Striking Clubman may look like a well-sorted track car from the outside, but there’s a whole lot more to it than that...
At first glance you’d never suspect anything. Sure, there’s a dirty great intercooler hanging out of the grille, plastic windows and slick tyres, but the perfect shiny paint, steel front end and even the proper narrow sills belie the true nature of Rick Jessop’s stunning Mini. It’s obviously a pretty serious bit of kit – a Clubman-fronted Miglia rival perhaps – but it’s only when you peer inside it becomes apparent that there’s a whole lot more to this striking creation than initially meets the eye. A lot more, but paradoxically a lot less, too. You won’t find the normal exposed floorpans, inner LIGHTWEIGHT sills or rear bulkhead you’d normally expect to see in a stripped-out Mini, but a beautiful web of intricate metal tubes and aluminium panelling in their place instead. Yep, this isn’t just a tidy looking track car, it’s a radical spaceframed one-off built to an incredibly high standard – oh, and it’s turbocharged too. No wonder it’s taken the best of part of a decade to complete... UPPING STANDARDS Rick knows a thing or two or about turning out top-notch builds, working alongside his dad and younger bother for the family business, Jessop Motor Bodies in Wakefield. Minis have always been heavily involved too, as Rick explains. “When I was 15 I bought a Sandglow Clubman Estate out of the local paper for something like £150, and it was still MoT’d. I used it for messing about, trying to learn to weld and trying to learn to fill. To be honest, my dad probably did the bulk of the work on that one! “We ended up selling it on, and I bought a white Advantage to pass my test in,” he continues. “It was the usual thing... we striped the doors off, then the wings and the sills. The boot floor had fallen out, and it got to the point where it was virtually a bare shell. So I ended up getting another Mini in the meantime to actually use.” Nevertheless, work on the Advantage would eventually progress. “The plan was to build it back up and move it on,” says Rick, “but once the paint was done it was too good to sell, so I thought I may as well build it as a toy to have alongside my other one. I had a turbo engine built by MED, and I fitted a pair of bucket seats and a six-point bolt-in ‘cage. I used it for a couple of summers, and then a MkI shell came along. The idea was to build it into a proper lightweight racer with a weld-in cage and a fibreglass front, so the turbo engine was taken out of the Advantage and I sold the shell to another lad who was building a road car.” INTO SPACE Soon after starting work on the MkI shell however, the project would take on a more serious turn. “Although I can weld panels on and put floors in, I wanted a proper Migliaspec ‘cage putting in it,” Rick explains. “With all the welds on show the joins had to look right, so I went to see a local lad and we got talking. The plan was always to keep the car long term, but the only downside to that was the rust. If I’d have rebuilt the MkI 10 years ago, I would probably be putting sills on now, or fitting a floor. So the crazy theory behind it was that if I got rid of all that, there was nothing to corrode. All I’ve got now is essentially an outer skin with a roof, rear quarters and door frames; there’s no floors, no bulkhead, no boot floor and no inner sills.” But it wasn’t just about stopping rust – the idea of a spaceframed Mini had its own unique appeal. “Years and years ago, when there wasn’t so much on the internet, I liked the idea of building a proper Maguire spaceframed Mini,” he explains.“Trying to find any information was hard, but I could see that the fibreglass shells didn’t have proper sills on. I wanted it to have a proper sill, so it still looked like a normal Mini from the outside.” In order for the frame to be built, Rick delivered the rolling MkI shell to Dean Forward Motorsport in nearby Barnsley. Dean now has several people working for him, doing everything from basic set-ups to full-on, ground-up builds. Back then though, he was still a one-man band, with Rick’s spaceframe a total one-off. The shell effectively acted as a jig, with Dean adding bits to it and cutting the old metal away when he was done. “It’s not been something built on the bench that’s had a shell popped over the top – it’s basically been built inside the Mini,” says Rick. “As a one-off it was easier to do it that way, but if you were making a conversion kit, you would have made a jig so you could repeat it time and time again.” Effectively, Dean started in the middle and worked outwards. “He built a square and sat that in the car, then braced it in between where the seats and tunnel go,” Rick explains. “Once he’d made the floor he built the rollcage around it, then tied that into the front subframe. The front subframe was already bolted up in the car, so he’s managed cut out bits of the front bulkhead to bring the tubes through to meet it, before cutting the rest of the bulkhead away. “It’s still got the lower part of the Mini front subframe, which took out the guesswork of mounting an engine in a load of tubes,” adds Rick. “In theory it uses the standard Mini geometry – the only thing that’s different is that the top arm is a mirror image of the lower arm and tie-rod set up. At the rear it’s got some lightweight steel radius arms that I bought from John Kimmins at Specialist Components years ago. They’re fastened to the rollcage itself rather than to a rear beam or subframe, but they are still sat in the same place as they would be on a normal Mini.” The final frame is hugely comprehensive, and includes a custom pedal box and a Rose-jointed steering column, as well the provision for the internal gear change and the top mounts for the coil-over suspension units. “The seats and pedals are a lot further back than a normal Mini,” says Rick. “And because everything is further back, there’s loads of space for the turbo and exhaust under the bonnet.” However, there was still plenty of work to do. “When I got it back, you put your foot straight through the tubes on to the concrete floor,” says Rick. “I worked out what to panel and how to do it, knowing I obviously had to put a floor in. For the front bulkhead I didn’t want to just rivet aluminium panels over the tubing, so I’ve welded little tags to the framework, then inlayed the panelling so that it’s inset and you can still see the frame.” Indeed, the panelling is extremely neat, particularly the rear inner arches where the KAD anti-roll bar passes through, and the curved rear firewall arrangement. “The exhaust was going to sit alongside the fuel tank and enter through the bootlid, but with the fuel pump and fuel lines, it all looked a bit close,” says Rick. “I had a local sheet metal guy make up the shape for the exhaust tunnel, but all the rest of the flat panelling -
“The roof ended up inside out and the rest of the panels weren’t much better...”
- is what I’ve made. It’s been a case of making cardboard templates to ensure it will fit. The panelling is thicker for the floors as they needed to be more substantial.” BODY BEAUTIFUL The new frame initially had the MkI outer skin welded on, but Rick wasn’t happy with the condition of it. “The MkI needed all new panels or a lot of filler,” he says. “I had it blasted, but didn’t explain what I wanted doing, so the roof ended up inside out and the rest of the panels weren’t much better. I got offered a mint shell cheap, so I ended up using that instead.” Rick fitted his new shell with the MkI rear light panels salvaged from the old one, and added a removable Clubman front end while he was at it. “I bought a fibreglass front, but the quality was poor,” he says. “So I welded some steel panels together and made my own. The bonnet and boot are fibreglass though. The bonnet’s a bit rippled, but I wasn’t going to put a steel one because of the weight. You could probably get a better quality fibreglass front now, so I may look at that in future to get the weight down.” As for the doors, the steel frames have been retained, but they’ve been hollowed out and had aluminium outer skins fitted. The inner panels are also aluminium, but with a neat swaged line that also features on the top of the dash and what would be the rear parcel shelf. “It puts strength in the panel and stops it vibrating, as well as being good for the aesthetics,” says Rick. “A friend of mine has a really old beading tool. It’s basically two rollers with a winding handle. When you get to a corner you have to try and turn it, so it was a bit of nightmare.” But not as much of a nightmare as painting the spaceframe and the panelling – a job made doubly difficult by Rick’s insistence that they couldn’t be the same colour. So, in between swapping shells, he sat the bare frame on axle stands in the spray booth and painted it in Honda Thunder Grey. The inside of the shell and panelling meanwhile, were coated in Honda Storm Silver, with final touch ups made when everything was welded back together. “If you look at the kit cars that people build, the aluminium panelling can start to look tatty very fast. I decided to paint everything aluminium so it would keep for longer. The simple solution would’ve been to weld the shell on, fasten the alloy panelling and lean inside to paint all the inside the same colour like a normal car. But I didn’t want to do it like that – I wanted to show that the frame was separate.” As for the outside, that’s now Porsche Riviera Blue, with the top half and the fibreglass bumpers in the same Honda silver as the inside. “I don’t really know why I ended with the blue, but I’d always liked it,” says Rick. “I could’ve painted it any colour I wanted, but that just makes the process of choosing one harder. If you’ve got a MkI Cooper you pick a MkI Cooper colour, but this could’ve been anything really. I’d seold Minis with the top painted a different colour round to the scuttle, and always thought it looked interesting.” Separating the metallic and solid colours from each other is a neat pinstripe – painted on obviously – but you wont feel a ridge between the two. “The whole car has been lacquered, so if you run your hand over it, you can’t feel an edge,” says Rick. “I could’ve just masked it and had an edge there like a normal pinstripe, but I didn’t want that – that’s not what I do. I’ve probably added more weight with all the lacquer, but I wanted it to have a nice paint finish.” TURBO POWER So remarkable is the body treatment that any discussions about the engine almost seem like a footnote, but with a fully lightened and balanced bottom end, forged pistons and an 11-stud MED Forced -
“It’s got a really low compression ratio, so it should take a lot more boost...”
- got the Forge Motorsport intercooler set-up The gearbox was originally a Jack Knight straight-cut close-ratio one that I bought second-hand, and MED rebuilt that. It had a Mini Spares cross-pin diff but I’ve replaced it with a Quaife one. Otherwise it’s all the same internally.” Rick has also retained the Metro manifold and T3 turbo unit, although the latter has been rebuilt with a 360-degree bearing. “That was done when I first started rebuilding the car, and a local company made the exhaust system for me. Ideally now I’d fit the more modern GT20 turbo I’ve got, but the downpipe has been made to bolt direct to the exhaust housing on the turbo to do away with the troublesome elbow and clamp, so it would have to be cut and altered. As the existing turbo is newly rebuilt anyway, I thought I may as well try it out. It can be changed later on if needs be.” During its last rolling road session the car reached 137bhp at the flywheel on 12psi of boost, but that was with the clutch slipping. “At around 14psi it should give a nice easy 150bhp,” says Rick. “It’s got forged pistons and a really low compression ratio of 7.5:1, so it should take a lot more boost – say 20-25psi. The thing is though, I want to enjoy using it and keep it reliable, and because of the weight, it should be plenty quick enough. Any more power and it’ll send me into another corner somewhere! It’s 544kg, and that’s with a good 15 kilos worth of fuel in it and all the fluids.” With a potential power-to-weight ratio of around 300bhp per tonne, the suspension and brakes have naturally been fettled to cope. Joining the adjustable geometry provisions all round are Protech coil-overs (with Eibach springs on the front and Hypercoil versions on the rear), with KAD six-pot front callipers on vented discs to bring it to a stop. The rear brake set-up features aluminium drums with the fins shaved off, and there are three master cylinders too – one for the clutch, one for the front brakes and one for the rear, with an adjustable bias control in there too. Concealing the brakes are a set of 7x10- inch Force Racing V4 Wheels with painted Riviera Blue centres and Yokohama A032R tyres for the wet, while a set of ST10 fourspokes with anodised centres, titaniumfinish rims and Dunlop Miglia slicks go on in the dry. Both sets use a trick centre lock fixing. “These are the first set of four spokes without the holes for the normal wheel nuts,” says Rick. “In place of where the normal wheel studs would go there are bolts in the drive flange, with a locating hole machined in the back of each spoke to locate the wheel. In theory the big nut just holds the wheel in place, as that alone won’t stop the wheel from spinning on itself.” Finishing off the trick spaceframed interior is a Sparco fibreglass bucket seat with Sabelt harness, a Sparco steering wheel and all the regular safety provisions, such as a battery cut-off switch and plumbed-in fire extinguisher. Extra switches have been located in a neat roof-mounted panel, while a Curley carbon-fibre dash has been cut down to leave just the central tower, housing an AEM air/fuel ratio gauge and a trick Stack display. “I bought the Stack dash second-hand,” says Rick. “It keeps things simple, and if I’d bought every gauge at £50, it would’ve cost more anyway.” TRACK TIME Although the car is now effectively complete, we can expect it to continue evolving in the future. “Some of it’s been together for eight years, so there are bits that need to come out for refreshing even though it’s not been anywhere,” says Rick. “Trends change and new things come out, so you try and keep up. The rear arms for example are available in billet now, so that would save some more weight.” For the moment though, Rick can finally think about enjoying his many years of hard work. “I’ve had a couple of Escort Cosworths, I’ve had a Porsche, and done trackdays in them and used them as my normal road cars, but the Mini is solely a toy,” he explains. “I’ve booked a trackday at Cadwell Park, and I’d like to do a bit of hillclimbing too. Basically it’s time to go and have fun with it...”
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