Midas Cars Forum - www.midascarsforum.com

Hey guys, I have a couple of friends who have performed the following mod on their vauxhall conversion mini and a track day mini and I am quite tempted to do it myself;


Reason for doing so is for exhaust tunnel clearance and moving the gear stick closer to the steering wheel - plus I do like the look of having the shaft internal of the car! (and it's not like I am easily able to climb from one seat to the other anyway!)

Does anyone think there would be an issue caused by cutting a hole for the gear change going through the floor?

I am prepared for the onslaught of 'daft idea' remarks

I can't see this happening in a Midas. You have 2 shafts and a remote gearbox in the tunnel and they are in line with the gearbox. If in theory you would install them on top of the tunnel, you would need a transfer mechanism in front of the bulkhead that goes downwards again straight through the exhaust manifold.

Hans Efde wrote:I can't see this happening in a Midas. You have 2 shafts and a remote gearbox in the tunnel and they are in line with the gearbox. If in theory you would install them on top of the tunnel, you would need a transfer mechanism in front of the bulkhead that goes downwards again straight through the exhaust manifold.

I'll post some photos of my friends setup with his mini when I get home, he has had to connect 2UJ's to make it work, as you said to go around the exhaust, KAD even sell a (stupidly priced) kit for doing exactly this

edit; here we are;

Apparently a bit of reading into it, without a rock steady engine it'll only keep jumping out of gear - well there goes that idea then!

lankyjames wrote:Apparently a bit of reading into it, without a rock steady engine it'll only keep jumping out of gear - well there goes that idea then!

I also (briefly) wondered about doing this conversion as well, for clearance reasons, until I realised that you end up without the steady rod between the gearbox and the gear lever - unless you do something really clever with it, and have it come through the floor as well. But if that were feasible, you would then end up with a big lump of metal shaking around inside the car instead of underneath it, if you see what I mean.

If you want to solve the tunnel clearance issue as an alternative you could dive into the expensive world of robotized gearboxes. I have no idea if it works on an A series engine, but then in theory you have a shifting device on the engine that is controlled by a computer and you only have flippers on the steering wheel. I believe we have had this discussion before on the forum, David was thinking about a Smart gearbox/system.

Or, if you're a dab hand at fabrication, you could mount a plate on the back of the box using the bolts on the back of the diff, use a few small rose joints and a bell-crank or two, and have a cable operated gear shift like Mondeos etc.
But the metro/mini remote gearshift is a pretty simple and reliable piece of kit, so unless it's broken, don't fix it.

I contemplated this option but came to the conclusion that the steady rod would have to be kept using UJ's as with the selector rod and the housing would need to be rubber mounted. I must admit that I could do with more space in the exhaust tunnel as I ideally need a 2" system for my turbo engine