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Avenue of the Giants Weekend Run - Sat. March 23, 2024

Saturday will be a very full day of cruising from Novato up through the Avenue of the Giants and ending at Eel River Brewing in Fortuna. Sun...

Is This Australia's Best Modified Mini?

AutoSpeed thinks it is. It is made from an imported and chopped Mini Sprint, modded with a twincam injected motor, straight cut gears, Quaife LSD, 6 pot calipers and "a rippling muscular body!" The body has been seam-welded for maximum rigidity and has an FIA-approved full chrome-moly roll cage. The generic A-series block was reamed out to "only" 1380cc using a billet steel crankshaft and 73.5mm Cossie forged pistons. For added bottom-end durability, a set of Richard Longman billet aluminium rods was also included in the build. It has a $10k-plus KAD DOHC 16 valve alloy head with KAD cams. Installed is a Perfection quad throttle body induction system (which bolted straight onto the existing Weber manifold). Fuel and ignition management are controlled with a Microtech Digi 2 programmable ECU. Running across the front axle line is a KAD 5-speed non-synchro dog box mated to a 3.6:1 Quaife LSD centre to give the FWD chassis maximum traction. Other goodies include Spax adjustable coil-overs, combined with adjustable lower arms; 9½ inch vented disc brakes; alloy KAD trailing arms; an adjustable camber bracket; finned alloy rear drums; and a hydraulic handbrake. Inside iare custom (narrowed) Velo Race seats; OMP harnesses; a fire extinguisher; a Terratrip rally computer; intercom; Smiths 10,000 rpm tacho; SWM wheel and knob; and a helmet net hung from the centre cross-bar of the cage. You can find a nice photo gallery of the vehicle here.