Japanese Parts

[tony105]

Hope I'm in the right section for this wild card enquiry. I was recently looking at a number of You Tube clips in relation to Mini's in Japan. One film (which I didn't have the sense to save) featured what looked to be an electrical device fitted to the rear quarter hinged opening window lock, which opened and closed the windows automatically - how cool is that! My question is - has anyone seen these, heard of them or possibly seen the You Tube film also?
Any advice would be welcome together with any experience members may have of buying and owning a re'imported Mini?

[niceboy1275]

Hi Tony,
I can't see I've seen the rear window openers (although they sound very cool) but I have imported a Japanese mini, but into Australia. I know to import it here, it needed side intrusion bars welded into the doors, rear seat belts fitted, new front seat belts fitted (not up to aus code), new tires fitted (once again not up to aus code) and a new dryer/receiver for the air con as the old one contained Japanese oil and was a agricultural threat (apparently). I've had it for around 6-7 years now, absolutely adore it but find parts are hard to get here and air con parts are non existent. I had to get new pipes made up as the air con in these mid 80s minis are different to the ones used on my 95ish engine, so a bit of modifying was required. But on a balmy 40 degree day in Melbourne, its been money well spent. Insurance was a bit of a killer as well being an imported car, I'm just lucky I work for an insurance company so that lowers the premium slightly to just over $1000 a year.

Here is my reggie rover as I call her sitting in Japan waiting to board the ship



With the standard 998cc auto and factory air con


And once here I got a mini builder based in Adelaide to covert it to a 95 SPI manual which cramped the engine bay a bit. Oh and tartan interior, just because its different



But I love the reliability of it now, much better than our older 60's minis

[tony105]

Hi there Niceboy,

Your Minis look great. I hadn't realised that 998 Minis also had aircon' fitted. The engine bay looks very full!

The Tartan interior was fitted to the UK spec' 'Sidewalk' Mini but was I think fitted to a number of export models too. It's amazing to see that although the basic Mini shape remained the same, they were in fact very different under the skin changes and improvements were implemented.

Good to hear from you and thank you again.