SheepSpeed

The history behind how this all started.....

Below is the story on how I made my 13 second 1/4 mile mini turbo, I hope to get sub 12's next year. I'm confident, with enough setup and enough boost this will be possible.

When I was 15, my Dad bought me an 850 mini. I spent many hours trying to squeeze the car through an MOT to get it on the road for when I was 17. After a few attempts I got it there. I loved this mini. It was standard apart from 12" Revolution wheels and a 1275 MG metro engine. Being young, stupid and a crap driver, the car lasted 8 weeks on the road, before I had my first crash, and it was a good one! I lost control of the mini going over a cattle grid (in my defence, who puts a cattle grid on a bend?) I spun around a few times, ripped the front near side wheel cleanly from the car and then buried the rear offside wheel in the back of the car, bent the rear sub frame almost in half. Every panel on the car was dented, except the roof, bonnet and the doors. When the car recovery people came to pickup my car, they creased the roof, which left me with a bonnet.

Around 11 months from the day of the accident, I made my first step in getting this car on the road. I bought a second hand 1990 shell from Cardiff Mini Centre for £170, and quickly started to work on it. Although the shell was not that old, it had obviously lived a hard life, the boot, bonnet and doors all went in the bin. I had the bonnet from the original car. I bought a set of new doors, and found a solid boot lid in a scrappy. The shell needed a new front and rear valance, which I welded on, while I had the welder out, I decided to remove the bumper seams and go for the cleaner look. I decided that I wanted to put the MG Metro Turbo engine into the mini, so I asked many mini shops for advice, each one I went to laughed at me and told me not to bother, I will never get it to work etc. This only gave me more of a reason to do it, just to prove them wrong. I got a turbo bulkhead box from Avonbar racing and cut out the cross member in the bulkhead and fitted it. (I have photo's I must scan them in!)

This was the shell almost ready, so I moved on to the running gear. I picked up a new front and rear sub frame and rubbers, and fitted recon radius arms on the rear, with Mini-Fin vented brake drums, with new wheel bearings, brake shoes and brake cylinders, and Aeroquip braided brake hoses. I also installed adjuster-rides and adjustable camber brackets along with spax shocks. On the front of the car I got a set of vented disks assembly from a MG Metro, and replaced them with new, the swivel joints (pot joints) wheel bearings, CV joints, vented disks, pads, which didn't really leave much of the original. As on the rear I fitted adjuster-rides, spax shocks, adjustable tie bars (for the caster) and 1.5 negative camber bottom arms and solid sub frame mounts. I also picked up a new steering rack with longer track rod ends.

At this point I now had a rolling shell, but still no engine, I found a MG Turbo engine in the free ads for £200, so I went to pick that up and dropped it in. I got the engine running, but had one major problem, every time I revved the engine to above 4000 rpm it would stall, I tried everything, including 3 different carbs, dizzys, fuel pressure regulators. I had mobile engine tuners come to take a look. They could not help either. It was now 1997, I just about gave up, and so I closed the garage door, and planned to go back to it in a few days.

Much to my Dad's disappointment (as it was in his garage) this did not happen, I got a new car, Ford Orion Ghia 16i and lost interest in the mini, until 6 weeks on, I wrote that off too. I went back to the mini, but I still could not get it going, so I closed the garage door again and planned to come back the next day. I was now 18 so Women often sidetracked me with large boobs and lots of heavy drinking thrown in for good measure. Days went by, followed by months, followed by years, bought and sold many cars, (only bent one more which was my BMW M3, this was expensive but the car lived on), I moved out but the mini stayed in my dads garage, he was not too pleased!

In August 2001 it had been around 5 years since I last touched the mini, I was browsing the web in work one day when I found that someone also had done the same conversion as myself, I read through his story, and found that he too had the identical problem I had found. So I emailed him and asked him how he fixed it, he explained to me that the gaskets the BL sell were wrong; the gasket between the plenum chamber and the carb should have a hole in it to balance the pressure of the turbo with the float chamber. When I got home I checked my gasket and he was right there was a hole missing in it. I cut a hole in the gasket, started the engine, and the problem went away. This is when I started to work on the car again, and this is basically gave me the boost I needed to pull my finger out of my arse.

Since 2001 I finished rebuilding the car and started to drag race the mini. I quickly found the my old tired metro turbo engine was not upto the job, and went to buy a whole new fresh engine from MED. This engine lasted me less than 1000 miles before melting. At this point a good friend of mine Dave Coxon, advised me build my own engine. With lots of help from Dave I did just that, and built a fresh engine. This time I went for a T2 Turbo from a Renault 5 turbo, and Mapped ignition. This engine did me well and last me a good few years. It made over 180bhp on Vmax's rollers.

I know had the engine I wanted, but I knew the car could do with being on a diet. I was then faced with reality; this was not the car I wanted. I wanted a race car which could be used on the road, not a show car which could be used on the race track. By this time I had made good friends with Endaf Owens, who had the time raced in the Mini Miglia race series. Endaf was impressed with my engine power, but not with the rest of the car. Endaf said, "can you imagine if you put your engine into my shell........." This got me thinking, and that winter out came the grinder, and the car lost 200kgs.

We set out to build a road legal mini miglia, with a turbo engine. We went a little further, adding bits that the miglia's were not allowed, (titanium suspension parts (from Force Racing, ally back arms from KAD, rear disk brakes also from KAD and Carbon fibre doors.)

All was going well with the car, until the head went porous in 2005 while at Castle Combe. I priced up a new head, but then decided on head conversion, which would hopefully turn my mini, into the best A series turbo in the world.

I could not afford a 16v head from KAD or Jack Knight, so instead I set about doing an unusual head conversion. The conversion was to fit a cylinder head from a BMW K1100 16v motorbike onto the A series block.

This was actually first done over a decade ago in Canada (although with a 8v head), then Bruno Roulle in France built and ran the first 16v version (same stud pattern and basic layout as the 8v unit – just with more valves).

MadMatt in Australia had also been working on a conversion, making slow but steady progress in amongst his many other projects.

Once again Dave Coxon helped out massively, with help with the design, drawing the parts in CAD and swinging the spanners. The block modifications for the head were completed at the SheepSpeed workshop, with the conversion parts machined by a several companies in south Wales close to the workshop.

I retained my Emerald ECU so now the car has full fuel injection, but also replaced the previous turbocharger with a brand new “special” turbo (I'm not giving away all my secrets so don't ask)!

At the time I started my conversion I knew of no others in the UK , I have since found out that John Kimins also did the same conversion. Although using a slightly different method to me, he did beat me to the first running in the UK (by a few days) . I however believe I am the first in the world ever to complete the conversion with a turbo – maybe the first 16v A-series turbo ever?

When I say complete, I mean running in the car, driving under it's own steam, and making boost. My car has driven on it's own power, on July 15th 2006 (with many witnesses), This was before it was on the rolling road. Since this time I have made 3 trips to the rollers, and sorted out a few problems. Last time on the rollers peak power was 238bhp (without Nos). I have since done some more mods but not been back to the rollers.

If you have any questions or comments, please ask in the forum <- click on the off track link on the left.

For the latest spec on the car click here

Cheers

Jim Lyons

The Build Diary

13/09/2006

Well what can I say, I’ve been really slack with the updates in the last 2 years, not one update! Well lot’s has gone on. The shell is now complete, and has been doing well seeing some track action. The engine has now been rebuild with a cylinder head from a BMW k1100. This gives me the advantage of 16v and 8 ports. Now that I no longer have Siamese inlet ports this has made it much easier for me to go fuel inject the engine. I simply have one injector for each cylinder, places as close to the head as possible. I have one single large throttle body. The engine is running, but has not been setup on the rolling road yet. Some live mapping has tried to be done on the car, but this was found to be too difficult, even with a wide band lambda, things simply happen to quick.

Here are some photo’s of the car as it is now, and in action over the past few months. I will try to update this website more often.

17/06/2004

I spent a few days in the workshop, but my battery was flat on my camera, I managed to finish off welding new plates in the boot floor, welded brackets in the boot for antiroll bar, fabricated some brackets for my handbrake (further back as I have moved seat and gear changed back too) and fabricated and tacked into place my new ball raced steering column. Also welded up the hole my petrol cap used to come through too.

27/05/2004

here is a photo of my carbon doors fitted, just found the pics on my camera, forgot to upload them until now.

22/05/2004

Here is a photo of the front end with the bonnet on

This is the dash going in

First cut of the wings and a panels, more trimming needed.

I also welded some brackets on to mount the boot lid to

Why do the little things like brackets etc take so long???

15/05/2004

The boot floor in, and holes for the antiroll bar cut in boot floor. New hinge panel welded on

Front end fitted, dummy engine in place, so I could check for intercooler fitment, it's not quite a porche intercooler, but it does the job

Also got the rear parcel shelf in

Also got the gear changed tower, tacked in place,

25/02/2004

Jim joins the Sheepspeed racing team www.sheepspeed.com

10/01/2004

Around 18 months ago I finished rebuilding my mini turbo. Well after 8 years building the car, and 18 months on the road, it's rebuild time again. After getting the racing bug, I decided to turn the car into more of a race car, but still remain road legal. A good friend of mine Endaf Owens, races Miglia's and after seeing his Miglia I fell in love with it. After this, I wanted to create a road legal mini Miglia, but with no rules to hold me back. Basically I will have a Miglia, with a turbo engine, carbon doors, rear KAD alloy arms and disk brakes, and no weight restriction. I hope to have my mini lighter than a Miglia. As I wanted the car to be not just light and stiff, I also wanted it to be strong, so I took the car to Owens Fabrications and got them to help me race prepare the shell, and put in the Miglia spec t45 cage. I’ve done all the donkey work, and left the rest to Endaf.

Over the last 3 months, I've done this.

I’ll give you updates as they happen but this is where I’m too now, what do you think? This was the mini last Easter,
And here are some photo's of the progress.
that's the engine out, now to get that heavy underseal off

Now to take the front end off, as I'm putting on carbon front end

Lots of metal had to be cut out to make the car light

The rear arches had to be cut and tubbed away, as these use to rub on the tyres,

A new slightly larger turbo box was cut it, along with a Webber carb, incase I ever loose the turbo, and got for a carb, I doubt it will happen, but while I'm this far it was thought to be a good idea

I was going to sand blast the whole shell, but after doing some the underside of the car, I though the sand was a bit to harsh, so I just did the hard to reach areas. After getting the paint off, the sills didn't look to good, so the pair was replaced

There are lots more bars to go in. While Endafs on the welder, I'm rubbing the car down, I want to get all the paint off, as I worked out that the total paint on my shell is over 2.5 stones as there is some many different colours. But it is a messy job!

I'm aiming for the car to be ready for Easter weekend when I'm due to race it at York! HELP!

if you want to see more photo's please look at http://www.jimboandlaura.co.uk/mini/rebuild/

Endaf, of Owens Fabrication is doing a great job on my car, please take a look at his website, he not only does race preparation, but also suspension parts etc. www.owensfabrication.com

Please sponsor our racing team www.sheepspeed.com

More photo's can be seen, Click here for photo's

27/09/2003

I've just got back from Castle Combe (Miniworld Action Day) Had a great day, and the car performed very well. It pulls like a train in 3rd and 4th, I'm going to cut some weight from the car this winter. Here are some video's of me goin around Quarry
Video clip 1
Video clip 2
The smoke in the first video is my tyres rubbing the wheel arches.

16/09/2003

I was on emeralds rolling road again today, as I had a new intercooler from a Landrover TD5, and I wanted to get the ecu map modified. The day went well, I managed to get 158 BHP @ 6274 and 163.2 lbft @ 4674. I say over as clutch slipping on rollers, This was only at 15psi, I'm confident the engine is good for 19psi, so don't know what I'll get when I wind it up so more. Now I need to look for a stronger clutch diaphragm, or maybe a paddle clutch. Here is the graph.

29/07/2003

I had the car setup on Tommy Willifields rolling road. The air temp was around 40 degrees C in the garage so I could only run 14psi of boost. I managed to get 140.5 bhp. Tommy did not really understand the software for the ecu, we think there is another 30 bhp to come.

Things went a bit better at Avon Park. I managed to get a 15.095 1/4 mile time which is much better than at York. Here are some videos' of me running

Avopark03/Avon03.AVI

And this is a video of my laptop screen while running the strip

Avopark03/ecu_avon.avi

12/05/2003

York Dragway was a good day, I didn't get the times I wanted, but the car is running to rich, and is missing at 5000rpm, also the ignition has only been mapped up to 4000rpm. I was hoping for something around the 15 second mark, but only managed 16.3. I'm also only running 15 psi of boost at the moment. Once the car has been setup on the rollers, then I'll push it to around 20psi.

Here are some video's of my in York.

Qualifying run 1 Qualifying run2 Qualifying run 2 (better quality) Final run Final run (better quality)

Mini on the grid!

Here are my bad 1/4 mile times, let's hope they get better!

Results for April 21st 2003: Super Street Shootout

Individual racer results for: M65 Jim Lyons

Run Time	Category	Dialin	Reaction	60 Foot	1/8 ET	1/8 MPH	1/4 ET	1/4 MPH
10:47:30	MINI	0.00	1.306	2.670	10.936	64.150	17.146	76.860
11:37:53	MINI	0.00	0.918	2.914	11.002	65.550	17.086	78.610
13:16:23	MINI	0.00	1.208	2.409	10.393	67.410	16.428	79.670
15:57:05	MINI VS BEETLE	0.00	1.062	2.628	10.575	68.980	16.366	83.220

15/04/2003

Got the head skimmed, my chambers are now 29.75cc so still ok. got head back on, I've got the car going, but I'm not going to have time to put it on the rolling road, as I'm racing the mini at York this Easter Monday. I'll let you know how it goes

09/04/2003

ok, here's how today, went, I got to Willfield motors about 9am, got the car of the trailer and onto the rollers, started the engine and allowed it to warm up. Engine got to 75 degrees. then turned it off, then Tommy, (the guy who owns the rolling road) did a leak down test of the engine, to cut a long story short, we found my head gasket was leaking. Luckily I had a spare head gasket in the back of the car, so I whipped the head of in 10 mins (my quickest time yet), then Tommy checked the head and found it was warped! So another day on the rollers without getting a power run!

07/04/2003

I Found the fault I replaced the Bi-metallic strip in the carb with a solid piece of steel, but omitted to make up the thickness of the thinner strip with a washer, hence the jet was pulled up under vacuum, but once boost came in, was pushed down, richening the mixture.

It is still a little rich, but at least now works.

01/04/2003

Running the engine in on Emeralds Rolling road

F&%^$% Mini's!!! Tried to run the mini today on the rolling road, all looked ok for a while, before we noticed a puddle of oil on the floor. After 30 mins of looking around we noticed that it was the oil feed pipe had a hole in it. Dave and I quickly pulled the carb, and turbo off and got a new pipe made up locally, we got it all back together in a few hours. Dave walker continued to map the ECU bad found the car was too rich over 4000rpm, the lambda reading was off the scale, and the car started to miss. I'll check the carb over in a bit to see what's going wrong. But at the moment I think I have around 80bhp, but at 4000rpm that's not too bad. I will fix it! Dave, and Carl at Emeralds where great, and I was there until 9pm, really helpful guys, I'm glad I went with emeralds.

Here is the mini half way through, not what you usually expect to do on the rolling road

And here are some video clips (3mb each) Right click on the links below, and select "save as"

Vid 1, Vid 2, Vid 3, Vid 4

T2 Turbo

As my old turbo was a bit Smokey, I decided to replace it, but I didn't go for the T3 from the metro, this time I went for the T2 from the Renault 5 Turbo. This should give me less lag, as I believe the T3 is too big for a 1293 engine, it's also water cooled too. The turbo was mounted to the metro turbo manifold, but an adapter plate had to be made from nickel, as the mounting holes are in a different place. Here are some pics of my new turbo, you can see lots of mods here. I have gone for an aftermarket actuator. You may also notice, that as this turbo sits lower, I have had to put the oil return from the turbo into the gearbox.

Mapped Ignition

I am using Emeralds M3D ecu for my ignition, I went for this ecu, as I have been advised that Dave Walker of Emerald is the best in the business when it comes to setting ecu's up on the rolling road. It is also seams to perform well, and I have never heard a bad thing about them, I am very impressed with it. As I am not running a distributor I had to get a toothed wheel machined to the end of my crank pulley, this will be used with an inductive pickup to tell my ecu where in the cycle my engine is.

Here you can see, my coil pack, throttle pot, ecu, lambda (o2) sensor and me starting to make the loom. What you can't see here, is the Map sensor, water and air temp sensors.

The Gearbox

The Gearbox has been fully rebuilt by Dave Coxon, who set all tolerances to minimum.

The Engine Build

My new engine will be similar to the last, but this time it will have under crown cooling jets (from a ford Zetec engine) a stage 4 head, mapped ignition, a smaller T2 turbo, and a non-verto flywheel.

Here are some pics of the engine build, you can see here the under crown cooling jets in place, I have had to modify the pistons to clear them, as they were a bit close!

29/07/2002

I've done 800 miles now in my new MED engine, but no more can I do! as the bloody thing has melted. I have melted the head, three pistons and the block. This to say the least has pi$$ed me off, I'm going to the pub!

11/07/2002

My new MED engine is in and running. I've only done a few hundred miles in it so far, after 1000 miles it should be run in, so then I hope to get it on a rolling road. I'll let you know how it gets on. One comment!! Bloody Fast!! and Bloody Loud!

20/06/2002

I decided against building my own engine, as I am in a bit of a rush. I have ordered an engine and a head from MED. I have also got in the post a TRAN-X cross pin diff, S/C 1:1 drop gears, comp central oil pickup pipe. This should all be in and running by the end of next week.

08/06/2002

The engine I had in the car was worse than I thought. It's burning more oil than fuel. I have a spare turbo engine I can rebuild, so that's my next job, to build a new turbo engine. I'm not even going to bother driving this engine around. I want to get the engine built by 13th of July.

06/06/2002

Passed the MOT today! The car is still not finished, need to tidy the interior. My dad was driving behind me today, and he told me that when ever I slow down and use the engine as a brake, I get flames of over a foot long coming from the exhaust. I think it must be running a bit rich, rolling road soon

For the latest spec on the car click here