’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.

Early “Magic Wand” shift mechanisms

I brought JKat one of the early “Magic Wand” shift mechanisms that he is able to adapt to the 4 syncro transmission. That magic wand is from the original transmission for my 1962 Mini Traveller, so that is as correct as can be, as well as being quite unusual.

I actually need the remote shift housing installed on the transmission as it is. However, I also want to fully restore and make fully functional the magic wand shifter as that will go into the car within a short time. While building the car I do not want to go back and cut a hole in the floor boards now, but I will do it later in other words.

Installed in my car when I got it was the remote shifter housing with a special optional shifter adaptor that allowed a firewall shifter to be put in. So, it had a later form of magic wand made by the factory for the 4 sycro transmission. By switching out the shifter rods and linkage with the 3 speed box that was made for the remote (true Copper S), the remote shift housing could fit the Traveller, which I thought at the time would be much more precise in shifting. As you have pointed out however that is not necessarily true, if the original Magic wand is all set up and working correctly. Since the magic Wand is specifically for the 1962 Traveller and is actually the real original shifter that came with the car, I will go back to that very soon. I WILL NEED A TEMPLATE OF WHERE TO CUT THE HOLE IN THE FLOORBOARDS / FIREWALL as my body man did such a great job of filling in the hole I cannot see where it would go.

I am working on finding out what final drive the spare 1275 engine has in it. Rumor had it that the spare engine came from a 1275 GT, but the final drive will reveal whether that is true or not. I would actually prefer a 3.1 or higher, if luck has it.

Sprite Race Engine, Mini Cooper Trans Update

JKat presents a brief description of his Sprite Engine rebuild

https://youtube.com/watch?v=bpXANtUv70M%26hl%3Den_US