The Mini has been improved, modified and tweaked from its launch in 1959. Tuners used modifications from other A-series-powered BMC cars and adapted them to suit. BMC made corrections to the original design, even from the very early days. Today we see race-inspired, alloy-block, 16-valve crossflow A-series engines and even fully electric Minis but, at present, you need a large budget for a battery-powered conversion. The options seem endless and, for the average Mini owner, there are so many affordable improvements you can make. Here is MiniWorld’s round-up of some of the easiest and most affordable, with a few extremes thrown in for fun.
Stage 1 tuning kit
It’s a fairly basic, and very popular, engine mod but it’s one that has to be done correctly if you are to actually make any power gains. Mini Spares sells a great example of the Stage 1 kit with a throaty RC40 exhaust system, Maniflow downpipe, which must be suitable for the engine bore, a ‘performance’ element air filter to sit inside the existing airbox and a richer needle. This kit is aimed at a single-carburettor set-up. Even with a supplied needle, your Mini should be rolling road tuned afterwards to confirm that the engine is running correctly.
Ignition
Changing the mechanical contact points to electronic points is a relatively simple task but be sure to get the wires the correct way round and check that the rotor arm sits correctly over the sensor wheel. Setting dwell
