Very nicely done by the sounds of it, not a true space frame car but a very solid rigid way of tying the front and rear frames together. On the rally cross cars we used to also run a tube down the sills to tie the frames together as well so it formed a box structure with the cage forming the top of the box and rails the lower

Here are some pictures from when I was still taking it apart Kermit,

The rear subframe mounts up normally with a few extra bolts near the exhaust tunnel, the top of the shocks go into plates welded to the roll cage and the roll cage mounts to the rear corners of the car, above the subframe mounts.

The front subframe mounts to the towers like normal then with four bolts through the floor in the foot wells, as well as four more that meet with the bottom of the front roll bar loops 

Probably don't need to swiss cheese anything as you are underweight for most organizations.  Set right the towers bump stops will get in the way as the arms should never get there.  Move nothing from their factory hub perches as some organizations don't like the moving of pick up points plus it DOESN'T MATTER.  We are talking go carts here, bump steer my butt and I have spent hundred of hours doing that deal on pro cars.  None of the advice we give you means spit at this point.  You ain't been there.  Save some bucks and time, put the car together as it is, learn how to drive , make it reliable and for crying out loud don't feel you have to spend money at this point to be out front.   It ain't going to happen.

With our racing Hornet, we did some camber/caster adjustments at the same time we added a rear sway bar.
The camber was 1.75° caster was around 5°
Rear was set at 1.5°

The turn in improved massively and the cornering was really amazing, until...
it wasn't.
We introduced some fairly unpredictable snap oversteer.  I was having some good fun with a BMW, somehow keeping him behind me when, during a high speed hairpin, (that I had successfully driven 20 times) without any warning, the rear end snapped around before I even had a chance to try and save it... I think it is time to pull the rear bar, or add a front one.

That's the trouble with making more than one change at a time, you don't know which change is causing the problem.

It doesn't help that we carry 12 gallons of fuel in the back, makes a nice pendulum. We race for anywhere between 8 and 24 hour stints, so the fuel load is necessary, we only need to fuel every 3 hours.

1. swiss cheese the rear subframe
2. rear sway bar plus pixieracing long-travel mods
3. swiss cheese the front subframe
4. add doubler plates to the front subframe towers, then drill for raised upper arm pivot location.  I have 3 available pivot points in my sub.
5. front sway bar
6. drop the front lower ball joint.  i did mine in C Sedan, today they sell them for Miglia.
7. cones.  Older the better.  Collect a pile and drill holes in sets of them to set the spring rate.  Not sure, but I think this is also in pixieracing's book
8. throw away the rear view mirror

Thanks Kelley, sorry I did not mention that.  

When the word 'old' is used to refer to cones for racing it means cones from the 1960s not cones from the 1980s. The later cones tend to go soft as they age the earlier ones tend to get harder.

Kelley

Nice looking car with history, very cool. I mostly run with VARA and you would probably get put in their "new" GTL class for SCCA modified cars less than 2 liters. All the other classes "according to the rules" would not allow the springs if they knew enough to look. I would bet that most other race groups would do the same. As most clubs have had to evolve to include "newer " cars to fill the grids you would find a place to race. If it was me, I would build the car to a "point in time" when the car was raced in period and make my choice on whether or not to run the car with springs or cones based on that. I would go to some of the GTL or ex GT5 guys for set up advice.
 
I run old hard rubber cones with a little more ride hide height to get some compliance and a rear sway bar with adjustable shocks and adjustable everything else. Graham at Heritage set the car up and I love it. Two of the best things you can do for a race car is have a professional set up the suspension and put the car on a chassis dyno. Good luck and have fun, I hope to see you out there.    

DISCLAIMER. Contrary so some peoples opinion you do not have to take any advice given here on this site. Since I am for sure not a professional race car driver or mechanic and have never tried springs my advice is best described as suspect. My wife does not listen to my opinions so why should you? I am not that fast anyway. 

I'll get you some pictures tomorrow Kermit! They are standard subframes that are tied into the tubing of the roll cage.

Thinking about this today.  Tube frame but with cones.  Must be a partial tube frame using either standard sub frames tied together with tubes or tube frame with bits and pieces cut from sub frames.  Interesting.  Pictures please. 

HSR is a run what you brung group so no big deal with a GT 5 there.  Very well run with management that knows what the hell is going on.  And other organizations might let you run as long as you were not either to fast or too slow.  They might put you somewhere,  just not with other minis in some cases.  For many groups it just about money and they will wink to get the fields full or entry fees in their pocket.  I'm more than fine with that as long as the cars are safe, not X SCCA poop boxes and the drivers are not out there to just tool around.

    

Can you run a GT5 car in vintage? If so it would certainly pack out the Grids a bit with more mini's!

Yeah! I've spoken to Nigel a couple of times, he told me all about the car and the engine he was running, seemed like a great guy! Any pictures you have of the car would be highly appreciated!!

That was Nigel Purvis's GT5/GTL Mini.  He ran it for years on the west coast (Vancouver BC) and then moved to Ontario and ran a bit before retiring it.  I'm sure I have some old pictures of him running at Westwood, Seattle and Portland.

Cheers
Dennis

Kucahrski94 great bit of history there! Will be pretty great to see that back on the track!

Personally if you're using stock style suspension (not coil-overs) then IMO the rubber cones (yellow) are the best bet. I've run ALL the springs, and never found a combination I like compared to the good old rubber cones. And like discussed as well also depends on the rules for the class you're going to run. If you're going to run SCCA GTL (what was GT5) then you can run anything u want. Vintage is another story, and that being a 'GT5' spec car would have to confirm to probably 1972 rules (vintage) and off hand I'm not sure what they would allow there.

I got super lucky! The last owner before me just had the car (with a blown motor) dumped in his lot, he knew nothing about it which made this a super easy deal to say yes to! He just wanted it gone!!

That's got to be one of those deals of a lifetime! 

by the picture u posted, looks like your cones are shot.

Lots of great info here:

//www.vintageminiracing.com/ 

I just sent away a pair of good used cones (had a few calendar years on them, but barely driven on) for the shipping cost, so I'm sure you'll find something if you put the word out.

Yes MiniMans, my avatar is the car! It's a 1966 Morris Mini Cooper with a fully removable fiberglass front end. It's a tube framed mini originally built in the 70's, it was raced in the SCCA GT5 class up untill the late 90's, when it was sold to a guy who wanted it as a track day toy. He blew the motor sometime before 2001 (One of the unused race tyres has a production sticker marker 2001) and left it sitting in a back lot in downtown Houston. I found it at the beginning of last year, picked it up for a couple hundred bucks, tore it down to the bare chassis, painted it, and now I'm in the process of putting it all back together! 

Back when it raced SCCA GT5 (1995)

When I found it (2015)

How its looks now!

Thank you very much! The one's I have might be just the ticket though the only point of concern is this crack
 
If that is not an issue then I can just re-use the cones that I already have!