Members Page/Charlie Kemp - VEMS wiki www.vems.hu

Started 2008-04-05

The car

It used to be a green Austin Mini Mayfair. Now it's this.

A lot of work has gone into it over the years, but most of the major changes took place when I first built it from several donor cars. All pretty standard Mini modifications (exterior, suspension, brakes, engine), but the interior was mostly a one-off - except the carpets of course.

A recent engine build prompted by a roundabout induced lack of oil pressure saw the installation of a crank trigger and Megajolt unit.

The Engine

MG Metro 1275 base
BMC A-series. 8V pushrod. Non-crossflow five port head - two inlet ports, three exhaust. Cylinders 1 & 2 siamesed, and 3 & 4 siamesed on inlet, 2 & 3 siamesed on exhaust.
Bore x stroke 70.60 x 81.30
CR 10.5
Ported head (Slark Race Engineering)
Megajolt ignition
Standard SU HIF44 carb
Foam filter and ram pipe
Maniflow LCB and exhaust
ARP head & con-rod bolts

About 80hp at the flywheel

Project aims

Run the car in - another 1000 miles should do it.
Rolling road tune for carb and Megajolt.
Fit VEMS for ignition only.
Implement knock detection, WB02, EGT and MAT.
Basically everything I can short of Injection. I want to have all the tools and be able to use them beforehand.
Plenum injection.
Not much of an improvement over carb, only lean cruise and finer fueling control. Still have problems with charge robbing with the 5-port head (about which I know nothing....yet, other than the outer pair and inner pair of cylinders burn different mixtures).
This is where the project aims get hazy.
1. Sequential injection on 5 port head to overcome charge robbing.
  Multiple injectors, funny timing, much experimenting (presumably). Very interesting, but ultimately pointless, because the 5-port will never flow as well as...
2. BMW K-head conversion.
  16V DOHC throttle body injection. Like the previous option, not trivial, and hence interesting. A completely different set of challenges.

I guess by that time (and it will be quite some time), I will know what interests me most.

The Driver

Charlie Kemp
Mechanical Engineering student (last year of an MEng)
Part time tractor driver
Car nut
Looking for work...

MembersPage/PhatBob There are a few people on the forum who've got VEMS controlling their Mini's

Thanks for the link Bob. So much reading to do. Shall keep all the links on the Research Page, mainly for my own benefit, but maybe so other people can follow my path in the future.