Mini MOKE Count-down to Start-up

With about a week to go before the Mini Mania open house “Nevada City Adventure”, our long term Mini MOKE project is going together for real!

This video shows me taking out the front sub-frame after lowering it a bit to get the old steering rack out. It was so easy to remove at that point that I couldn’t resist! I hammer-and-dollied some bumps and bruises, pressure washed, then painted it the next day when I came home for lunch. By Friday evening, the engine went in, and back up into the MOKE it went….. That’s the next post….. Let’s try at least one update per day until we drive it!

Mini Moke’s Monster Engine Going Together

After Letterman, lets see what’s going on in the garage. Late night fun and games, putting the final piston in.

Well, I wasn’t watching Letterman. Here I’m getting last of the piston assemblies into the engine block. These are the Russel Pistons from Australia. I really like the design of these… A modern three ring piston that is available in a bigger oversize without having to bore the block to 1380. This leaves a lot more room for reliability, specially when using pre A+ blocks.

Ah, yes, my Grandad’s hammer. I’ve had this thing for 40 years and have used it to put countless pistons in engines.  It’s perfect for the ratcheting style ring compressors like I’m using here, and the perfect weight to gently tap in the piston with the wood handle. Or maybe I’m just sentimental!   Anyway, my lovely assistant ran out of memory just before the final tap, so here is a brief re-enactment…

And we flipped the engine on the stand and pulled the rod down the bore. It’s different being under time pressure because her iPhone has too much junk on it!

Then finally after she deleted more old stuff, I put the cap on the connecting rod and make sure all the animals are in. Turn off the music, it’s 1:46AM!

’67 Mini Moke Rebuild Continues

Mini Moke Engine Rebuild

Follow along as we rebuild a Mini Moke.

After a few weeks of distractions around the holidays we have still managed to sneak in a little work on the Mini Moke rebuild. We got the engine back from our friends at Reibe’s Machine shop in Grass Valley. Jemal has worked with these guys going back to his years building MiniMania’s custom engines.

He’s assembled the shortblock up in the garage, but tonight we are down in the basement where the four snycro remote gearbox the we brought back from Wales a few years ago is strewn all over one work bench. This gearbox came out of a Cooper S that his sister owned in the 80’s. It’s being modified to accept the magic wand case and linkage to retain the Moke’s originality, yet still have a serious gearbox under the big 1345cc engine.