Finally, Progress

If you remember where we left off, our MINI was wrecked and we filled the cold autumn and winter days poring over parts catalogs. The good news is, with the hood and front of the car off, the engine bay of the MINI is easy to work on, so we removed the A/C compressor, condensor and lines. The weight savings for this alone was 23 pounds. Altogether, our diet removed fifty pounds from the car, 19 of it was from the flywheel! Our JB Racing flywheel is made from billet aluminum and weighs in at only 10 lbs. We had to use the dowels from the stock flywheel, as the sport pressure plate was slightly thicker.

Finally, the bodywork has been completed. Even the very wrinkly hatch was saved. Amazingly enough, our new hood from MINI is reasonably priced, wholesaled at under $300.

Underhood, we installed a new camshaft from ProMINI. Cams are a legal swap in J Prepared BMW CCA classing.

We also swapped the supercharger pulley, removed the A/C compressor and removed this idler pulley. We wound up using a 325mm long serpentine belt, instead of the 500+mm long original piece. The ProMini S/C pulley is approx. 15% smaller than stock, which increases blower speed by that same amount. This increases boost from the factory 10.5 P.S.I. to almost 15.0 P.S.I.

We used a Sachs four-puck clutch and heavy duty pressure plate. This will help us transfer our new-found power.

We also installed our new Torsen LSD. The old ring and pinion gets mounted on the Torsen performance differential. Right now, there is only a handful of these Torsens made. They are all being used for testing and are not available for purchase. Torsen is shopping the piece to MINI aftermarket distributors and Ford for production. Please do not contact Torsen about this piece. It is not for sale.

While everything else was out, we sent the ECU to PowerChips to be recalibrated for use with the pulley and camshaft.

Finally, we started buttoning it all up.

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