Did a search but nothing popped up...at least not on the first 20 of 50 pages!

For all those who drive their minis everyday, or there abouts, are there any tips or suggestions of things that one could do to make their mini a bit more reliable and trusty for the daily grind?
Any problems with overheating in traffic?
Getting a cabin full of fumes sitting in a tunnel?

My drive to work is a nice 45 minute cruise that I would like to take the mini on some days, however it involves alot of tunnels; lane cove, harbour tunnel, eastern distributor+more small ones. and not to mention driving these roads gives alot of potential for a traffic jams, especially on the M2.

P.S. its a pretty racey little 1098

Cheers!

1. Put a proper PCV on it if not done already. Then the engine digests the fumes, not you.
2. Replace all the door, boot and side window seals.
3. Ditch a centre exit zorst if you have one, they create a fug of fumes that drags along behind the car..

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DrMini- 1970 wasaMatic 1360, Mk1S crank, 86.6HP (ATW) =~125 @ crank, 45 Dellorto (38 chokes), RE282 sprint cam, 1.5 rockers, 11.0:1 C/R.

I used to drive her everyday.

Get the biggest baddest CCA battery you can fit into your battery box. Something in the vicinity of 550CCA.

Carry a tool kit with you, one that you can use to change spark plugs and fan belts with etc.

Make sure your spare is in good nick and pumped up, jack and tools to change tyres all there.

Have a clean cloth with you in the car for those wet winter days when you can't see a bloody thing front or back.

Install a passenger side mirror if haven't got one << life saving device.

Make sure your horn is loud, upgrade to air horns << life saving device.

Sort out your overheating problems if you have any. After my rebuild with fresh clean block and radiator, she can idle all day without overheating. Flush out the radiator or get it serviced, think about installing thermofan if you need to.

Smoke inside cabin: I too had this problem for many years, it was a long and hard fought battle that really gave me the sh!ts for many years... There are many causes but in general: make sure all your exhaust from headers to tailpipe isn't leaking. Only way to check is jack up on hoist and check for black soot on joints. If it's leaking anywhere then there will be high chance for exhaust in the cabin. Make sure the tail pipe is as long as possible (without looking too dicky), and left side of car (centre exhaust is no good for fumes!) Lastly fill up all holes in the firewall and floor, door seals, pretty much all holes in the body, especially boot seal and rear window seals. Any little drill holes or cable holes will suck in fumes via vacuum effect at speed. I got the sh!ts and in the end the only way I fixed my issues was to Dynamat the whole EFFing car inside. Every last square inch. That fixed her real good

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Lillee - 1969 Morris Mini K

I used Minis and Mokes as dailies for around 20 years.The big downside of using our little darlings everyday is that they need more maintenance than modern cars. That's OK, but having to do tedious dirty jobs every weekend wears a bit thin after a while, so anything you can do to increase the time between 'services' is good.

One thing that I can recommend is fitting disk brakes. Not just because they stop you better, but because they don't need to be adjusted all the time like drum brakes do on a high mileage car. Other things would be to use good quality lubricants, coolants and filters.

Tim

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1951 Morris Commercial J Type Van
1955 BSA C11G
1961 Morris Mini Traveller
1969 Triumph TR6R
1977 Leyland Moke Californian

make sure your fuel gauge works.... isnt that right Lillee

keep the services up to date with the engine, the more times you change the oil, the better.

And as above.

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Here am I sitting in my tin can far above the Moon
Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do...



“A turbo: exhaust gasses go into the turbocharger and spin it, witchcraft happens and you go faster.” - Jeremy Clarkson

It works, I just don't pay attention to it!

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Lillee - 1969 Morris Mini K

Wow! Big thanks for the quick replies!

This has given me a few small jobs to do over the xmas break.

I have a left rear exit exhaust, however the pipe runs under the centre until it hits the boot and shoots off to the left for the muffler?

I will also dynamat my firewall as best as possible, as there are a few small holes surrounding the weber where it became a case of a sledgehammer to make the weber clear (a matter of milimetres!) and maybe chuck a bit of something to fills the holes.

There is a serious buffet of smells wafting through the cabin at the moment...I have taken this so far as standard engine running in? (full rebuild and upgrade was only 100km ago)
Some fresh seals around all the windows and doors would go down a treat too.

I also chucked some nice discs on it about 4 weeks ago

Sure it can never do any harm putting a nice big fresh battery in. Unsure of current ones age as it was in it when I bought the car a year ago...car turns over no worries after sitting for 2 weeks though. Except for when my starter decides not to engage....which the doc has given me a remedy for.

My voltmeter dips about 1-2v each time the indicator flashes.... and do some minis not have hazard lights???

A freshly rebuilt engine shouldn't smell too much, unless you painted the exhaust manifold.

Ditch the points and condensor for an electronic distributor module to fit inside your own dizzy.

Or replace it with a new high energy pointless dizzy altogether. It will make those cold morning starts so much easier and you won't be left on the side of the Waringah Fwy with those crazy Sydney drivers screaming past hurling abuse.

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SooperDooperMiniCooperExpertEngineering

All garage work involves equal measures of enthusiasm, ingenuity and a fair degree of irresponsibility.

Upgraded the points to electric a few weeks ago, so good to hear thats a reccomended point.
Might book her in for a tune for the timing, jetting and mixture so she runs smoother and as she should.

Just putting a new exhaust on my ute stinks for the first few hundred kms...surely putting a whole heap of fresh metal with fresh gaskets, loctite, gasket glue, engine paint, etc wouldnt be out of place giving off some smells..........

If you have one of those useless Bling engine breathers you will never get rid of the enginey smells. Unless you can hermetically seal the firewall...

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DrMini- 1970 wasaMatic 1360, Mk1S crank, 86.6HP (ATW) =~125 @ crank, 45 Dellorto (38 chokes), RE282 sprint cam, 1.5 rockers, 11.0:1 C/R.

Kev, if I wasn't so afraid to pull the inlet off again after my issues with the gasket and leaks I would have it drilled, tapped and PCVed in no time haha

Ill try and seal up the engine bay from the cabin as much as possible...theres alot of holes for the wiring too which makes it extra interesting

Yes on my last rebuild I got Greig Malure to weld a weber box for me, I rewired the entire loom do that it enters via one grommet in the firewall which is much easier to tame than 10,000 holes. This allowed me to fill the rest of the bullet holes in the body over with Dynamat. If done right and your door and windows seals are right then this should work.

One thing might be the big hole in the firewall where the speedo sits. This is not exactly sealed... try sealing this somehow. I did it with a weber box

The other one that is important to fix is the boot seal. Exhaust smoke can get sucked in via the back at speed and seep in through the (badly) sealed boot firewall. Behind the rear seat there is usually a big hole as well where the mini went through rotisserie at the factory. Seal that up too if it isn't already.

I only have one puny little breather on my engine so I don't think this is the source of the problem...

My wife used to hate riding in the mini for this very reason "It's smelly!". I took her for a drive for the first time in quite some years in Lillee and she was pleasantly surprised "It's feels so comfy in here" (referring to new carpets, new seats and new pretty much everything!)

Do as mick says and replace your dissy with an electronic one. This will help a lot.

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Lillee - 1969 Morris Mini K

Cheers Lillee!
I will treat myself to some new seals and dynamat for Christmas!

At the moment when I arrive somewhere, people know if I drove the mini because I stink of petrol and fumes!

Hey sam, the entire reason my Dad bought a Mini (thus giving me the bug) was that he wanted a fun car to commute in, mum handed in her licence so the second car no longer had to be an Automatic jap shoebox (yay!).

His round trip was about 50kms a day and for 8 years he did it in two Minis - both were mechanically stock - standard engine/induction/brakes/running gear. First Mini was a 76 clubman S - from memory these were the 'upgrades' we did for regular driving:
- extra soundproofing
- upgraded stereo
- BRIGHT 3rd brake light on the rear parcel shelf - VERY imporant for driving in traffic due to the low height of the Mini tail lights!
- Rear window louvre to keep the sun out
- flashing led (alarm lookalike theft deterrent)
- R/H tank - Dad got annoyed at how often he had to fill up - the twin tank really boosted the range and meant that we could fill up only on the cheap days!

After I bought my 850 in '98 I reckon I must have given Dad the round nose bug - we sold the clubby in 99 to finance an overseas trip and bought a 1962 850 for $600 - Dad painted it himself and did a semi reasonable job, we put in a new gearbox (it still had the original box with the early soft synchros) and then went about making a few upgrades for daily driving:
- Extra water temp, voltmeter and oil pressure gauges (concealed behind a woodgrain dash)
- Extra lumbar padding in the drivers seat
- 'Lights left on' alarm
- Modern stereo, speakers hidden in the rear door bins
- Clubman inertia reel seat belts, hidden in the rear door pocket with the belt running through the spot for the ashtray.
- Lots and lots and lots of soundproofing, mostly thick rubber matting and full carpet throughout - it was a very quiet car!

Even though a '62 Mini was about as basic as you could get, we had very few issues using it everyday - it had one of the fresh air under-bonnet heaters so it never had an issue overheating. We tuned the SU to be slightly lean, advanced the timing and ran it on 98 and it gave stupidly good economy so not having a 2nd tank was not such an issue. Even though you had to do a lot more maintenance such as points and adjusting brakes we just got used to it (and could do it pretty quickly) - and the extra effort was offest by the amount of money we saved on fuel!

So 8 years and approx. 100,000km of driving was done in two mechanically standard minis - oh and the good thing was that when the time came to sell, unlike the jap shoeboxes that came before them, we ended up selling both Minis for much much more than when we first bough them!

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Dave - 64 Nurburg White Morris 850 & 67 Morris Mini Deluxe (Bro's Car)
Previous Rides - 62 Morris 850 (Sold '03 - Now 'Lulu-62') & 76 Clubman S (Sold '99 - SFW-863)
+ Too many other classics