
R1 Swapped Mini - Pt 1
It all begins with an idea. When I first bought a classic mini, I was living in Texas. Home of the straight roads that seemingly go on forever. Flat straight roads. You don’t need a whole lot of power or torque to get up to highway speeds here. My ~40hp, 1.0Liter A+ series mini engine was serving its purpose just fine. 70mph was achievable with how little the car weighs. Same story in Florida. It wasn’t until my move to the bay area in California that I realized the mini was lacking in power. My first drive up Hick’s Road in San Jose was the road that showed me this. The little A Series engine was not happy with an incline one bit. All senses were in shock with the mini screaming to get up the road.
So, I “needed” power. Swapping engines into the mini is not uncommon. All over the world people are swapping engines into these cars. From your classic Honda D series, B series or H series swap all the way to mid-engine LS swaps and then back to twin bike engine swaps. It’s all been done basically. I landed on the Yamaha R1 swap. For one, a subframe kit is readily available from multiple sources (I chose the promotive route). Two, the room you have in the engine bay is still enough to work with - it’s not stuffed like some of the Honda swaps. Three, the cost of the swap is not outrageous - it’s not the cheapest but its close. Four, the information available to me if I run into snags along the way is plentiful - people are well versed with both the swap and just the engines alone. And finally, five, revving passed 10k RPM is something I have yet to done in a car - this is a good chance for it.
The goals I’ve made for this swap is to get the power and revs that would make one’s privates “fizzle” all while still having the swap stand out as unique amongst the R1 swapped minis. To do this I will have to get the details right. The swap is still far from being done. So far, I have integrated the 2015+ R1 Drive-by-Wire ITBs into the 2003 R1 Engine, I am working on the design for my own sump baffle plate, I have yellow zinc plated all hardware, all engine covers are now a wrinkly black finish and I have made the purchase of ECUmaster’s EMU BLACK, ADU 5 Display and they’re PMU-16. All of these modern electronics will work with an 8-button CAN switch board to make the swap into a more modern kit. Stay tuned for more updates, pictures and tests for this personal project.