MINI COOPER TURBO CONVERSION
 

Hey guys here is some of my recent work I did converting over a supercharged MINI to a straight Turbo setup. It is my car that I was running a twincharge setup on, but finally decided to go straight turbo. I fabricated everything you see in the pics. I am not the greatest of welders, but I can hold my own and I can get stuff done. It is something different than the norm and I am not quite done with it, but all the hard stuff is fab'd for now. Let me know what you think. I have about 96 hours in this fab work minus the manifold, which I built about a year ago. I did this this past week as I took a weeks vacation to try and finish this thing. As for the rest of the details, I built the engine almost 2 years ago and never fired it, it fired up tuesday morning at 7am after another all niter on the 1st try. I was extremely happy at that point.
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intake horn ran through front bumper support
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good stuff. i was hoping for an old school mini, but still cool. awesome fab work.

Yeah old skool would be kewl...but waaaaay over kill for something that small....lol
Thanks for the props on the fab...

damn nice work man. i think your fab work looks pretty damn good...

ya those welds look pretty nice

Very impressive work, i like the intercooler piping

this is SO sick. i would love to fab up a mini.

i bet firing it up motivated you for the next year.

master job!! :)

Thanks for the props...I am pretty happy how it turned out especially for the amount of hours I put in and that I worked on it from 3pm til 7am each day. I think that helped keep me focused as I wasnt bothered with other stuff when the shop was opened.

I have ran into a snag however, my starter died an amazing death (which had me searching for the noise until its demise). My ClutchMasters FX600 is not dis-engaging when pressed. I put the FW/dual plate clutch in 1.5yrs ago when I put the engine and tranny back in, I went back and examined the pix I had taken, it all looks good. I am not sure if maybe I put the discs in backwards or if my new slave cylinder is being extremely lame. I am going to try and bleed it again and give CM a call to try to sort it out, but if anyone has any ideas on that dual disk clutch I am all ears...

Nice job, only concern I would have is something catching fire with the turbo being that close to the firewall, you might want to get a insulated turbo bag for it just to be on the safe side. Other than that everything looks great. Love the scull cut out also :) As for the clutch, those twin discs can be a real pita, if you put it in that long ago and haven't used it I would take it back out just to examine it to be safe. If it is anything like the tilton I had it doesn't take much to give you issues.

cool

Dude that is some impressive work.

Yeah I didnt take pix of the firewall since the ones of the fitment, I covered it with therma shield and put up a fiberglass heat tarp (the same material I am using to cover the hotside)

As for the clutch, I popped a starter on the flywheel, and I put a new one in tonite, same thing...it wont disengage from the flywheel and popped the new starter in short order....I need to give ClutchMasters a call and see if they have known issues and need to space the starter...

Thanks for the props everyone! After tonite, I am a bit annoyed at it...lol

nice work man

very nice work...shame to cover it all up with a bumper

really nice work....pretty welds

sweet

awesome work i like it! no more supercharger all turbo! even better! =D thumbs up

what engine management are you going to use for the new mini cooper owned by bmw?

well that hasnt been completely decided on just yet, but how I was running it when it was twincharged was with an Apexi AFC. That's how I am going to run it until I can get a proper ECU tune. There are just a few people that are able to hack the ECU and scale injectors and the like. I just havent decided who I am going with yet.

Also, I figured out the starter issue after sending the flywheel back to CM, got a new flywheel and found that I had my starter wired to the motor side and not the solenoid side, so needless to say it saw 12v's and continued to run, quick fix. Like I said it was almost 2 yrs since I tore it all down and it doesnt resemble anything like stock in the engine bay, so it was kind of best guess and I didnt think it through until I troubleshot it. As for the disengaging problem, still an issue, but I think my slave cylinder is bad and letting air in as I can hear it after I bleed it. New slave on it's way and then I need to figure out how to jump out the clutch switch that isnt a switch....

in for updates

No luck with the new slave....looks like the engine and tran will be coming back out and I will be swaping out the entire clutch/fly(clutchmasters fx600) to something different. May be some time, as I moved shops this past weekend and wont be getting a lift until the weekend. Nice thing with this shop is my Fab area is far away from the bay, so I wont have misc car parts laying on my fab table or tripping over larger parts like engines & trans. I also get to finally move my powdercoating shop from my garage at home to the new facility, which means I should be able to do much much larger items!

Nice work

you must have small hands . Very great work indeed

updates

Nothing new on the MINI....still working on the new shop, had to tear down a room in my shop, paint all the walls(15') and epoxy the floor. That took 2 solid weeks and I havent got to dropping 220 lines for my welders or wired up the new lighting. Now it's time to start on the garage bay. I need to get that done quick as jobs are starting to pile up and I've yet to get the lift installed...

who needs lift all you need is some jackstands,creeper,a skate board, and some beer. come on man up

F'ing awsome build

MINI clutch slaves are a pain to bleed. when i was working for Rasmussen MINI we used the power bleeder and did the initial bleed with pressure in the system i would step on the clutch 2 to 3 times and then bleed again. but make sure you bleed it with it out of the trans and have a stopper plate attached to the slave. thats if you still have a problem after the new clutch is installed. Good luck:)

sick build bro