Yes, I must be crazy.......so this build should fit right in with this group, right? 
I've had Minis - both the classic and the "new" versions - most of my life, I got my first one, a 63 Cooper S with the 1071, dry suspension, tiny 7" disc brakes and all in '68 for $400. I rebuilt pretty much everything, had it painted twice and drove it from KC to Colorado when I moved there. Kept it for years and sold it when I moved to California.
Now I'm back in KC, I've owned about 5 classics and two new MINIs since I've moved here in '94 and all along I wondered about building a Mini hot rod, so I've decided to do just that.
The plan - a 2 liter Ford Ecoboost from an ST, mounted in the rear and driving the rear wheels......hence the thread title.
I acquired a shell from a friend, it was supposed to have had all the rust fixed with new panels but.......well, no. So I will be doing quite a bit of rust repair even before I cut it all apart to fit the motor.
My inspirations come from many sources, including some of the builds I've seen here and of course Project Binky.
The day he brought the car up from his shop near Tulsa, it was raining buckets......this will become important shortly.....
In reply to MiniDave :
When the car got here I rolled it into the shop and onto the scissor lift, it was late in the afternoon so I didn't do anything else that night. The next morning the shop smelled horrible and I soon discovered why.....
The car had been sitting on the dirt in a covered lean-to for probably 5 years, and it was FULL of poop.....raccoon, possum you name it, and of course on the drive up it all got soaked! So I got to spend the next day cleaning buckets full of poop out of every nook and cranny, plus there were probably 100 mud dauber nests (thankfully empty) all over the car......I'm still finding new ones of those!
Since it has no suspension or wheels, I can't get it off the lift and onto the driveway for a good hose off, so it's still pretty dirty. But since I'll be doing massive amounts of grinding and wire brushing, I expect it will be clean eventually.
At this time I also began to realize just how much rust there was to fix....even tho it did have some new panels on it.
I started by stripping what was left in the car, all the wiring, brake pipes, steering column and rack and so on, then I found I really didn't have any place to put all those parts plus the new stuff that was going on the car, so I did a quick detour and built a 10X16 shed - that was for all the gardening stuff.....my 60"ZTR, push mower and all the wife's potting stuff. Decades ago I had built a small 4X7 lean-to shed off the house and now it's looking pretty sad, so all the car stuff is going in there till the project is done, than that one will be removed.
With that done I ordered a few new panels to fix the worst of the rust, and I'll start cutting it up once those get here.
While waiting for panels and such I decided to start work on the front end, I needed a gas tank, radiator and A/C condenser first....
One of the members here found me a link to a gas tank that would work with some small modifications, so I started there. First I put the front subframe back in, cleaned up some misc protrusions I wouldn't need and started measuring. With the guy's help here I figured out how many gallons I could get in the space I had, and started cutting. I cut 9" off one end of the new tank, then built a baffle inside. I also had to relocate the sender as the arm wouldn't fit in the original location. With that all done, the baffle was welded in, the much shortened end welded back on, the sender hole welded over and a new one drilled. Then the tank was tested for leaks (none found - yay!) and I fit it into the space. It fit perfectly!
Tank before mods.....
Baffle with slot cut in for the sender arm, fuel pump location shown tho it's not attached at this point
End welded up and sender installed in new hole. Pressure regulator/filter will be bolted to a tab, hoses go to the dash8 fittings, one for pressure from the fuel pump, one to a return fitting with a one way check valve and the middle one to a charcoal filter as a vent. Two tabs welded on the ends to locate the top of the tank. All done, it gave me right at 10 gallons.
Next order of business was the radiator and A/C condenser. I looked long and hard to find one that I thought would be large enough to cool this engine and yet fit in the space I had.....here's where Binky helped. Even tho I'm not doing what they did to make a tilt/removable front end I did see how they managed to get a massive radiator, A/C condenser, charge cooler, oil cooler and who knows what else under the bonnet on their car!
I finally found a 3 row, dual pass radiator that fit the space (for a racing Sirocco) and did some calcs on how big a condenser I would need to cool the tiny space in this car - then ordered one from Vintage Air, along with a mock-up evaporator case. More on that later.....
With the sub frame back in again I located the fuel tank and dropped the condenser, radiator and fan in to see how it would fit....looks like it will work! the inner fender with the hole in it will get a set of louvers like the left side has
Next I will build some brackets to attach all the parts.....now that the new panels have come in I can start cutting out some of the rusty panels and welding in the new ones. I'll have to move the '73 Innocenti parked next to it to a friend's garage temporarily, I can't have grinding sparks and debris hitting a freshly restored car.
Next up - the engine.......I know I'm skipping around a lot and this is six months of work so far compressed into a few short posts. I expect this build to take at least two years to completion, but I hope to have a running/driving car by this time next summer.
I found a low mile (39K) 2013 engine/6 speed gearbox from a Focus ST. This engine makes 250hp and 275 torques out of 2 liters with a turbo. The gearbox will be a problem as it's geared for a car with 18" wheels and I'm running 13's.....unlike a Honda you can't just order up a new final drive, these Getrag boxes (same as used in new MINIs) use two drive pinions to achieve the final drive, one on each main shaft. One is for gears 1,3,5 and the other for 2,4,6.
Solution? Pretty simple.....in Europe they sold a Focus ST diesel, and where the overdrive final ratio in this gearbox is about 2.9-1, in those it's 2.1-1. Given that this car will be about 1500lb lighter than the Focus it came out of, I think that should work perfectly. I've found used gearboxes with reasonable mileage for about £200 in England and my brother lives there so he'll handle getting it shipped to me.
The engine came on a pallet, with all the PATs removed and wired and ready to run, so naturally I had to start it up!
VID20230415192107 - YouTube
I have absolutely no idea how I'm going to build the rear subframe and suspension. I'm torn between a double a-arm setup for it's ease of adjustability and a trailing arm setup for its easier build. Any way you cut it space will be at a premium......I plan to use coilovers all the way around.
I'm not really building this as a track car, tho I will be doing Mini meets with lots of spirited driving on windy, hilly roads, and I'm hoping I can get a better ride quality than a stock Mini. If it does as well as my current MINI - which is no Caddy in ride quality - I'll be happy.
After a good discussion with the folks here I decided on the brake package I'll be using. I'm going to stay with 13" wheels even tho some of these builds have gone with 15 or even 18" wheels.....I think the 13's look best.
I have found a set of "Fortech" flared fenders for it, I'm not 100% sure I'm going to use them as they are huge and require a lot of fettling to fit......but I have them if I decide to go that way. They're rare as hen's teeth so I'm glad I stumbled onto a set. They look like this
Using those would allow me to push the rear suspension further out and even allow 8" wide wheels vs the 6" ones I have now.
Brakes will be ventilated rotors with 4 piston aluminium calipers, std discs with two piston calipers in the rear.
That's a pretty cool render, but way more extreme than what I'm shooting for.....
No, it won't be army green. No idea what color at this point, but that's not going to be it. My buddy did a version of what I'm doing, you may have seen it last year when it sold on BaT....... army green with the WWII style graphics, running a turbo charged Honda V6. Also way more extreme than what I'm going for!
I pulled the motor off the pallet to get ready to fit it up into the body......
Opened up a lot more room in my tiny shop getting that 4'X7' pallet out of there.!
OK, question for the cognoscenti.......
Looking at the shifter on the gearbox, there are a couple of large weights attached to the main shift link....this is on the fore/aft motion side. It's very easy to shift so I wonder if it's just to enhance shift "feel"?
I'm thinking of cutting them off to make the brackets and shift cable routing easier.
Can anyone think of a good reason NOT to?
New MINIs have the same Getrag gearbox and they do not have these weights.....
Piguin
New Reader
8/7/23 3:33 a.m.
Amazing project!
Don't forget - no update is too small, every one is an opportunity for feedback, discussion and possible inspiration. Plus, when you are feeling stuck, being able to look back and see how far you've gone and how many obstacles you've overcome helps a LOT with morale.
Re: weights. No personal experience of these gearboxes, but it may be worth it to check the new MINI's shifter arm, maybe it uses a different way of spreading the weight since they are latter models. Question, can those be found in the diesel version of the ST too?
Hard to say - I've had MINI shifters apart and they're no different than this one - the shifter link moves very easily, so I can't see where it would change that. Maybe an anti-vibration thing of some sort?
I won't be at that point for quite a while yet, but I'm using Binky as a model of how to go about a project this big - I'm trying to plan WAY ahead, to keep the mistakes and re-does to a minimum. So far it's worked out OK......
I don't know where to go to research this, that's why I asked here.......buncha smart fellows here!
Cool! More EcoBoost goodness!
Subscribed! I've been looking forward to this build for a long time, I can't wait to follow the progress here!
Definietly in for this!
btw - are you the same Dave that likes Mini's from Garage Journal?
Yes, that's me! But on Garage Journal I'm under my old screen name, from back when I had an E-type......
Glad to see you here, I'm following your V-8 build too!
Today's project was to get the engine settled on the hydraulic table and remove the engine electrical harness......which was a total PITA! But I didn't want to have it in the way when lifting the engine in and out of the car to mock up the subframe and suspension.
With that done I'll probably move back to the front subframe and build and weld in all the brackets needed to mount the fuel tank, A/C condenser and radiator. With that in place I can start thinking about how to run the pipes from the front to the back, I have some basic ideas already but I'll need to refine them as I go along. Looks like the two big hoses will be in the right place to hook them to the pipes, and I'd like to put some elbows in the front part to match up to the radiator, so all I'll need are a couple of short elbows to connect them. However, there are a couple of small bleed pipes that were attached between the coolant recovery tank and the thermostat housing, that used proprietary fittings. I'm not sure how I'm going to make those work, or even plug them off if I can't make them work as intended. Challenges....
By the way, each one of those little blue tape markers are for a sensor or control........there are a bunch of them!
MiniDave said:
Yes, that's me! But on Garage Journal I'm under my old screen name, from back when I had an E-type......
Glad to see you here, I'm following your V-8 build too!
Excellent! Great to see you over here too, really been enjoying GRM
Also, re: shifter weights, most of the VW short shifters eliminate that big counter weight, and when I bought the CAE shifter for my r32 they have you cut that weight off an OEM unit and drill/tap it for the ball stud....so I'd say lop it of!
When we built the Outlaw bug we soon arrived at the point that it was realized to get the strength and suspension pickup points we needed for the performance we were building, we had to build a tube frame chassis and drop the body over it.
Love the concept of going mid-engine.
https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/build-projects-and-project-cars/purple-frogs-vw-build/162519/page1/
If you see any good ideas that will help, use them. If you see any bad ideas.... shhh. 
YMMV
In reply to fouckhest :
Yeah, I can't see anything that will be harmed by getting rid of it either, I can shift it with my fingers very easily right now.
In reply to Purple Frog (Forum Supporter) :
Thanks! I will go thru the build.....
Most likely the weights are there to dampen rattle noises in the shift lever. Seems like a synonym for "useless mass".
