13 replies to this topic

[Avtovaz]

Who builds rally mini engines in say the north west of england, or just is the best?

 

I friend of mine has a nova that is probably the best 1400cc in the country, and he is thinking of going even lighter with a 1400 mini. He recons that the KAD 16v would be the way but he said they are massively expensive.

 

His 1400 nova is 190 bhp, was wondering how far off the kad is, what sort of price they really are, and what sort of power a 1400 7 port would do?

 

Just options for him.

 

He has looked at subframes to take his 1400 nova motor, but he is not convinced the ones has has seen will pass with the msa, and also it may not handle like a mini does.

 

 

 

thanks

[nicklouse]

KAD can match that power as can SC very closely.

 

cost of parts 10-20K as a start then building

 

most of the subframes are fine people have been rallying with other engines in Minis for years.

[Avtovaz]

yes they have , but the msa have banned a lot of them when they brought all this kat 2 rules out.

[Tupers]

Bill Richards runs somewhere close to 1400cc with a KAD head in his circuit racing Mini Clubman that they’ve tuned up to 200bhp.

As Nicklouse says they’re horrendously expensive to build. I think you’d be looking at a £30k engine that runs 10hrs between strip downs regardless of who is building it.


If I where him I’d be contacting the technical folks at the msa to find how he can run his Nova engine in a way they’re satisfied with and build a subframe to their liking.

[Avtovaz]

i knew they where expensive but not like Smith and Jones expensive!

 

Thing about his nova engine, its happy where it is, its a JRE mega thing but its heavy compared to A series in a mini engine. Mind you, on the last rally we did, there was a lupo and the guy said it was 100kg lighter than the nova !

 

What sort of power are these 8 port head engines?

 

I just remembered about the guy in ireland LLody Hutchinson, will be looking about his car now ..

Edited by Avtovaz, 12 June 2019 - 08:31 PM.

[Cooperman]

For rallying against modern cars a Mini will struggle no matter how good the power to weight ratio is. The big problems are traction and the lack of suspension travel.

I I have a very full-on FIA Gp.2 Historic Cooper 'S' with around 110 bhp. I also once had a Rover 214Si rally car to endurance spec, that is standard engine and gearbox. My 'S' was a lot faster in a straight line on dry tarmac, but on any sort of twisty & bumpy road the Rover 214 was much quicker, more stable, easier to drive and felt safer. It was also a damn sight cheaper! 

Think what a great modern club rally car you could buy for the cost of a big-engined Mini ad how much better your results would be.

[Avtovaz]

yes i agree, my friend just phoned KAD though and was put on to Lloyds car, He has an older engine which is less tuned and less revs, has very little maintenance. He’s just had fabricated, wide track front suspension made for it with alloy uprights etc. He does very well on bumpy tarmac.

 

THose rovers are good by the way, my friend has one of the original race tomcat 216? The honda motor i think it is, since the day be bought it and raced it he has never done anything at all to it. Since racing it properly, he has done at least 2 track days in it a year.

I went out in it with him around oulton park, it was so nice, and because colin can drive not much at all passed us!

 

So richard is also in contact with a guy in wigan who builds these subframes for putting K series into minis, apparently they can go under a round nose too, he is a bit worried that the suspension wont work, but the guy used to rally a mini with a xe in it until the cat 2 stuff came out and his car was banned.

 

 

I know minis are old but they are very light.

[Cooperman]

As a rally competitor for almost 60 years and someone who has built rally cars, I cannot see any point in spending a fortune on a 61-year-old designed car in an attempt to try to compete with modern vehicles. You will never beat them. You may spend thousands and get beaten by a well-built Mazda MX5 or a Rover 218, for example which would cost not a lot to by and prepare.
For historic pre-1968 rally class a good Cooper S can still do well, although it will struggle against an early 911.

[Avtovaz]

Yes i agree totally, it is 61 years old, but development has moved on to. That is what i was trying to explore, we dont know what is out there. Dont get me wrong, if it looks like it wont work, he wont do it.

 

The guy in wigan doing the subframes, i think they are a rover subframe with mini mounts kinda welded onto them, but i know nothing about them. I think richard now is looking at a 1400 16v vauxhall, not the JRE one out of the nova. You then have a good front end set up. This guy also ran a c20xe in a mini years ago, that was banned when the cat 2 stuff came out due to the bulkhead had been cut, it had no inner wings, and a few other reasons. So this rover subframe has to be passed by the msa first also.

 

 

and yes those mx5;s they seem to be a really good package, dutatec that is already RWD [personally i dislike these engine but!] 6 speed box, forget first and the ratios are like a decent tran x 5 speed, reasonable light, cheep and plentiful. I think they will be the next big RWD car down the lanes, the bmw compacts are getting pricey now on parts, and there is that level of being a current car to buy and rally, to where parts are going up and something new comes along.

[Cooperman]

It's not an engine or power issue, it is quite simply a lack of suspension travel which has caused the Mini to not be very competitive against modern cars. This loss of competitiveness due to this started in about 1967 when cars like the Escort and Porsche 911 came along. The Mini could hold its own against the Lotus-Cortina, except on very rough events, but with the Escort came better P to W ratio, superb suspension and the ability to get the power onto the ground, no matter what the surface.

Yes, a lot of development has taken place, but so has the overall design of vehicles. Trying to get the Mini suspension to work like a modern all-independent coil-spring suspension system is like polishing a turd! 

The problem with hybrid rally cars is the in-depth engineering investment is not there and you are more-or-less on your own. You have no CAD systems or simulation tools to sort out handling or steering issues nor to do suspension setting calculations. Thus it is easy to spend thousands and get no-where. When I had my own design consultancy business I did a lot of work with Ford Competitions on their then-current rally cars. The available resources were simply awesome, especially when we did the RS200 Group B car and the Sierra & Escort Cosworths.

I do recall a friend who, in the early 1970's built a supercharged Escort 1600 with a cross-flow engine. He spent a huge amount of time and money and in the end his car was only just about competitive, but it had cost him more than a prepared Escort RS1600 would have cost, and that would have been a winner for him.

A Mini is still a 61-year-old basic design and whatever developments have been done, it will never, I'm sorry to say, again be a winner in proper rallying.

[Avtovaz]

yes i agree again, will pass on all what you say mate, ive not spoken to richard for a few days, he may have just binned the idea, and that is all it is, an idea! It maybe that he was thinking of a small version of like a zr in a mini shell, running the front and rear suspension. That is kinda what mike taylor has done with the 2 lotus sunbeams he has, chopped the shell up and fitted it over a lotus europa [i think it was] chassie. They are on cat 2 logbooks, really nice cars too...


But its been explored a bit now, was fun doing so.

Who was the guy with the cross flow supercharged? The guy who built my volvo engine, he used to run RED/MCD, he was saying that they had 2 v6 transits, and they where old, they were replaced with pinto mk2 transits, and they where runnish. So to give them some pulling power they put turbos on them and they went like stink, towed really well too.

ok thanks

Edited by yeti21586, 15 June 2019 - 08:42 PM.
Edited to keep the peace

[Cooperman]

The guy with the supercharged Escort(s) was Ian Taylor who later emigrated to the USA. There were two virtually identical cars and one, which was driven by the lovely Linda Jackson, was sponsored by SKY Petroleum. Nigel Raeburn had the pleasure of navigating for Linda a number of times and they got some reasonable results, but the car was never as good as an RS1600 would have been with her driving. I helped Ian with some of the development work as he was a good friend.

 

I have always liked the Escort and I did quite a few events in them, including some internationals like the Swedish and Circuit of Ireland, both in works-assisted ex-works cars. In 1968 and 1969 I did many Motoring News and International events in a 2.0 litre Porsche 911 with the late Jock Russell and later did some events with Jan Churchill in his 2.8 litre Porsche Carrera RS. By that time the Mini was virtually finished as a top line rally car, although my old friends Will Sparrow/Nigel Raeburn did win the Welsh International in 1970 and were 2nd in 1971 in Will's Mini-Clubman which was a very full-on Cooper 'S' disguised as a Clubman. Those were the last real successes for the Mini in top-line rallying.

 

My son had a Cooper 'S' 970, but now has a 1978 Escort RS2000 historic specification car. In fact he is out on an event at Sweet Lamb this weekend. It is great to drive and has just over 160 bhp plus all the right transmission bits and good suspension. My 1964 Cooper 'S' rally car would get no-where near it if we did a back-to-back test. Since my son is a design consultant in F1 the build standard is superb and he has used his skills to get it just right. I want him to go to 4-link suspension, fit twin Webers, etc, and take it to Belgium for some tarmac rallies. I would like to go and service for him there as those Belgian events are much better than UK forest rallies and a damn sight cheaper and less damaging as well. The last rally I did in Belgium was the Tour of Ypres Historic in 1999. We were leading our class in my Cooper 'S', but a front wheel came off on a  long stage and we were out right after we had caught and flown past a Volvo 123GT. That's rallying!

Edited by Cooperman, 15 June 2019 - 12:42 PM.

[Avtovaz]

Is your son out on the Ystwyth? Ive been to the start many years ago but didnt stay about to watch. Hopefully with all this rain it wont be so dusty for him.

 

Do you know of Guy woodcock also? Escort PHF356T he owns, its ex mersyside police car, my dad used to drive it on patrols!!!

 

I like escorts, but ive never had the money for a competitive one. When i got into rallying some 25 years ago, my mate suggested to buy a lada instead, and that was really good car to be fair. Ended up with c20xe in it but never actually did more than 2 novice events in it. It started to rust so i bought the bmw 10 years ago and never looked back really. I think they are the escort of now.. First event out in it did the gogledd and won the novice class! Now its got a fair spec for a RR car, 2.3 volvo engine 6 speed is200 box, porsche 996 calipers 3 way avos, best part is the motorsport abs!, looking at doing rally mon next if i can get it sorted in time. On rally mon, its the only rally ive done where you get people waving you on, and just really happy for the rally to go on, people stood in gardens watching the cars going past , its good.

 

Your sons escort is what i call an escort! The ones ive been involved with as in servicing wise have been big power ones. My friend Keith Douthwate just packed up rallying but he had the full hit, 2.5 JRE jobbie, sequential, the lot. This is why im servicing for richard now, he had a 1600 zetec darrian, sold that and has gone back to a nova.

 

Belgium is meant to be amazing, 2 lads i know from manchester had a compact, they went over, and then didnt do any more rallying over here, just belgium. Its meant to have one great atmosphere to the rally.

 

This may make you laugh, when i first got the BMW, i bought some escort 260/60 long inserts and wanted rae to put them into bmw struts, and i had heard it was the thing to do. when i got the inserts, i measured the travel and it was maybe 3" shorter than a standard bmw strut! So whats a mini like !  I bought some b6 struts of Dave Baines instead and returned teh escort ones. Dave did the manx in a almost standard 2.8 capri years ago, he said everyone was laughing at him but when he was out, when the escorts where flat in top, 90 mph or what ever, he was doing 125 making up loads of time !

 

 

The other escort point ill make is, when yoour stood at a speccy point at 3 am, its raining, its dark and cold, and your thinking why am i here? Then you see the lights over the hill, lighting up the sky, and they go. Then you can hear bits, and it goes, then lights, and you hear this full hit pinto powering threw a SCCR box, brakes down to you, send her in, big smiles out, you know why you came then!

[Cooperman]

I stopped 'proper' rallying in 1976 ad then went historic rallying from when it started in about 1982.
My last full year was 1975 when I did the MN Championship in a 240Z Datsun. I rallied for Dealer Team Vauxhall for a part of 1976 but needed to stop to build up my design business.
The big Datsuns were a handful in the Welsh lanes, but I did quite a few internationals in them. They were wonderful cars, but not quite as good as the Escorts.
When I got going in historics I decided to build a Cooper S and have actually built 4 of them including a 1071.
I also built a 1990 Cooper for the Endurance formula which mandates up to 1400cc with standard engines and transmissions, but it was not really competitive againt modern cars like the Pug 106 Rallye and Rover 214/MG-ZR. In fact I just bought that car back and it is currently in my workshop. I may be tempted to do one last rally in it although I won't be able to win (too old as well as too slow a car), but my first rally was 60 years ago in November 1959. It might be a good way to end my long rallying career. My son said he would be happy to navigate, but we would need to choose a very smooth event for the Mini.