So it sounds like you decided to stick with the 1098? I think that is a good choice. I  agree the 295 head is the way you want to go. high compression, good cam, and a cooper free flow exhaust manifold should get you decent power and torque. Keep us updated. 

Thanks for all the tips.  I will get together a list of what I have and maybe some of you can make suggestions.  I have a very bad relationship with our local machine shop due to a combination of their screwup and my lack of communication on another project so I will need to find a machine shop that knows what they are doing once I get to that point.

Rick, I think I have a 295 head here if that's the way you want to go, I have a 202 as well if you are interested. Super cheap for you due to the blatant hijack.... I am slowly gathering parts for an 1100 build as well, which includes a heavily shaved 295 of my own.

Spank, Is that Chris and Chrissy's new ride? Be great to see them again!

We have a super secret IOE contender in the works that will make both Minis look like F1 racers, naturally it's British.

PS: I would love to do a stint in the Lemini, in exchange, I offer a stint in the LeMonte

Ok, so the whole mini wasn't $500, just the budget-restricted items added up to $500. The wheels, tires, brakes, exhaust, cage and "driver comfort" items make it more. 

The shell was bought via a link LA Mini posted on this forum for $500 and it came with a new rear subframe, uncut fiberglass flip front and nice steering wheel, and a load of other misc parts that were sold off to make shell cost virtually free. (The shell had been sanded or blasted to bare metal and then left out to rust again a few years or so. And you don't want to look too closely at the rear subframe we put on it. Trust me. Same for the doors and boot lid. Our engine and front clip came from this $250 score. (and yes, it's that MK4 subframe in a MKI shell.)

I'll sell the race-ready Moke for $500 for the budget-restricted items plus $3000 for the cage, 2 sets of wheels, seat, harness, tires, wheel bearings, exhaust, fuel cell, etc. I'll even toss in the original moke parts I'm not using, like the 4 steel moke seats, gauge pod, steering column, windshield surround, and I'll supply some additional spares.

But I think you shouldn't confuse cost and value. Many critics do. Much like your steering box assessment, it's not what someone else would pay but what you'd pay (plus factor in the relative competitiveness of the car in question).

Yea, I'll be at Buttonwillow and Chuckwalla (that's the plan). I'll also be at The Ridge so our ghettocharged 998 mini can kick the snot out of that cheaty 1275 GT5-wannabe mini of Swindrum's. I've got ringers flying in from Pennsylvania to help me. Oh, and speaking of $500 cost/value disputes: said ringers' new racecar=

/thread hijack

HI GUYS so hp is more like 60 ? if u ad a stage 1 does it give any more ? whats that header. K&N and  perfomance muffler ? and i guess the light weght of the mini ands i guess .. iam looking to buy a real nice one . new paint intearor tires rims .underneth has to be great LOOKING TO go for a 1978 or older ..dont what to etest it know cats .  what do you think is a good $$ to buy ..iam in ONT CANADA ..Thanks 

Standard HP of a stock 1275 with single HS4 carb (ie the A series motors) is around 60 HP, at the CRANK.
It's pretty easy with engine mods these days to crack 100HP at crank for a street motor with a single HS6 or HIF44, the big HP secrets are in the camshaft choice, also manifolds and head work. You don't need to go past 274° duration to get it either, with modern cams.

Same story with a 1098, 80-90HP at crank is easy to get. Just don't rev these ones over 7000 or they won't last. Don't ask me how I know...

HI GUYS so hp is more like 60 ? if u ad a stage 1 does it give any more ? whats that header. K&N and  perfomance muffler ? and i guess the light weght of the mini ands i guess .. iam looking to buy a real nice one . new paint intearor tires rims .underneth has to be great LOOKING TO go for a 1978 or older ..dont what to etest it know cats .  what do you think is a good $$ to buy ..iam in ONT CANADA ..Thanks 

Ah, the ridge sounds fun. However, I don't think we'll make it to any summer races this year -- we have a fair bit of engine and transmission rebuilding after the last race. By the end of the weekend, we were having trouble keeping above 10psi oil pressure, and the transmission needs a rebuild.

In 2014, I hope to branch out and hit a few more races. Too bad they don't have the nevada (reno?) races any more.

Zerobelow, bring the Corvair up to the Ridge in Washington for the LeMons race in the summer. We too have a legitimate $500 Lemons mini that was built from a rolled insurance write off.

We had to cobble together an engine and we were off to the races, as it were...

Not knocking it. The hacked together cars that appear in lemons are fun, but the budgeting isn't as relevant to street cars. Anyways, I shouldn't be on internet discussions while in lame meetings at work .

My lemons car, a '65-'66 Corvair Corsa, started as a "get this engine-less thing out of my driveway so my wife will talk to me again" from a friend of a friend...and 600 mile round-trip to buy another non-running car for $499 which had no steering column/box and a maybe-functional motor. The steering column in our $0 car could resell for around the $500 limit (apparently the collapsible non-decapitating ones are rare these days for that car)...

Spank: will you be doing the chuckwalla race this year? I'm probably going to enter the Thunderhill and Chuckwalla races this season.

Zerobelow:  You have an interesting comment.  Spank's mini, for example, is made out of two or more crappy MK I body shells.  I don't think there is a strong market for stuff like this, similarly there is not a strong market for used 998s assembled with mismatched pistons and connecting rods on used bearings of different sizes, oil pumps made from 2 or more used oil pumps and so on.  No one is taking blocks to Spank's place to have him use his ancient boring bar on their high dollar 1380 engines.

I think that the LeMons Judges bring very reasonable car savvy to their work.

I'd be curious to see a whole running mini for $500 . Many Almost all of the Lemons cars are pushing the $500 limit a fair bit...

You will be lucky to see 60 hp out of a stock 1275cc Mini but as stated it is not all about the HP.

To get just over 80 hp at the wheels on pump gas in my streetable 1275 race motor, it required +.060 bore, SPVP3 (286ish) cam, a Longman ported big valve head, and high lift rockers. while it didn't add hp, I also had a lightened flywheel, sc/cr gears, sc drop gears, and a limited slip diff. To replicate would be probably $5K or more retail for the drivetrain.

On the flipside, in the following video you'll see a 52 hp 998 that became so with just a reground 274 cam and a stock 1275 head. All used parts and built with a $500 limit for the whole car. What I hope you'll recognize is that it's not the hp the makes a mini-- it's the handling-- and the DRIVER.  lenty of higher hp cars in that video and the notice that the mini ain't no slouch at the hands of our webmaster. (Thanks again for that video, Dennis!)

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVLJblRZNLE

Don't forget that your MINI is dragging around a whole bunch more weight than a classic.
A 70hp classic could very well shock you with it's performance..... Hell, I have a blast with the supposed 34hp the 848 Moke was born with.

HI so you guys are saying a stock 1275 is only ? what .. 70hp i thought it would have been more close to my BMW mini cooper that iam selling ..going to buy a old classic ..hoping for more when i find one 

The pop up pistons were used in 998 cooper motoer so they didnt have to skim them when using them for both 998 and 1275 applications.

The 295 head was also used with flat tops, in the 1098 AH Sprite/Midget. C/R with flatties was 8.9:1.
The trouble with 295 heads is the chamber is so big, if you rip heaps off the face to raise it a lot, they blow head gaskets. 940 has a much thicker face.
You can easily reshape 940 chambers to get whatever C/R you want. Mine was bathtubbed years ago to run with a blower (I think was the reason).

From memory the 12G295 is 28.3cc, and required the use of raised crown pistons. 
I dropped mine to about 24 or 25cc and only ran a compression ratio of about 9ish as I intended to supercharge the engine.

Spank i think you meant to say 26 ish for the 12G195 head.