Amateur Restoration of a 1960 Morris Mini

[BruceK]

My '88 Mini had the ballast built into the wire running to the coil. It's been 7 or 8 years since I fitted an electronic distributor and I had to unwrap the loom with the wire to the coil and trace it back 2-3 feet ( at least!) toward the firewall to get to part in the loom with the wire before the ballast had been fitted. I ended up just running my own new wire along side the other existing wire down to the coil in case I ever wanted to switch back to using a ballast.

[Dan Moffet]

My '88 Mini had the ballast built into the wire running to the coil. It's been 7 or 8 years since I fitted an electronic distributor and I had to unwrap the loom with the wire to the coil and trace it back 2-3 feet ( at least!) toward the firewall to get to part in the loom with the wire before the ballast had been fitted. I ended up just running my own new wire along side the other existing wire down to the coil in case I ever wanted to switch back to using a ballast.

My 1980's era Mini has the same ballasted system. Much more than 8 years ago, I installed a first generation 123 Ignition system for Mini. If I recall correctly, the options were with or without vacuum advance,, but they'd both run ballasted or unballasted. I did not have to change or add a wire. It would run on either voltage. I presume it has the capacity to detect input voltage. I suppose during starting it accepts the full 12V, then runs on 8-9V of the ballasted circuit.

[94touring]

I was looking up the 123 instructions recently and you can run as low as 1 ohm with it as I recall. It has a way to regulate itself.  Most coils for us are 1.5 or 3 anyway, though I just bought a couple of tons performance 1.2 ohm coils to run in the inno that the dizzy says needs 1 ohm. The 1 ohm coils from spares or the like are stupid expensive right now. I can absolutely see a difference between a 1.5 and 3 ohm on it just by the idle quality and bump in rpms.  This summer when the bus coil died on a 123 I used a 3 ohm to get me 2 hours to a town to grab a 1.5 60k volt coil. And even the girlfriend with me with 0 car knowledge noted it drove better.

[scalpel_ninja]

Got some more work done today. Installed the wiring loom, but no connections made yet. The previous owner welded a flat blank plate to the bulk head without any holes, so I had to bore a hole to feed the wires into the engine bay.

Also installed whatever coolant hoses I had on hand.



Lastly, I test fitted the intake and carb. Because of that flat bulkhead plate, the intake manifold couldn't really sit flush against the block without tipping the engine forward. So I used a fender hammer and made a bit more clearance; however, the air filter doesn't fit. I was thinking of getting a foam filter so it can deform a bit as needed.

[BruceK]

Yeah, the bottom of that HIF carb usually seems to have some clearance problems with the firewall on all Minis, whether the firewall has been modified or not. On my Mini, I installed an adjustable "dog bone" engine steady bracket so I could extend the length and tilt the engine forward just a little bit to gain that needed clearance between the carb and the firewall. 

The other trick is to try to work with different thickness of the Phenolic spacer on the carb to manifold interface to move the carb closer to the engine to gain clearance.

I ended up tackling the problem both ways.