Quite a bit of news on the Mini at the moment, I’ve made quite a bit of progress this weekend.

First off, a good friend of mine - Steve - wanted to buy one of my Metro head’s, so I arranged to pop over to his on Saturday to drop off this head, but to also run through with him how to remove and fit valve’s, and their springs, and how to do valve lapping. Pretty easy stuff really, so I’ll be valve lapping later this week.

Also, we took both heads down to Slark racing (very experienced Mini race specialist) for Neil Slark to have a look at and to see if they were any good to start with. Both head’s were good, and Steve and me arranged which head was who’s. Also, after talking to Steve on my plans for my new engine he suggested that it would be a good thing if I were to change the cam.

I’ve thought about changing the cam already, but I decided against it because of extra cost and time - its something I can upgrade later. However, after talking, he said that he has a cam which he could sell. Since I was selling one of my head’s to him, then we agreed on a straight swap! Awesome. The cam is a Minisport stage 2 cam with a 252 duration profile and 8.8mm of lift, compared to just 6.1mm lift from a standard MG Metro cam. Should be nice and lumpy on idle!

I may follow up this post with a more detailed explanation of cam’s, and choosing the right parts to go along with whatever cam chosen since I understand the whole concept of camshafts a lot more after talking with Steve.

Apart from all that (excuse the massive amount of reading material), but I’ve also removed my 998 engine from my Mini. It was surprisingly easy removing it, with the help of proper engine hoist brackets on the rocker’s and an engine hoist.

Nothing went wrong at all. Everything went to plan and was very smooth indeed. No tips required really, just a second pair of hands help, and of course the engine hoist is almost certainly required!