Mini Cooper S R53 Track Car

Working on an old car can often be a very frustrating experience, jobs that you assume will be easy turn out to be a nightmare but the flip side of that is jobs you thought would be horrible are done in minutes. I did think the front suspension would be

One of the main weakness exposed by the cars first session on track was the stock suspension and road geometry, the tyres took a real pasting after only a few laps! Rather than opt for an out and out track setup that would make the car a pain to drive

The car came through it’s first track day on the iconic Brands Hatch GP circuit in one piece, the main weak point (apart from the driver) was the stock suspension. Through some of the more challenging corners the car just didn’t feel planted, looking at the more positive aspects the

After another couple of days in the garage I’ve finally completed the first phase of the conversion from road car to something more track focused. The first job on Saturday morning was to bed the brake pads in, not really an idea job for the public highway but unfortunately there

Yesterday the Eibach Pro-Spacers for the front end arrived from Lohen, I was pretty excited as this would be the first time in almost three weeks that the car had been back on four wheels and drivable. I gave the brakes another bleed fitted all four wheels and prepared to

After swapping the restrictive stock air filter for a free flowing GT Tuning Ram Air Induction system it was time to turn my attention to the exhaust. Blown engines need to push large volumes of air through their exhaust systems to generate good horsepower. I wanted a cost effective solution

A day off work but an early start, I was in the garage at 8am to remove the power steering pump. Turned out to be a relatively easy job only taking just over an hour to remove. Before setting out to BBA Reman in Rochester to pickup a reconditioned pump

Had a delivery today from GT Tuning (http://www.gtt.uk.com/home.asp) some nice new parts to make the Mini go a little quicker, to save a bit of money I’m fitting the majority of the parts and then taking the car down to GT Tuning later this month for the final pieces to

  The weakest link in any road car when it hits the track is usually the brakes (in all but the sportiest of sports cars and even some of those can’t cope), under normal road driving conditions we don’t use the brakes for long periods of time avoiding any significant

It seems like a really simple idea, take one lightly used R53 Mini Cooper S add some performance parts get rid of some unwanted weight and take it to some of the best tracks in the UK and Europe for some fun! I’m looking forward to the journey…