After a few clean panels had been fettled into place and tacked. Even had to resort to panel beating some one off parts over an anvil to fit the intricate areas around the windshield. My thoughts kept wandering to the subject of 'power'. As the A series engine was way past its best and would need extensive work to get it reliable. I started to look into alternative engines to put in its place. Everything from a direct replacement 1.4L MPI engine to the 1380 Metro lump with nice and shiny webber carbs, I even looked into putting a big V8 block in there. But I was pretty sure that it wouldn't look exactly like a standard mini afterwards.

 

After much research I stumbled across the 16V Mini forum where anything from vauxhall red tops to the k series lumps and the expensive Z cars conversions are taking place. I was almost instantly attracted to the Honda Vtec section as the extra 'boost' seemed like a nice thing to have on top of the already crazy amount of power going to the wheels of a 700/750 kg car.

 

So once again I put my 'eBay GOD' cap on and got hunting. There seemed to be an abundance to choose from bare engines to whole vehicles. I spotted a tidy little 1.8 civic and instantly knew. Very long story short. Me and my dad got it home and I proceeded to stripping it down to remove the power plant. The engine was extremely tidy only covering 66k. Looking at the size comparison was food for thought and I started questioning whether I could keep the standard nose length of the Mini. ( this was the ultimate goal of the exterior of the car).

 

Whilst all this was happening I continued with my panel work, carefully cutting out mangled panels and replacing with nice shiny steel. For me this was extremely satisfying and after a good day could see significant progress. However my attention then grew to what frame and setup to use. The choices I looked at were the slightly wider tracked watsons frame, the allspeed frame that looked very robust or the minitec frame from america which looks very snazzy but quite expensive to ship over. As I was wanting to keep the exterior appeal and handling as close to the original mini as possible I decided to go for the allspeed frame. I considered building one, but at the time didn't feel comfortable enough to get it right and I didn't want any major problems further down the line.

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I could start to tell by this time that I would need to adopt many new skills and invest in alot of time to ensure that the vehicle would be safe and suitable for road purpose. 

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