1971 Leyland Mini Van

[whitebuffalo]

Well, I did it again. I had the intention of selling my Mini and focusing my efforts on my Sunbeam Imps and MGB, however, Minis are in my blood and when this car came up for sale a few days after I sold my Mini Traveller, I had to get it. I have always like the Clubman style front end and this car fits the bill. It was built in Australia as a Clubman van so it originally had panels on the sides, but the Australians tend to fit glass in which is highly beneficial to visibility.

Since it was built in Australia , it has unique features like only being right hand drive with no provisions for left hand drive, there are V-shaped pressings where the windscreen wipers mount and the doors have exposed door hinges with roll up windows where UK produced Clubman Minis had internal door hinges.

Nice thing is that the load bay is flat so I can use it to carry car parts and other things and not worry about getting the upholstery damaged.

It has a 1098 motor and I intend on rebuilding it with a little more performance in mind. The 1098s are good for torque in the lower to midrange RPM so canyon carving will be a blast.

[whitebuffalo]

So, took my car out on it's maiden voyage on 3 January for my Mini club's new year's drive. On the way to the meeting point my car decided to do a James Bond smoke screen impersonation at 70mph, but when I slowed to about 60 it went away. Got to the meet point and saw that a fair bit of oil had pushed out of the dip stick and through the crankcase breathers. Checked the oil and found it was down about a pint and found that there was Mayonnaise in the rocker cover cap.




So, did a compression test dry and with some oil in it and found that #3 and #4 had low compression so hoped that it was just a head gasket. Took the head off to find the head gasket is not the problem, #3 and #4 pistons have holes in them


Now I need to take the motor out and look to rebuild it. Not what I expected so early in my ownership, but it is what it is.

[Steve Simmons]

Oh bummer! I guess those holes aren't supposed to be there.

[whitebuffalo]

Oh bummer! I guess those holes aren't supposed to be there.

I think they are called compression bypass holes

[VWNate1]

" Compression Relief Holes " .

I really like the looks of this car .

[whitebuffalo]

Got my rebuilt motor back from Heritage Garage the engine builder so now I am ready to get stuck into painting the engine bay and fitting the motor. It is a 1098 with .30 overbore so now roughly a 1122cc. High compression pistons, Cooper 12G295 head, 266 camshaft, larger valves with unleaded hardened seats for the exhaust valves. It will breathe through an HIF 38 and exhale out a Maniflow Freeflow three branch exhaust and an RC40 muffler. Super 2 core radiator to keep it cool.

[VWNate1]

Ooh ;

That engine looks good and sounds like it'll be a stormer .

Shouldn't you paint it Austin Green or perhaps to make it go faster , RED ? .

What was this trucklet's original color ? .

Blue or the off white ? .

Looking forward to more up dates .

[whitebuffalo]

After 1967 , BMC motors would be black, from 1967 and earlier they were green or in Australia they were an Apple green metallic color. Red motors were in the 1980s and later. I think the black is the faster color, absorbs light that is energy

The Moggie pickup was originally white.

[whitebuffalo]

Worked on the engine bay preparing for the install of the motor. Sanded down some of the panels, but someone in the past had put a texture coating down first then painted purple over that then another person had red painted over the purple.

In the effort to smarten up the engine bay and put a somewhat universal color to the bay so in the future if I paint the car a different color then the bay won't need to be changed. The bay is now a semi-gloss black with the texture showing through. Looks much better.














And to fit the carbon fiber firewall block off to keep noise and fumes out of the dash area I had to make a slit in the panel to fit the wires through, better than having to disconnect all the wires and feed them through the hole. Now to find a plug to fit in the hole to make it more fume resistant.

[equiprx]

I recently put all my firewall seals in one place so if you send me the relevant dimensions I'll take a look.

[whitebuffalo]

I recently put all my firewall seals in one place so if you send me the relevant dimensions I'll take a look.

I'll have to see what the diameter is, the one for a Mini floor drain hole didn't fit.

Progress on the car though, engine is in! I need to align the engine mounts then put the ancillaries on and I will be close to doing the initial start up.

Cool thing about these Australian built Clubman fronted Minis is that the slam panel across the engine bay is removable which eases removal and installation of the motor. On round nose Minis and English built Clubman Minis , the slam panel is fixed in place so you need to get the motor really high and angle it rearwards to clear the differential housing from scraping the firewall. This Australian design allows the motor to just go straight onto the bay with no banging the radiator or scraping the fresh paint.

[whitebuffalo]

Did initial run of the motor on the 17th of September, first drives in the car on Thursday and Friday and did a run with my Mini club on the 25th on Angeles Crest and the car ran perfectly! Only one issue that I found was that the throttle cable was binding, but now have a longer one with wider radii so will work as it should.

[VWNate1]

Looks good ! nice to hear it's running fine .

FWIW : when my Morris Minor came to me it had a gorilla throttle return spring so I replaced it with the correct soft one and discovered the throttle cable was all bound up .

Remove it and taking it apart revealed one strand had broken in the exact middle and was dragging .

Simple solution ? unwind then snip off that one strand at the pedal end and Lo ! all is well again .

Of course , I cleaned and lubricated both the cable and Bowden .

[Larry Kluss]

Congrats! Nice job. It's looking good. That's the kind of mini-van I wouldn't mind being seen in

[whitebuffalo]

This motor is so much better than my Innocenti's motor. Pulling power on the freeway and canyons, revs nicely. Next on the agenda is to put disc brakes on and set up the suspension.