1320 had any single mass lightweight ones floating about, they did … £400. Gave Thomas/Scott’s minis a little rev in the car park, then bought one haha.
All mounted back up
Once that was all put back on, it was time to move onto the subframe to check everything over, steering has been a little wobbly ass of late … and the culprit? Knackered Powerflex wishbone bushes, naturally these aren’t supposed to be rounded on the inside:
They are supposed to be more like this:
So in some Superpro ones (£100 or so) go instead, problem solved.
After that everything was put back together while I kicked around my old bushes with Alan:
Then for a quick test drive. Genuinely its like a different car!! Gearbox ratios are better, the actual change is smoother, the diff is just weird, more power & it drags you towards the apex, cannot wait to try it out on track!! Steering is far better with the new bushes and the engine revs far more cleanly with the new flywheel, I did stall it though when turning around so it’ll take a little time to adjust to it no doubt. The flywheel also rattles a bit at low revs, so i can understand that would be a little irritating on a daily, as a "fun" car though it just adds to the drama/fun of the car i think! Essentially it feels like the GP used to, but with a bit more power, its a lot more extreme, but then again, my GP was standard, this has had £5k chucked at it, & that’s only since Ive owned it, god only knows what Richard put in …
Unfortunately I went to drive it work the next day & I couldnt get any gears FFS. Quick call to Thomas and after much apologising (it was perfectly fine when I lefts theirs, after test drive etc) it seems that the clutch probably needed bleeding, bit of a ball ache, but I said id give it a go on Saturday - which I then did, in the cold/wind/rain!! 2 Litres of Castrol React later I now have gears again, pedal is a little soft for the first half, but engages gears perfectly fine on the 2nd half. Will do the trackday at Bedford then re-bleed it all again after that, will probably be time to flush the brake fluid through as well by then anyways (same fluid/reservoir).
All in all, very happy, Also very poor
So it was the Bedford Cliosport/Passionford Bedford trackday at the weekend, so i thought id give a quick write up.
Needless to say in the morning the car was an absolute animal compared to before. The gearbox/diff have made an unbelievable difference, i now firmly believe that any high powered FWD car needs a diff, its quite literally night & day the way the car responds now, so much front end grip. Had to reassess my braking points at quite a few corners as i was simply carrying in too much speed, LOOS is now amazing, lift, sideways, plant foot, pull out of corner. Epic!! The way it covers ground was quite something, there is no way it would have caught up with/overtaken the cars it did before, no chance.
The afternoon wasnt so great, but that is covered more here: http://www.minitorque.com/forum/f24/melted-spark-p... I think its mostly fuel related (i filled it up with Bedford's own fuel at lunchtime, instead of the Shell VPower i normally use/its mapped for, so c'est la vie/probably a coincidence etc), but will be checking through everything else as well.
The car also melted the drivers side front CV boot at some point, what a mess!!:
Some pictures of it looking nice:
And some videos of the morning:
Yellow 200 at 6:10, Black R26 at 8:30, Silver 172 at 10:00, Black/Orange 182 at 14:40
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnobTSjwsko
Various Clios from the start, 130i/172 Cup at 9:30, 13:00 Blue 172 cup
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBQXNqM60SE
Black megane at 5:00, Red Turbo 172 WTF at 7:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzCHaik1UJg
All in all, an epic morning, with some more teething problems to sort out, it gets driven hard though, so problems are expected.
I now need to replace:
[I]1. Rear pads, & maybe disks. Its gone through the OEM Pagids in 1500 miles/3 track days, so i might upgrade to Carbotech XP6's
2. Drivers front outer CV boot, will probably do both sides as the passenger one was looking a little melted as well (heat from the XP8's is obviously rather high)
3. 4 x plugs, fuel filter, will also get the injectors flow tested i think, & check the coil pack is ok
4. The cage will hopefully arrive at the end of the month, so thats something nice to look forwards to.[/I]
Also need an MOT at some point this month, so 1/2 are priorities really.
Needless to say in the morning the car was an absolute animal compared to before. The gearbox/diff have made an unbelievable difference, i now firmly believe that any high powered FWD car needs a diff, its quite literally night & day the way the car responds now, so much front end grip. Had to reassess my braking points at quite a few corners as i was simply carrying in too much speed, LOOS is now amazing, lift, sideways, plant foot, pull out of corner. Epic!! The way it covers ground was quite something, there is no way it would have caught up with/overtaken the cars it did before, no chance.
The afternoon wasnt so great, but that is covered more here: http://www.minitorque.com/forum/f24/melted-spark-p... I think its mostly fuel related (i filled it up with Bedford's own fuel at lunchtime, instead of the Shell VPower i normally use/its mapped for, so c'est la vie/probably a coincidence etc), but will be checking through everything else as well.
The car also melted the drivers side front CV boot at some point, what a mess!!:
Some pictures of it looking nice:
And some videos of the morning:
Yellow 200 at 6:10, Black R26 at 8:30, Silver 172 at 10:00, Black/Orange 182 at 14:40
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnobTSjwsko
Various Clios from the start, 130i/172 Cup at 9:30, 13:00 Blue 172 cup
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBQXNqM60SE
Black megane at 5:00, Red Turbo 172 WTF at 7:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzCHaik1UJg
All in all, an epic morning, with some more teething problems to sort out, it gets driven hard though, so problems are expected.
I now need to replace:
[I]1. Rear pads, & maybe disks. Its gone through the OEM Pagids in 1500 miles/3 track days, so i might upgrade to Carbotech XP6's
2. Drivers front outer CV boot, will probably do both sides as the passenger one was looking a little melted as well (heat from the XP8's is obviously rather high)
3. 4 x plugs, fuel filter, will also get the injectors flow tested i think, & check the coil pack is ok
4. The cage will hopefully arrive at the end of the month, so thats something nice to look forwards to.[/I]
Also need an MOT at some point this month, so 1/2 are priorities really.
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