This is the advice that i was given on another forum, it is not a mini dedicated forum so i just want to check if it is accurate or just opinionated
If you are wanting a Mini, your best bet financially is a 1 litre with disc brakes, they were standard on all models in the late 80’s. You then have a good base to start with. Suspension wise they were all the same, unless you go for an older hydroelastic set-up (C**p but comfy).
Mini’s do not have coil springs as standard, they have what is commonly known as “Rubber Doughnuts” which sit on top of trumpets. The old way of lowering mini’s was to cut the trumpets a bit, but this is bloody dangerous and adjustable kits are only about £100. You can buy coil overs and the price is between £300 and £500. I don’t think it is worth doing this for the road, as mini’s are very stiff as standard and are one of the best handling cars. I had spax adjustable shocks with adjusta-ride trumpets fitted and that was amazing.
Brakes: Standard is a 2 piston caliper on 8.4 inch discs front and drums on the rear. These are surprisingly good (I have managed to get the back of the cars off the deck under heavy braking), but an easy upgrade is to get the 4 pot calipers and vented discs from a metro turbo. You will need discs, calipers and a brake line kit (Mini’s are 2 line, metro’s are 4 line). You can go silly with the brakes, there is a kit on the go with 10 pot calipers, but that’s just wasting money on stuff. Braided lines are always good to have and a good working servo.
Engine wise you can fit anything you want, seriously, v6, v8, 16valve…they all fit. To the original a-series you can mod the engine in all sorts of ways. The engine comes with a 5 port head, 3 exhaust ports and 2 inlet ports. This is not very good but can be modded quite well. You can get 7 port conversions and 8 port…or my choice…kad 16 valve head, coming in at about £3500. You can fit the metro turbo engine but this involves cutting the bulkhead to fit a box, as the turbo sits too far back.
If you buy a 1 litre the first thing to do is fit a 1275, there is no point in spending a load of money modding a 1 litre when you can fit a 1275 for £50 and get the same power. The mini 1275 came with 65bhp but if you can get the MG Metro 1275 it came with 75bhp. You can hear some wild claims of 150bhp at the wheels of a 1380 mini, yeah its possible, but not in a daily driver. The things that can be done to the engine are almost endless so I’m not going to list them, but on a safety note…never lighten the standard flywheel as they are cast and this weakens them, they can then explode…and guess where the shrapnel will go.
Wheels: Huge choice of wheels from 10 inch to 15’s. Minilights are my personal favourite, these are available in magnesium, ultra strong and lightweight, but cost about twice as much as the standard ones. If you are to fit 10inch wheels, which look fantastic, you will need a different brake set-up. You can either fit the Cooper 7 inch discs (almost as bad as drum brakes) or you can fit the 7.5 inch Cooper S set-up. These kits are available new but cost around £500, a better bet would be to have a look round auto jumbles and classic car shows, but you are still looking at about £100 plus a rebuild kit. 12 inch wheels are the norm and came standard on most later model Mini’s, including the Cooper (not Sportspack models), so you can get a set of Cooper Minilight style wheels second hand quite cheap, but I don’t think they are wide enough and they don’t have much of a dish on them. Many people fit 7 x 13 inch wheels which look very good, but this affects handling and also damages wheel bearings. Any bigger than that and you are just being silly and will need to do a lot of bodywork. The late models of the Cooper came as the Sportspack, they had 13 inch Sportspack alloys, they are like a modern Minilight but they are not to my taste. To fit these wheels you will need the Sportspack arches, you will need to cut your wings back to fit them.
Body Mods: Most people will just fit arches and get chrome parts if they came with black bits. But you can be a bit mad. There was a kit on the go called the Fortec, huge bubble arches and huge wheels. I am not sure if these are still available. Zeemax also make a kit and it comes in at about £700, but does look good. There is the ERA Turbo body kit, which is a replica of the body kit fitted to the limited run ERA Turbo. Arches are available from little chrome trim to 5 inches wide. If you were going to be fitting a vtec or Vauxhall 16 valve engine you will need to extend the front end by 3 inches, unless you buy a clubman (square front) which have more space as standard. Almost all body panels are available in carbon fibre or fibreglass. A popular mod is to fit a flip front, this is where the entire front body panels hinge forward (wings, bonnet and front panel), you will need to fit extra bracing to do this, as you are weakening the cars structure.
Some people de-seam their Mini’s, this is not something I like, this is when you remove all the guttering on the car and give it a smooth shape. The problem with this is now the rain just runs into the top of your doorframe and you get soaked when you open the door.
At the end of the day it is all down to personal taste and budget, but your money will go a lot further on a mini than it will on any other car I can think of. One of the best bits of advice I can give you is join a mini club, I can almost guarantee that you will never join a more friendly and helpful club……..and there is always someone willing to come and look at a car for you.
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