1978/79 GTS

[GTSPhil]

I was approached by the events company that handles MINI's events that was looking for either a genuine GT or GTS to display with the launch of the new 1499 GT MINI of which only 30 will be brought into SA.

Long story short, the beast was shown at SA Festival of Motoring this past weekend.

The one salesman of MINI told me they had many enquiries about the GTS, but obviously I could not put my details or the business details on the car.   


   

[DomMINIque]

Nice opportunity there Phil.

Pity about the fact that you couldn't do any marketing.

[Sean1380]

Looking good Phil

[Sean1380]

are those stripes from Malcolm ?

[GTSPhil]

Thanks Sean

Nope sourced the stripes from a different supplier.

[Jared Mk3]

That does look good!

[GTSPhil]

So long time no posting on this forum or on this mini for that matter.

Well let's see.....

Way back in may 2019 I did this little conversion.
Twin SU HS4s.


   

It came with the little challenges of making it fit, running the correct needles etc.

Then the clutch stopped working properly.  The clutch arm was at fault including the plunger that gave up.


   


While I was at that the engine was removed and I wanted to rectify this nice mess...



   

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The gear selection sucked, upon further investigation the selector forks was worn..


   

Got the best fork out of my used stack and


   


Some more gearbox bearings and baulk rings being replaced.


   




   



Layshaft also



   

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Then the preparations for Cars in the Park 2019

Fitted the wheel arch covers and rear bin liners.
For the un-informed these items should match the vinyl of the door cards on an original car.


   


New carpet set seeing as the black set did not match too well with the look I wanted.


   


Front fitted.


   


Rear fitted and done.


   


Also fitted the stud and plug for the carpets, that I had sourced long time ago and never fitted before.


   

[GTSPhil]

Engine was re-installed ran great for some months.
Then I ran into some valve trouble with a bent valve that contacted piston no 2, so the head came off, new valves, new headgasket and a trip to the engineering shop later the engine was back again.  That will teach me to dice GTI golfs robot to robot....revving to above 7300 or so.

Anyway in early december I replaced the side light lenses and put gaskets on etc.


   



   

[GTSPhil]

Going a bit backwards in 2019 as I posted from later in the year.

So in March 2019 MOCSA had a dyno day organized.  I changed the oil and re-torqued the cylinderhead and set the timing as best as I could man alone.  At this stage the car was still running the Twin HS2 carbs.

So to make a long story short and to just stick to my own dyno results....

The car made 43,1 KW on the front wheels at 5800 rpm, that was good enough as the most powerful 5 port NA car on the day.  To put this in perspective, Raz's bog standard 1098 estate made 20.5 kw and a fellow member with a alloy 7 port crossflow head fed by two 40 DCOE webers made 67 kw, so I was disappointed with that to say the least.  That is why I decided to fit the twin HS4 carbs.....


   


Not too long after the dyno day it was found that the springs in the dizzy was past their best, so they were replaced.  Compression was down on 2 cylinders still, so oh well.  Another opinion was that I should have let the dyno operator rev the engine to 7200 then the power band would have settled.

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So after the engine rebuild in June/July 2019 the small HS2 twins was refitted.  

Onto Cars in the Park early August so I was invited to show the GTS at the pits.

   


Keeping some excellent company.



   

[GTSPhil]

Fast forward to the march 2020, so I decided to remove some of the redundant wiring, that had been added over the years, such as for the now no longer fitted front mount radiator electric fan etc.


   


The relays and power supply wires was trimmed and made better.


   


Then in may I had a customer interested in the seats that I have in the car as my daily seats,  I had a set of original GTS front seats for a second GTS project that just never happened, so I decided to have those recovered.  The brackets had been modified and now was un-usable with standard brackets that mounted on the crossmember.


   


After making a template from a standard seat bracket, welded the current bracket to the correct angle.


   


The end result after a lick of paint.



   



I had to weld up all the other holes on the bottom legs also.


   

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Old front seat vs the new.


   


Result excellent.


   


I did a compression test and the results led me to decide to fit a fully rebuilt 1275E engine that I had rebuilt in feb 2020, so let the stripping begin.