skank
New member
This is a story about a little Mini that decided to become awesome.
Her name is Ratex. She was given to me as recompense after a fire.
I was building this;
Those are Kyalamini colours, 3 were built, raced, and died at Kyalami in the 70's. They were competitive but were pushed too hard I suppose. Any way, this happened to the shop where 'Beezul' was being painted;
The nice man who felt bad about the loss of Beezul sourced me Ratex for free. (The world needs more people like this) Johann lost a couple vintage Porsches in the fire too.
Ratex is a 1976 Leyland Mini 1100. Unknown mileage. Trivia; In true Saffa style, the manne at Leyland SA decided that having a different engine block for a different capacity engine like the Poms was stupid (I agree) so they used the same block as the 1275cc engine, a short stroke crank and stacked pistons to create an 1100cc engine. Same 'big bore' and head as the 1275cc. This results in a heavy pistoned asthmatic 1100 engine, just like the Pom long stroke 1100 but cheaper to manufacture. The Poms disagreed with this but that's because they didn't want to admit the dutchmen had a better idea!
Personally I think the Poms didn't like this idea because the SA 1100 now had a factory short stroke crank, and we all know that short stroke cranks create sowing machines right? The SA crank is the same as the pukka Cooper S 1071, the little beast that regularly won rallies around the world and ran to 9000rpm.
So with a little jiggery pokery an SA 1100 engine (which costs fuck all compared to a Cooper S 1071) can be made into a wheel spinning sowing machine.
Any way. Having cast aside the idea of building a Kyalamini (The universe said NO and being broke from building the prettiest Shark) I decided that Ratex would become a Rat Rod.
1. It's relatively cheap
2. No one does it in SA
3. It's Fucking Awesome.
Ratex before her transformation;
Her name is Ratex. She was given to me as recompense after a fire.
I was building this;
Those are Kyalamini colours, 3 were built, raced, and died at Kyalami in the 70's. They were competitive but were pushed too hard I suppose. Any way, this happened to the shop where 'Beezul' was being painted;
The nice man who felt bad about the loss of Beezul sourced me Ratex for free. (The world needs more people like this) Johann lost a couple vintage Porsches in the fire too.
Ratex is a 1976 Leyland Mini 1100. Unknown mileage. Trivia; In true Saffa style, the manne at Leyland SA decided that having a different engine block for a different capacity engine like the Poms was stupid (I agree) so they used the same block as the 1275cc engine, a short stroke crank and stacked pistons to create an 1100cc engine. Same 'big bore' and head as the 1275cc. This results in a heavy pistoned asthmatic 1100 engine, just like the Pom long stroke 1100 but cheaper to manufacture. The Poms disagreed with this but that's because they didn't want to admit the dutchmen had a better idea!
Personally I think the Poms didn't like this idea because the SA 1100 now had a factory short stroke crank, and we all know that short stroke cranks create sowing machines right? The SA crank is the same as the pukka Cooper S 1071, the little beast that regularly won rallies around the world and ran to 9000rpm.
So with a little jiggery pokery an SA 1100 engine (which costs fuck all compared to a Cooper S 1071) can be made into a wheel spinning sowing machine.
Any way. Having cast aside the idea of building a Kyalamini (The universe said NO and being broke from building the prettiest Shark) I decided that Ratex would become a Rat Rod.
1. It's relatively cheap
2. No one does it in SA
3. It's Fucking Awesome.
Ratex before her transformation;
