Dark Mini

As soon as i was old enough to drive i have always wanted a Mini, over the years i have have had many minis from round nose minis to clubmans. i started with a Leyland and eventually learnt about Rover Minis (the Rolls Royce of Minis) and have had a few of those but for one reason or another ended up selling them.

Throughout the years of owning Minis i had heard of people (mostly in the UK) convert their Minis with a Honda VTEC engine, it seemed like an exciting premise, all the reliability of a Late model engine, and the economy of 5 gears, sounded like a win/win situation.

In early 2017 i felt the Mini "itch" again so i went on the hunt for an import model Mini and eventually i found an import model Austin Mini that had been brought to Australia long ago, it had been painted with a paint brush so it looked very average, and it was clearly an English import meaning its possible it was full of rust, but on inspection it seemed to be relatively rust free.

I soon contact a friend of mine to go on an adventure to pick it up, and in April we flew to Melbourne and planned to drive back to Adelaide in it. however the mini had other plans.. with its ageing 850 engine it it was less than 1km from the point i had bought it before we struck problems.  we eventually solved 2 other issues on the long journey back but we made it home to Adelaide. (Just)

Details of the vehicle -
Make - Austin
Model - Mini
Year - 1968
Engine - 850cc
Trans - Manual
other specs - 10" Contessas, white roof, Blue interior with lowback seats,

My plans for the vehicle was to originally to make my own frame, and installed the VTEC into the Mini but it went from that into a full restoration project as you will see in the following pages.

Below is what I started with.