Converting a 1984 Mini to Fish-carb
-Temporarily discontinued-
[February 2008]
In october 2007 I got a place to study on Lake Constance. Due to this I didn't had the time to continue work on the Fish project. And the car had to be finished because I needed it. I had the problem that I now lived 200 kilometers away from the car. One weekend I noticed some play in the rear swing arm and I destroyed a brake caliper. The bleeding screw blew away a bif part of the caliper while closing it. And so I decidet to bring the car to a garage for the first time in nearly 5 years.
It got new swing arms and brakes all around. New tyres, some minor work and then brought it back on the streets.
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In the meantime I bought a brandnew Maniflow LCB. And, surprisingly and to my very delight it cleared the Fish's manifold!
If you compare both the Sportex budget manifold and the expensive Maniflow piece you can clearly see the difference. The Sportex is much more bulbous as the Maniflow:
Maniflow | Sportex
It now runs very nice and economical. I put an K&N replacement filter in the original airbox of an Rover-Cooper/MG Metro and it now needs about 7-7.5 litres 95 octane on 100 kilometers which is very satisfactory.
I will see if I start the experiment with the Fish again in summer vacancies. But to be honest: I'm not in the mood for experiments. This is on one hand because I don't have the possibilities to work on a car here and on the other hand because I need the car - never touch a running system.
Again runing with an SU HIF44.
But the time to restart the project will definitely come.
It's just not the time now.
[Mai-Oktober 2007]
A few years ago, I first noticed the Fish-carb on Mark Forster`s great sites.
Some months later, I discovered an Reece-Fish carb on Bay.co.uk an won it. It was a complete 1.25" kit for aircooled sinmgleport VW-engines. But unfortunately I didn`t have a VW but a Mini
Since I didn`t find an matching intake-manifold for BMC a-series engines and was not willing to use a cast HS2 (Mini 850) one, I soon startet bidding on a second carburetter.
This time the seemingly pretty rare 1.5" version. And, the main-reason I bought it for: It came with an alloy-manifold for a-series engines!
Unfortunately someone drilled a huge hole into the float-chamber which I had to close. But anyways it came just in the right moment, because meanwhile I switched to an 1275cc, as the 998 suffered from continuing issues. And not least because of the money it`d cost me I wanted to use it ;-)
I did`nt find any matching intake-trumpets. A custom-made one would have cost a fortune! But luckily somebody helped me out... Good man! It is shaped after a drawing in David Vizards yellow tuning-Bible and has a flange for an open K&N filter which arrived 6 weeks after ordering it direktely from the US and A.
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But it`s not that straight forward to run an carb from the 60`s on an 90`s engine. There are severall differences, one to name is the vacuum-adcance for the ignition-timing. On early engines it was (regarding in direktion of air-flow) before the butterfly, on later engines after. A second modification was neccesary, as in Germany open engine-breathers are forbidden since 1974!
So I had to invent something, ´cause the Fish didn`t support all these necessities. In first instance I had to solve more basic troubles:
The LCB I`d fit to remoce the old exhaust-clamp (poor piece of engineering!) didn`t clear the Fish-intakemanifold.
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Compared to an SU manifold, the Fish one is relatively flat:
Even grinding didn`t lead to success. So I had to search for another solution. Which came in form of an cast manifold from an 1.3injection engine. Together with a Maniflow downpipe it gave sufficient space between the two manifolds without lacking to much performance. Another benefit was the good support for an oxygen-sensor which can be a pretty good held when tuning the carb.
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Unluckily there wasn`t any space left for the K&N. Well, it may fit but if the engine moves (can`t stop it from doing this without SERIOUS lack in comfort and silence) it will hit the speedo or firewall.
The telescopic throttle-slide I made as a copy of the original Reece-Fish device turned out to be way to smal and weak. But no problem there, as you can see later on. I had to made an adaptor-plate between carb and manifold for the ignition-vacuum. Why not make it a support for the throttle-cable too?
At this point I decided to swap in the new old subframe, as I smashed the old one. Story goes about sharp corners, too much speed and little grip together with a kerbside...
After some hard work I put in the overhauled subframe, upgraded with poly-bushes. The engine was out, so it was a perfekt time to do some serious tuning: Port-matching!
For this i used a brandnew reinforced manifold-gasket (1.3i). Controlled in how far it matches the intake-ports on the head. Then sticked them on the manifold, drilled it through the little holes for centering it and put it back on the cylidnerhead. Drilled it too, put little pins in and - BOoM - had matching ports! Tuning can be so simple! (Fortunately the size of head and manifold ports was the same!)
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So back in with the engine. Meanwhile the Manifold Downpipe arived from england.
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But with everything bolted on place things turned out to be a little different to what I`d expected them to be. The 1.3i engine sits about 1cm more to the front. That little difference amde my plans fall into the water. Either the downpipe cleared the firewall/exhaust-tunel or the Fish-carb hit the firewall and brakelines. I relocated the brakelines, but still it was TOO tight to be drivebal. Same problem as with the K&N. But way more serious. It`s the different shape of the Fish compared to the HIF44 which makes it so difficult.
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A bit dissapointed I headed to the adaptorplate. A masive piece of aluminium which I drilled, filed and driled and drilled again. It has takeoffs for ignition-vacuum, smith`s vacuum-gauge and one more for something-which-could-come-later-maybe.
The throttle-cable support is only provisional, until I have an verry good idea for something without Su-type return-spring. This sort of throttle-returning unfortunately produces much wear - a well known issue to i.e. HS4 carbs.
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So much for now. I don`t have great motivation at the moment to continue on the Fish. But some good ideas, thought. The K&N will be replaced by an pipercross sock-filter. Flexibel and good.
For the issue with the space I need, I`ll modify the firewall to clear the Fish`s floatchamber. And then I`ll have to figure something out for the engine-ventilation. Maybe a smal pipe in the trumpet.
