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Vented rotors: My Metro rotors are here. Some rough spacing and measuring - I didn't have the correct tool at home to remove the drive flange - implies that I'll only have to take about 6mm off the diameter of the rotor. That's only half of what's usually done. My measurements were done with a set of brakes from a 1.8 Miata which has larger pads than the 1.6. More checking will be done tonight on the smaller unit. I'll also see tonight how close the mounting points for the caliper are. Since the caliper bracket holds the pads, it'll be difficult to make one up from scratch. This will be interesting.
It wouldn't be a hobby if it were cheap: I've been looking at options for the brakes from several different angles. Sending $500 to KAD is one option but not one I like very much, in large part because I'd still be stuck with a pad size that is not available in North America. Fiesta calipers are another option that apparently works well but I can't bring myself to do it. So in order to allow the Miata brakes to work, I need thicker rotors. A pair of vented Metro rotors are winging their way to me right now. I'll install them on the Mini drive flanges (sacrilege! cries the crowd) instead of the more common Metro flanges because I'll be building the caliper brackets from scratch anyhow. In the meantime I'll pull off a hub and see just how close I can come with these Miata calipers and what my rotor diameter will be.
More braking news: I tried to fit a Wilwood Billet Dynalite caliper up to one of the 10" wheels. Now that isn't going to work. The caliper is designed for much larger wheels. No surprise there of course. Wilwood does have a nice compact caliper (the Dynalite Single) but the piston size doesn't work out well. The largest piston available is 1.75" and I need 2". Time for a little more research. These parts are freely available in the UK for large amounts of money but I'd prefer an alternative solution.
First test fit of the 10" wheels: It's no surprise that the rear 10" bolted right on. The offset appears identical to the 12" wheel it replaces so there's no problem whatsoever. In the front, the caliper fouls the wheel. Again, not a surprise. The current plan is to fit a pair of Wilwood calipers up front. They make a "Billet Dynalite" caliper that is light, appropriately sized and has an enormous variety of pad options available. I have a few here at work that I can take home to try. The neat thing is that by removing and replacing a spacer in the caliper body, I can make the same unit work with the normal unvented rotor or a vented Metro unit.
Time to get little: The car is a riot to drive. I love it.
I've been accumulating the tools required to paint it Almond Green. The garage has been reorganised for more room and a giant compressor added. Now all I need is some painting skill. But first, I've picked up some new wheels and tires. The 12" wheels on the car seem to work pretty well but new rubber is brutally expensive. I have a set of Falken street tires but I'm a sucker for the sticky stuff. For the same price as a new set of A048 tires in a 12" size, I picked up some 10" Minator wheels with Yokohama A008 rubber installed. These tires are easily found at Tire Rack, making future replacements easy. Plus Minis look super-cool on the original 10" wheels. The only problem is my 8.4" disc brakes. I'll have to make some modifications to those in order to fit the wheels over top. Honda and Fiesta brakes have been used in the past but I'm considering Miata calipers because I have a number of them handy and there are good selections for pads. Let's see how this turns out.
Ooooh, messy: The new tie rods are on. I'll have the car realigned tomorrow. The new tie rod ends will go on at the same time.
While working on the control arms last time, I noticed a split CV boot. I picked up a new one from Mini Mania and went to put it on last night. Everything went pretty smoothly until I went to withdraw the driveshaft from the chassis. First, my manual forgot to mention that if I did this with a full sump, I'd pour oil out the side when the offset sphere joint was pulled from the tranny. I was pulling it free and thought to myself, "Hmm, I wonder if this is going to AUGH!". Thanks, Haynes. Secondly, I'm told to just pull the shaft out through a handy hole in the subframe. Maybe my car has beefier joints from the Metro engine swap, but there's no way it's going through that hole. I ended up removing the CV joint with the axle still in the car and putting the new boot on that way. The inexpensive aftermarket boot came with zip ties which actually interfered with the steering knuckle so that needs to be taken care of as well. Sheesh, it never ends.
After the alignment: First, the bad news. Unless I install adjustable tie rods, the car ends up with 2 degrees of cross caster in the front. There's also 0.2 degrees less negative camber on one front wheel which I find a little odd given the adjustment range. Perhaps more camber made the caster even worse. The steering tie rod ends both have worn ball joints.
The good news? Adjustable tie rods and new steering ends are on the way. The car doesn't seem affected by the cross caster - and it's a total riot to drive now. I'll have to recalibrate my corner entry speeds as the car just shrugs corners off. It's not darty at all, but it's obviously using the tires much better. Where I used to scrabble out of a corner, the car just puts down the power and roars out - and it's not that it was a slouch before. I'm tempted to enter the Mini in an upcoming track event just to see how it does against the other newer cars. Excuse me, I need to go drive the little thing some more.
Suspension work and other problems: After looking at the tires after the autocross, it's obvious the alignment could be improved. The car appeared to have some positive camber on one side and was overworking the outer edges of the tires. After asking around (why can nobody give ballpark recommendations on a car with 40+ years of motor racing behind it?), I decided to buy some adjustable lower front arms for camber adjustment as well as some trick brackets that gave me both camber and toe adjustment in the rear. I tried to buy these from the UK but the company politely declined the opportunity to ship suspension parts to the US due to fear of lawyers. Pity. I found the front arms at GB Car Parts for an excellent price and also took advantage of a sale at Mini Mania for the rears. MM also supplied some tie rod bushings to replace the cracked ones I already had. Ideally I should have some adjustable tie rods to change the caster but I can fabricate those easily enough.
I like working on this little car. It was immediately obvious what to do up front to fit the new beefy arms. That went pretty quickly and I didn't even have to remove the wheels. In the rear, it was straightforward enough but corrosion cost me two broken bolts. One was easy to sort out but the second involved a damaged captive nut that is inside the rear subframe. Not so good. I'm still trying to sort out what to do there. The car is currently at the alignment shop to get the wheels pointed in more or less the same direction and I'll tweak from there.
There's been some other excitement in the meantime. A fuel line cracked between the filter and the carb, dumping raw fuel on to the exhaust. Not so good. There's also a missing bolt on the engine that's supposed to hold an exhaust bracket (that's why I was looking underneath the car). The fuel line was quickly fixed but the exhaust bracket hasn't been yet. Once that fuel line was fixed, another broke right at the rear of the car where the line passed through the body. I had to pull the tank to replace this - and the only way to drain the tank was to cut this hose and let it drool for a while. It takes a long time for 5 gallons to drain out through an unpressurized 1/4" hose! It's all fixed up now. Now I just have to repair the cracked CV boot. Lots to keep me busy on this little critter.
No flares: With the upcoming repaint, I've been wondering about running the little Mini with no fender flares. It's fairly normal for cars with 10" wheels, but it seems the disc brakes on my car widen the track somewhat. Well, the flares had to come off the car anyhow so it was time to see how it looked.
Not bad, actually. The front wheels are definitely pushed out a bit but it gives the car a bit of attitude. Surprisingly, the lack of flares makes the car look smaller (no, really!) and older. I rather like it. Since the Almond Green color I'm planning to use is a more vintage hue, I think I'll fill in the mounting holes for the flares and put a chrome strip around the lip of the wheelwells, as would have been done on a old Cooper. Almond Green with an Old English White roof is a color combination used on those cars. The wheels are still too big at 12" but I can live with that for the time being. I can always redrill the holes. I'm starting to get excited about stripping the car down and painting it.
No squeak: The squeak was an odd one. I took both wheels off on the right side and couldn't find anything. When test driving, the squeak turned into a scream and then stopped. The car is showing no ill behaviours now. Was it a stone behind a dust shield on the discs? Or has something else crippled itself and I'm just waiting for a wheel to fall off? I'd love to know. There's no indication of wheel bearing problems now.
Fairly soon the Mini will be coming apart so I can repaint it. I must admit the tan is growing on me, but I think Almond Green will look much better. I'll pull off the flares first to see how I like the looks of the car without them.