Adam's Mini was quite a find! It must be one of the best mini shells we've seen. The plan is to turn it into a show-stopping C20XE powered, 250bhp monster, with details to match!

Firstly the shell was blasted and zinc phosphate primed. Almost no rot was uncovered, just a small area at the front of the nearside sill and a couple of 'frilly' bits on the seams.

The rot is repaired......

.....before a smooth bulkhead panel was folded up and fitted, complementing the lovely smoothed front reinforcer which Adam has already created.

The next job is to add some strength to the shell to manage all that extra torque! The cage is being designed to add stiffness but with minimal intrusion into the car (it is to be used as a road car, with kids to go in the back... not a track car!). We tie the cage into all four front subframe mounting points, and the rear turrets, as well as multi-pointing to 'a' and 'b' pillars. We are also taking into consideration the new inboard pedal-box arrangment at this stage. You'll notice a new Heritage scuttle is also being fitted.

The next job is to 'tub' out the rear arches and fit the fibreglass extensions, and then come up with a decent hinge and latch system for the all-steel flip front that Adam has supplied. The solution we came up with uses BMW E39 Bonnet hinges and an Opel Manta latch mechanism mounted to the scuttle and braced to the bulkhead. This will be operated by a remote cable and has the option of being activated by a solenoid for relasing the bonnet from the key fob.

Before we get onto the prep for paint stage, we want to carry out a 'dummy' build to make sure we get any metalwork involved with mounting the engine and all associated parts completed beforehand. Here we can see the engine and suspension in, and radiator mount taking shape.

We are also engineering an electric power steering system using a Corsa system. We remove the upper part of the corsa column, then machine a stainless tube down to form a new upper section. this has the correct bore size to accept the corsa upper column bearing, and the correct outer diameter for the mini stalk controls to attach.