goes like a bat out of hell,” says Steve.
The radiator is an upgraded Honda
alloy one but, even so, the rear of the
bonnet is raised. Libby wants to get it
back to normal if possible. “I might put
another fan on it. It doesn’t bubble up
but it does get hotter than
we’d like it to,” says Steve.
This isn’t an everyday car
for the couple. “If it’s a nice
day, and sunny, I’ll use it.
We’ve yet to put the dog
in it, but we want to. I’ve
spent so much on it but
people don’t care about
other people’s cars. We have
taken it to the shops but, if
we do, one of us stays with it,” explains
Libby. That sounds familiar. “We’re not
made of money and that’s cost £20,000
excluding labour, which is about 1000
hours. If someone bashed it then it would
be gutting and it’s not just the money
side of things.” So true: if only everyone
was respectful of other people’s property.
There has been one moment with the
car, though, as Libby explains: “The cat
got locked in the garage with the car, and
scratched it on the boot where he jumped
off.” Thankfully it could be polished out.
That said, this Mini isn’t mollycoddled.
“It got driven to Mini in the Park in
the rain and it annoyed me as it’s sohad done 140,000 miles so it’s had new
synchros. If you use the correct oil, and
change it regularly, these engines go
on forever. We also changed the final
drive in the gearbox,” sourcing a taller
ratio from MFactory, “as we’re runningsuch a smaller wheel. If we’d left it we
worked out that at 70mph we would
have been doing just over 5,000 revs. It
now sits at about 3,400rpm at 70mph,
and you get about 50 to the gallon
out of it. It’s great,” explains Steve.
Not only has the front suspension
been changed but the rear now has
a beam axle with coil-over dampers.
“It’s been built to cope with the power,
from the bushes to the CVs. The
suspension has chrome-moly rose joints.
The drive shafts are rated to 400bhp
and are chrome-moly. And my mate
set up the suspension on the latest
alignment kit so it doesn’t pull andoriginal brakes, machined inside the disc
and the two are held together with 16
high-tensile bolts which are also wired
together. We also made the brackets
for the calipers. We’d seen a 243mm
kit, but we thought: ‘we can go bigger
than that,’” explains Steve.
Libby decided that
starting with a complete
Honda donor car was
the best move to source
a reliable engine. Having
found a car from the
opposite end of England,
the nice seller delivered it
for the cost of fuel. “I took
it for a drive and I said
‘done, we’ll have it,’” explains Steve. “It
was such a nice car I thought I might
drive it for a bit,” adds Libby. But, sadly
for the seller, who had no idea of the
couple’s plans and who had apparently
cherished the 1994 Honda del Sol, he
was in for a shock when shown the Mini
and told the destiny of his old car which
was based on a Honda Civic platform.
Before taking the engine out of the
Honda del Sol Steve, who isn’t a fan of
electrical work, had an auto electrician
modify the Honda loom so it was more
compatible with the Mini’s MPi loom.
Even though the Honda was a good
car, the gearbox did get a refresh. “It
72 July 2019 MiniWorld
[ Modified 2000 Rover Mini Cooper Sport ]
“I got the bug at Santa Pod,
when I got beaten by a Moke
three times, and I thought:
‘no, I’m not having this.’”