| Hi,
Here's a bit of background information about myself.
My first car was a good old Mini 1000 while at college which was just about able
to remain on the road, this was followed by a Rover 214si once I started full
time work. The car was only a month or so old when I purchased a
performance exhaust and K&N air filter.
Not long later I became bored
with the 214 and moved on to a Cavalier GSi which was my first real performance
car, this was fitted with a Performance exhaust, Power Boost Valve, BBR Starchip
and JR Air filter. After these modifications the limits of grip had been
reached on to the front wheel drive Cav so moved on to a Calibra 4x4
Turbo.
This car was good as standard but I couldn't leave it alone and
soon had a new exhaust, hybrid turbo, foam air filter and re-chip. Once
the engine was getting a bit tired I opted for a complete rebuild courtesy of
Regal Autosport in Southampton with race cams, gas flowed head etc. The
Calibra hadn't been returned for long when I managed to melt 2 pistons and it
was rebuilt again, high intake temp's being to blame. This time I rebuilt
the engine myself and also designed a new chargecooler to be added to help with
the heat problem, this worked better than expected and the Calibra was running
13.7sec 1/4 mile times. The next tragedy was that I managed to strip the
teeth out of the gearbox, this was the last straw with the reliability problems,
I sourced a replacement 6 speed and sold the car.
I had decided that I would like a new car which was just
as quick out of the box as the Calibra but reliable. My choice at this
time was a Subaru Impreza WRX which I went to test drive at a local
importer. The Subaru was quite impressive to drive and I quite liked it,
but the dealer also had a Skyline R33 and I asked if it would be possible to
have a test drive. He agreed and I was immediately impressed by how stable
and controllable the Skyline was, so that was the end of the Subaru and I bought
the Skyline instead. That was back in November 1998 and I have been
steadily modifying the car since but have now reached the point of minimal gain
for a lot of extra cash (click here for my GTR site).
As my main mission was to get a really quick 1/4
mile time the Skyline just wasn't financially viable due the the cost of
parts/labour and it was so heavy that to get a really quick 1/4 mile time of
below 10 seconds requires approx 700-800bhp and reliability becomes an issue
then. I needed something lighter which wouldn't require such a large
amount of power to produce the times I wanted and needed to be sensible
running/repair costs. I had always missed my Mini and after seeing the 16V
mini websites and the amount of information which was available decided that it
was time for a monster Mini. As I had a good background with the Vauxhall
XE engine I decided it was the way to go and not very difficult to see well over
200bhp and still be reliable. As with the Cavalier GSi grip was my biggest
worry if I tried to put too much through just the front wheels so thought to go
for the twin engine setup and run a sensible amount of power on each engine.
Hopefully with around 400bhp it should be able to get a low 11 or even a 10
second 1/4 time with the right setup as it should only weigh around 800-900kgs
when complete compared to my Skyline which had approx 540bhp but weighed around
1600kgs and had the dreaded turbo lag, ran a 11.15sec 1/4 mile. We'll just
have to wait and see if it can do it :o).
|
