Saxon is that a 30?
My first car. Fabulous little thing. Loved it

Mini Remastered £99k

I remember seeing Radford Minis in a showroom in St Aldates , Oxford in themid 70’s.
Just googled them and found this:

http://www.carandclassic.co.uk/car/C724549 😯

Speeder yes it is. 4″ inches height taken out of the body. Bonded in steel stiffeners. We built a purpose built cage that tied the subframes together. Subframes sit a bit lower. Using a Weber allowed us to keep the normal bonnet. That one is putting out about 100bhp+ at the wheels. It’s very light which helps. As much work went into lightening everything as much as possible. I remember drilling the suspension cones to soften them, what a faff. Should of just used coilovers. They are very scarce these days. Most are used for track days with motorbike engines.

Ooh I have thoughts of a KAD 16V powered, Force Ti suspended, 10″ wheeled Mini Minus in my head now – another one to add to the list of lottery win cars I had THIS Brochure BITD –

Probably pickled up at the Mini 30 meet or similar, I couldn’t afford it then and probably couldn’t now. 😥

The Kad stuff was superbly engineered problem as always with the A series is the gearbox and diff weak link. It costs a fortune to make them handle the power the Kad stuff is capable of putting out. The Minus works well with the Hyabusa engine because it’s light enough for the lower torque at lower revs to pull away without revving it’s nuts off. Needs a reverse gear for road use though! Original mini stuff is going up in value all the time.

My first car in 1993.

Not in the same league as the crackers above but a great car.
Some mild tinkering with go faster stripes, bucket seats and an orange pool ball gear knob (nicked).

It went pretty good too with big bore exhaust, inlet manifold and filter upgrades. I remember looking longingly through the mags for upgrade parts, especially wheels but I never had the cash.
Rust! Me and my dad did a lot of welding to get it through its last MOT.

Bought and sold on for under £500.

When I see a classic mini going past I reminisce of past adventures. Camping, Skiing, Windsurfing gear on the roof! Even delivering fruit and veg as my summer job van had broken down.

This is a friend from school’s car, his uncles from new. It lay for years as a shell before eventually being restored after his brother enthusiastically took it completely to bits.

I am not sure if it was excitement or fear hurtling though the Inverness countryside in that car. I remember BRAKE FADE and incredible ditch avoiding cornering. I dare say it will be worth a few pennies now as a Mark 1 1071cc Cooper.

How fast are we going?
Just past the fuel gauge!

A mate of mine was helping them out last year when they had the bad floods.

He was going round draining all the oil and stuff. Saw some pictures of it too.

It was goof that they managed to survive all that as I do love seeing classics like this come out on sunny days 🙂

There is another review if the crazy David Brown resto-mod classic mini over on Pistonheads now.

Certainly not the way I’d spend £100k and I love a mini (wife and sister both had them as first cars).

Inbred456 – Member
The Kad stuff was superbly engineered problem as always with the A series is the gearbox and diff weak link. It costs a fortune to make them handle the power the Kad stuff is capable of putting out. The Minus works well with the Hyabusa engine because it’s light enough for the lower torque at lower revs to pull away without revving it’s nuts off. Needs a reverse gear for road use though! Original mini stuff is going up in value all the time.

I always wanted to do a 999cc screamer based on a 970S block (or cut down 1275 block as the 1275 iirc is the same with an inch or so of extra casting or so on top) so the torque would be less of an issue – the KAD would be utilised for the smoothness and revability really. Shorter block would also help it fit under the bonnet but would probably require a custom subframe anyway as the minus is so much lower than standard. I like the idea of the hyabusa engine but they are a bit shouty and would always feel a bit wrong somehow.

Pipe dream anyway really though mini minus had gone on the eBay list for a while

If I could afford to fund the build, then one of THESE in a lightened mark one shell on tens……..well, maybe if i sell a kidney or a child or two…..it may well be worth it for 360bhp at the wheels 😀

Somewhere I have a copy of MiniWorld magazine with that mad twin R1 engined one in. I think it was pushing out 320bhp. Can’t seem to find mention of it on the Z Cars website though.

Dunno if mine qualified as “classic”, it was a B-reg Ritz, but it gave sterling and mostly reliable service when I was about 20. Used to get a bike in the back somehow too.

Started like this…

Resprayed it like this…