Irish Mini Owners Club

Hi everyone.

I been thinking of starting a project thread, an introducing myself to this forum for a long time, but although I work on this project for nearly three years, I always felt I don’t have that much to show. Anyway here it is…my electric Mini conversion.




It started in 2012 like this:







Today…






















…I’m slowly approaching stage where I’ll probably get stuck, not able to afford all the expensive stuff, batteries, electric and electronic ancillaries etc. Well, not unless I win lottery.

There’s still bit of work before big capital expenditure be required, thou.


Up to now, apart from restoration, I’ve build an electric drive train….










…and modified everything what I could think of, that is bad in mini.


Like…heating / ventilation







Steering







Brakes

















I also did some modifications to suspension. These were off the shelf mod kits, so nothing to brag about.

Hope you like it. I’ll be really grateful for all your input, suggestions, opinions, well, criticism too, and happy to answer any questions you might have.


Cheers
Kriss

Hi Kriss,
Glad your doing a build diary here too. It's a fine piece of work your doing. You've got that power steering column to fit nicely, what's it off? How are you going to provide a vacuum to the brake servo?

Ambitious. I would like a nosy around this.

Thanks guys.

Steering column and rack is from Seicento. I’ll be using this for vacuum…







…vacuum will be stored in the blue triple ball reservoir you can see on the picture









No prob Underhauled. I got like 15 hundred pics of everything I’ve done. Ask anything. Or, if you wanna see it in 3D you welcome to come.

What battery are you going to use or are you going to jump on the luas lines?

Rear brake conversion, home made design or off the shelf?

It’s homebrew.























They only do KAD disc conversion for minis. It costs small fortune, and I don’t really like it. Looks like something more suitable for mountain bike rather than car.



Plan for battery pack is Lithium LiFePo4 batteries from Calb.

Would i be a pain in the posterior asking you for the specs and details in a pm? I'm building a rally car and I'm planning on a lot more power than standard and I want discs but same as yourself I'm not paying kad money for them and would like something beefier and easier to get bits for, I have an idea anyway but if yours is easier/cheaper I'll go that route, if it's to much hardship for you I will go won't my own plan, thanks,

Why in the PM? There is no need for secrecy. Actually I think the whole point of participating in this kind of forums is sharing information. So if there’s anything members of this board wanna know about my project I’ll be happy to share. I’ll post detailed description of disc conversion here. Just need a free moment. Hope you not pressed for time.

That's fine, some people don't like sharing stuff like that, I'm in no hurry, I've a lot of stuff to do before I need to worry about brakes ha, thank you very much,

hey Kriss, what a fantastic project and a lovely looking shell to boot.
do you mind me asking what the colour is? also whats the deal in terms of the nct?

i'd love to do something similar in the future as I think the days of owning a classic car
in a large city are numbered. i used to follow an american forum where theres loads
of people buying in small classics (fiat 500's etc) and swapping in an electric power train.

gonna watch this thread with great interest
maxi

Hey Maxi. Thank you. NCT? It’s quite a distant future for me at this moment I guess. But I know the guy here in Ireland, he converted his BMW, had it tested and taxed, and he never mentioned about any problems with that. The colour is Arizona Orange, Renault Capture colour code.

Now… the brakes. I’ve used NISSIN callipers. They generic, fitted to a number of Japanese and Korean cars. Mine are from mark II Honda Civic. Paid 50 Euro for them. They needed refurb, and as the pistons were badly pitted (wouldn’t make tolerance after skimming) I had to get complete refurb kit. It’s around 50 sterling, without spring shimming. These you need to get separately. Then the rotors, these are mark I Nissan Micra rotors. 30 Euro for pair. They 214 mm diameter,12mm thick, standard. I machined them down to 200mm diameter 8mm thick. Next, you need spacers.








I don’t know where in Ireland one can get aluminium, so I got it from UK. Came about 30 sterling for 5.5 inch diameter, 70mm long round bar. I don’t remember exact thickness of spacers, and I don’t feel like taking the brakes apart now to measure it , I do know thou, I made them the way original wheel track was kept. But I guess it won’t hurt if you make them thicker as long as you leave enough studs thread.

Finally you need bracket plates. I had two goes at those. First set I made was in straight line with trailing arm.







On assembly it turned out that calliper, its part with handbrake lever, is too close to rubber doughnut (spring in my case). I had to rotate calliper downwards away from the spring. Had to make new set of brackets, made them bit larger to have some extra room for anti roll bar linkage.







Brackets are from 12mm gauge steel.10 Euro for two square plates Machined little bit to even out surfaces. You need spacers on calliper’s hanger bolting points to offset calliper so it’d got onto rotor. I had steel discs press fitted there. As for shape of bracket it don’t really matter apart from the section between the hanger bolting points. You need to cut it out. All this doesn’t require high precision really. These are floating callipers, so if you couple of mils off, it won’t do any difference. What else? Brake pads, 20 Euro. Oh, you gonna need bit longer brake hoses. I’ve fabricated mine myself, but these can be ordered to size. Handbrake cable? I think existing set up can be fairly easy hooked up to handbrake levers. Me myself never really understood the idea behind those quadrant things, so I just binned these and made proper handbrake cable, the kind normal cars have.

And… that would be it I guess. If you need more info more pictures just say

Thank you very much for that, I'll get onto the boss and see have we any spare rear civic calipers in work, and get a set of discs ordered, I'll get onto our local engineer (boss's cousin) for the spacers and disc modifications,

Would you be interested in selling the first brackets you made? I have a rear beam and coilovers, so I won't have to worry about springs/doughnuts,

Nah mate. Sorry.

No problem, just said I'd ask, as I said the boss's cousin is an engineer and does a lot of bits for us for work, I'll get him to knock 2 brackets up,

thanks again for the info, I was going to do a similar idea only use mx5 calipers so I might just use them instead of civic ones, have a few spare sets of them left from my old drift car. Have discs aswell so they might fit.

Mazda callipers were my first choice, but I couldn’t find a set at sensible money. Scrap yard people wanted 200 Euro for pile of rust. New, were too expensive for me. They may not be smaller in overall size perhaps, but they certainly much more compact. There is actually off the shelf conversion kit made by Mini Tec in US, using those.






Concept of converting brakes this way is nothing inventive. This is how all rear disc brake set ups are designed. The only difference is, that you need separate bracket for conversion. Factory made brakes have it incorporated into trailing arm, radius arm, wishbone or whatever is used in particular car‘s suspension.

Can't beat a Phoenix lift, we have one the very same in work,

Stitched up roof lining.

Nice work. Did you make that from scratch?

Yup. €30 worth of fabrics

Are there patterns available somewhere?

I didn’t have one. Used old lining as a template. But I vaguely remember seeing it somewhere. TMF uk I think.

You're a man of talent Kriss, what are you trained in?