The Wild Thing

[mccarefree]

Greetings people. I'd like to introduce you to The Wild Thing. She started off as a humble Mini Tahiti, a limited edition of 500 x 1275 carb cars released in 1993. She came our way in 2000 as a return to Mini driving for Mrs McCarefree and was used regularly until 2005 when the chance of a brand new car for the first time was too much to resist (bolstered by Wild Thing's reluctance to start in the mornings). The plan for the Wild Thing then was to give her a bit of a tidy up and offer her to the next deserving owner. But the tidy up didn't quite happen and she sat out in the yard getting sad and depressed in the British weather as the lacquer peeled off the roof. Then redemption...A plan formed. Give her the makeover she deserved and some extra spark under the bonnet. So here we are. A MkI Austin Cooper front end and a bodywork and paint job courtesy of Alan Crompton. Next stage is a power run at Gerald's to see how little skin the poor thing will pull off a rice pudding in standard tune (she's actually not VERY wild yet!), so I can see what we are working with. The 'extra spark' will, hopefully come from Mr. McCarefree's home ground MG Metro head (if you've never done one, respect to the pros; it's a hell of a lot of work) an HIF44 carb with K & N (ish) filter, 1.5:1 rocker set and Maniflow exhaust. A trip to AC for a fine tune then back to Gerald Dale for the October dyno shoot out. Hopefully It will hit 70BHP (I think it's around 53 as standard) and provide some entertaining times ahead...if not it may be back out in the yard..........When I've worked out how the hell to post photos I'll let you see her .......

The awful truth. A visit to Gerald Dale's rollers: 46BHP. Not that good for a 1275 but on the upside, plenty of room for improvement.

[mccarefree]

Ok, we're there. The revised version with all the go faster bits bolted on hit 82.4 bhp at the club shoot out, so something must have been right. However, in a perfect demonstration of peak power not being everything, a carb problem made the little beast a pain in the neck to drive, with the mother of all flat spots. Enter AC Dodd who diagnosed a faulty piston damper on my (new) HIF44. With that replaced, a replacement re-curved distributor and one of his custom tweaked needles and it's transformed. Even Andy at ML said "That's quite rapid" when he took it for their obligatory test drive. If anyone doubts the benefits of a proper set up to make the most of the time and money we put into this sort of thing believe me it's worth it, and AC is the man.