Shown here is a 1426 cc engine fitted with original Mowog 8-port head and Tecalemit fuel injection. This setup was used in a 850 cc short stroke circuit racer here in Finland. The engine was based on 970 S engine with even shorter stroke to get 850 cc.
My friend put together a 1426 cc engine and fitted the head and fuel injection on top of it. It took a few months to get everything working but it is now a very powerful unit. The cam is 8-port 320 degree cam but the engine still retains a very sophisticated idle despite the cam timing. Fuel injection is not too sensitive to hairy cams.
This car was driven from Finland to UK to participate in Mini 35 years celebration at Silverstone. The car is a road car around the year, even in winter.
The box on top of the clutch housing is the mechanical brains of the injection. It controls the fuelling through the rev range by having a specially shaped cam inside the box. To alter the fuelling a differently shaped cam needs to be fitted. Simple ???
The manifold has separate throttle bodies for each intake port. The throttle discs are connected to the control box via a cable visible on the photo. When the gas pedal is pressed it turns the cam inside the box and simultaneously the throttle is opened.
The metered fuel is supplied via transparent plastic hoses also visible on the photos.
This photo shows the mechanical high pressure fuel pump driven from the crank. There is another low pressure transfer pump that supplies the mechanical pump. My friend has fitted a separate swirl pot to ensure trouble free supply at high speed cornering.
This engine has produced 137 hp on the same rolling road where I have taken my turbo-Mini. Driving experience was pretty interesting. There is a 3,9 diff fitted with pretty tight set LSD and this combined with small diameter steering wheel makes the car quite handful. But the engine is brilliant when it screams.
Here is another approach to feeding the 8-port engines: fitting baby side-draft carbs (Weber DCOF or Dellorto DHLB). These are similar carbs as their big brothers but with smaller chokes, ideal for smaller engines. What is even better is the distance between chokes: it is just about the same as the distance between intake portsd of the heads. This allows the chokes to line up directly with intake ports and thus prevent the awful intake design of the larger carbs.
The largest choke for DHLB 35 is 31 mm which is the same as AMALs. These would be ideal size for 1300 cc although smallish for 1380 engines. These carbs are also a bit shorter so they might fit better under the Mini bonnet. These carbs do fit pretty nice at their "normal" location but here the owner wanted to fit them behind the engine. For reasons unknown.
Problems included a chopped rocker cover, slightly difficult valve clearance setting etc. But the layout is impressive. The head is MiniSpares reproduction one and engine size 1380 cc. Power figures are rumoured to be huge but not measured, my personal estimate around 120-125 hp mark. Future plans include 5-speed box. This car rolls on 8x10" Spectrums and 205/50x10 Goodyears.
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