I Bought a MINI Indie Formula Race Car (RARE FIND)

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]Check this thing out. This thing was a pretty crazy find. So, this thing popped up about 10 minutes away from my house on Facebook Marketplace and I believe this to be an extremely rare find here.

[00:00:15]So, I did a little digging and it looks like Sugar Grove Cars made this car. I guess they produce custom race cars and kits and this is one of their kit cars that they made. This is a mini Formula Indie race car they made for racing. And uh looking around their website, I believe this to be one of the only ones they produced. So, the only one I can find other than this one is a yellow one that they have in the blog. And they're talking about producing these kit cars to sell to the public. And I don't know if they sold a couple of them and stopped doing it or what the deal was, but I cannot find an exact replica of this car anywhere out there except for one. So, this one might be one of two ever produced by the company. And it looks like they actually sold off to a different company last year is my understanding. But if anybody knows anything about that company, let me know. And um I'm interested to hear the history on this thing. But I guess they have a huge history of racing and they just wanted to produce a car that was a kit car and user friendly to the public and this is what they came up with. But all customade. It has a custom fiberglass body on it. This is all fiberglass.

[00:01:35]Um it looks really well built. All the welds are nice. Nice wheels on it.

[00:01:40]Looked up the basset wheels. Each wheel sells for about 200 bucks. Um there's grease fittings everywhere. Disc brakes.

[00:01:48]Nice tires are on it. Removable steering wheel.

[00:01:53]Racing seat with a harness. Nice roll cage on there. Disc brakes in the back.

[00:01:59]And I believe at one point it was supposed to have a VW engine in there.

[00:02:03]Right now it's got a V twin. I'm not sure if it's a Honda or what, but I'm guessing it's close to 20 horsepower.

[00:02:12]But, uh, yeah, custom gas tank, aluminum up there.

[00:02:17]So, really, really well-built car. So, this thing was up for sale on Facebook for $3,000. And the guy lowered it to $2500. Then, I went there and offered 21 and he said sold. So, that's how I kind of acquired this car. But, the owner said he only drove it once down his driveway. He said it was very fast. And he said he got this as a package deal with like a lawn mower and a couple other things. and he said he had no use for it and that's why he sold it to me.

[00:02:44]But today, we're going to kind of go through the whole car, see how this thing's built, and take this thing for the first test drive. Should be pretty fun. I've never owned anything like this before, so this will be something different. So, let's get this thing unloaded from the trailer, and we'll start digging into this thing. See what this thing's all about.

[00:03:06]All right, little walk around of this thing.

[00:03:37]Really cool looking car.

[00:03:39]Check that thing out.

[00:03:42]It's got the Union 76 gasoline sticker on there.

[00:03:46]Pretty cool. You can see looks haven't been ridden in a while.

[00:03:51]There's a little rust on the brakes on the rotors there.

[00:04:00]Here's the inside. So, there's the key right there. You can see the gas pedal and the brake down there.

[00:04:09]It's all painted. It's got the harness.

[00:04:13]Not much padding on the seat.

[00:04:16]Kill switch here. Kill switch here.

[00:04:21]In the back, there's a setup there. You can see the the clutch setup there.

[00:04:28]The chain and sprocket there. Looks like it's probably built for torque more than speed based on that sprocket.

[00:04:35]Um, so there's the build here. You can see all the grease fittings by all the bearings.

[00:04:46]It's a pretty cool little car.

[00:04:51]And for 21,00 bucks, I think we did pretty good. I mean, this thing's clean.

[00:04:59]See if we can climb inside.

[00:06:00]It's definitely not easy to get into or out of. It's really light, too, to push.

[00:06:25]All right, we got this car into the garage. Let's start taking a closer look at everything. So, underneath the fiberglass panel here is the engine. I'm not sure what brand the engine is, but I do know it's a V twin. The gas tank is up here, and it was at the seller, so I could not get that open. We're going to have to lube that up and see if we can somehow open that up. But that's all aluminum. Looks like it's custom welded.

[00:06:49]Everything looks good there. Looks like a breather hose here.

[00:06:53]Or is that? That's a breather hose, I believe.

[00:06:57]what that is for.

[00:07:00]Oops. That's not good.

[00:07:04]That just fell in there. Already breaking things.

[00:07:10]But you can see it's got the removable steering wheel. Just needs to be greased up a little bit. So that comes off.

[00:07:17]Pretty cool.

[00:07:22]And then the seats actually bolted right to the frame. Threepoint harness, two kill switches, one right there. It's got the key there.

[00:07:33]Battery is, I believe, below the gas tank. Or is it below the seat? I think it's below the seat. Yeah, right there.

[00:07:43]Everything should be hooked up correctly there.

[00:07:47]It's kind of nice. The seat pivots like that. [snorts] Yeah, everything is extremely clean on this thing.

[00:07:57]Steering is really really smooth.

[00:08:13]So, let's go ahead try to take off the fiberglass panel in the back here. And that will give us access to the engine.

[00:08:20]I'm curious to see what kind of engine's in there. this off.

[00:08:26][snorts] So, four bolts gives us access to the engine here. Let's see what's going on.

[00:09:03]So, there's the gas tank.

[00:09:08]Says pressure tested for leaks.

[00:09:13]Yeah, that's just a breather up there.

[00:09:18]That goes down to a filter into the carb there. Yeah, that's definitely a V twin. Looks like a brand new air filter on there. What brand of engine is this thing?

[00:09:37]Got torque converter.

[00:09:42]Belt looks pretty decent yet.

[00:09:45]chain. I'm surprised they went with that thin of a chain for this thing.

[00:09:53][snorts] Two pipes off the back here.

[00:10:00]Choke right here.

[00:10:08]Looks like the oil fill is right here. I don't believe there'd be a dipstick on that. No. So, that's oil fill. Oh, here we go. Here's a dipstick for the oil. We'll have to check that.

[00:10:31]Let's see.

[00:10:34]Oh, it's a Briggs and Stratton.

[00:10:36][clears throat] I can see the sticker down there.

[00:10:47]It says 278070.

[00:10:55]All right, we're going to have to look up the model of that. See what horsepower this thing is. So, the model is 305447-3079 for the Briggs and Stratton. And it looks like it is a 16 horsepower 479cc engine is what I found. So, pretty good size engine. They sell for about $2,000 just for the engine.

[00:11:19][clears throat] So, we're already at the $2,000 mark with just the engine. Then we're at $200 per wheel. So, I'm guessing this thing wasn't super cheap to build.

[00:11:30]So, that's good. At least the engine's pretty nice. All right, let's see what the oil looks like in here.

[00:11:40]Looks pretty clear. Let's wipe that off.

[00:11:48]See what the amount is in there. So, it looks like full is right to the mark right there.

[00:11:57]Add is that mark there. Let's see where we're at.

[00:12:05]We're exactly up to the full mark.

[00:12:11]Yeah, it doesn't look bad at all.

[00:12:15]Doesn't smell like gas. Smells like oil.

[00:12:17]So, oil checks out. Let's check the air filter here quick.

[00:12:24]See if there's any mice living in there.

[00:12:29]That looks perfect. Just a paper filter.

[00:12:33]It's missing the cover.

[00:12:36]I wish it did have that cover on there.

[00:12:38]Kind of protects it.

[00:12:42]Um, underneath here is the carb. We'll take a look at that in a second here. I want to check out the fuel coming from the gas tank and see what that looks like.

[00:12:55]All right. Right now, it appears to be a little bit stuck. It says open is that way. on it.

[00:13:05]I want to break it off.

[00:13:23]May have to pound on that with a hammer.

[00:13:25]Bring in here gets stuck. See if we can just >> [music] >> Just now I want to go.

[00:14:00]H. [snorts] I really don't want to break it. Yeah, it's going to break right off of there.

[00:14:13]How the heck can we get that off?

[00:14:19]Little bit.

[00:14:21][sighs] Is it locked?

[00:14:40]There we go. One big pound got her to go.

[00:14:47]Hopefully I didn't break anything. Let's see.

[00:14:52]It's still hard to twist.

[00:14:55]There we go.

[00:14:57]It's off of there. So, yeah. I think you have to push down.

[00:15:04]So, is it I think it's down.

[00:15:11]Get this going in here.

[00:15:23]Looks pretty clean.

[00:15:31]All right, that looks like brand new fuel.

[00:15:34]No water in there at all. That looks really good.

[00:15:42]All right, now we just have to figure out how to uh get that cap back on. Also, the breather tube is stuck in there. Let me fish that out quick.

[00:16:08]So that went up through here.

[00:16:29]Let me put that onto here. [snorts] There [snorts] we go. All right, we got the gas cap back on. Um, so it looks like gas in the tank is perfect. Looks like the filter is filled up. So gas is going down to the carb on the engine. So that all appears to be good. So why don't we go ahead and attempt to fire this thing up and see if it runs. Always do some tweaks to the engine to get this thing to run right.

[00:17:15]So, let's go ahead. We have to flip on the safety switch here.

[00:17:21]There's one right here that's already on. And then we just turn the key and this thing should fire up. The guy said on the first start, you want to prop up the back wheels so that it doesn't take [clears throat] off on you. So, I'm guessing there's some issues with the idle on this engine.

[00:18:09]Doesn't look like that's going to move.

[00:18:11]Goat.

[00:18:13][snorts] Heat.

[00:18:35]All right, she fired up.

[00:19:01]Sounds pretty good.

[00:19:14]Yeah, idle needs to be adjusted for sure.

[00:19:32]It's running good though.

[00:19:36]I think the idle is right there.

[00:19:40]I think let's try adjusting that.

[00:20:09]Heat up here.

[00:20:33]Heat.

[00:20:36]Heat.

[00:20:54]Heat.

[00:21:01]Heat.

[00:21:19]Heat.

[00:21:21]Heat.

[00:21:48]All right. So, the idle screw is all the way backed out and it's still idling pretty pretty high. Um, so I'm wondering if the cable is just pulling that too far out.

[00:22:03]Seems [snorts] like it's revving out.

[00:22:04]Okay, it was stumbling a couple times, but So, right here is the throttle cable. And as I push this back like that, the idle went down.

[00:22:18]So, I'm guessing if we just move that throttle cable back a little bit, give a little bit more slack, that might work.

[00:22:25]Or this spring is just not strong enough right here to pull that back.

[00:22:36]So, let's see. We're going to do a couple adjustments here.

[00:22:57]Heat. Heat.

[00:23:20]Heat up Heat.

[00:23:38]Heat.

[00:24:03]Huh.

[00:24:05]It's weird. It shuts off the engine as soon as you hit that brake there. Should not be happening.

[00:24:27]Heat.

[00:24:31]Heat.

[00:24:51]Heat.

[00:24:53]Heat.

[00:25:01]All right. There's a little spring right here. It might be a little bit too stretched.

[00:25:32]We're going to see if we can maybe find a little bit stronger spring to pull that back.

[00:25:49]If you pull it too far back, doesn't want to go either. Let's see.

[00:25:58]Good job.

[00:26:38]Heat.

[00:26:56]Heat.

[00:27:20]Heat.

[00:27:22]Heat.

[00:27:27]See if it comes right back down there. That's a lot better.

[00:28:30]Okay, I think we got her. It doesn't stall when we hit the brake.

[00:28:40]So, what I had to do was there was a spring right underneath there. You can see it.

[00:28:46]I cut that a little bit off and then rebent it. And now when you do the throttle, it pulls that back nice all the way. It was really stretched out. And then I did the same with this spring here. So now those springs are actually pulling and uh getting that thing back down to idle. Before it was, you know, when you rev it up, the wheels were spinning really, really fast and you couldn't even stop them by holding them. So, now it should be fixed.

[00:29:19]So, let's hit the grease fittings and then we'll go go test drive this thing.

[00:29:23]Hopefully, it doesn't go full throttle on us and then we're we're stuck here.

[00:29:28]All right. There's a grease fitting here for this bearing. Let's hit that one.

[00:29:33][snorts] One on the other side as well.

[00:29:53]All right. Anything else?

[00:29:55]Lower this thing back down here.

[00:30:48]Let's really make sure these brakes work here.

[00:31:05]Yeah, brakes are working. All right, let's see what happens. We're going to put the helmet on just in case.

[00:32:53]Heat.

[00:33:19]Heat.

[00:33:31]Heat.

[00:33:47]Heat.

[00:34:24]The choke came back on. That's weird.

[00:34:29]Choking itself out.

[00:34:35]We'll have to fix that. I think there's a missing spring.

[00:35:10]All right, the choke lever. Something's going on with that.

[00:35:24]here. Every time it would stall, this was back out. See, there's nothing holding that in place here. There should be a spring right there to somewhere in there.

[00:35:41]There's nothing holding that from coming back like that.

[00:36:07]All right.

[00:36:24]So, let's see. Where does that spring go? There should be a spring holding that down there.

[00:36:37]Unless it was just a little clamp here, but you'd think there'd be a spring going back to somewhere on the carb holding that holding that down.

[00:36:56]Aha.

[00:37:16]There we go.

[00:37:18]So, now this is clamped down tight.

[00:37:24]It's hard to push in.

[00:37:29]There we go. So, that's fixed. Now, let's see if this thing works.

[00:38:00]All right, let's try this again.

[00:38:33]Heat. Heat.

[00:38:54]Heat. Heat.

[00:39:02]Heat up here.

[00:39:37]Heat.

[00:39:53]Heat.

[00:40:00]Heat.

[00:40:13]Heat.

[00:40:21]Heat up here.

[00:40:46]Yeah.

[00:41:10]Heat.

[00:41:22]I don't know what that popping is.

[00:41:42]There's zero suspension on here.

[00:41:46]Is that popping?

[00:42:14]Heat.

[00:42:23]Heat.

[00:42:27]Heat.

[00:42:42]Heat.

[00:42:49]Heat. Heat.

[00:43:20]All right, it's definitely getting better, but there's a popping noise like right at like 0 to 1/4 throttle. So, probably the pilot is clogged, but pop pop. And then finally, once you push full throttle, it finally goes This is the popping All right.

[00:44:24]Heat.

[00:44:55]Let's see if we can get this carb off.

[00:44:58]Heat. [snorts] [snorts] Heat.

[00:45:35]Heat. Heat.

[00:45:57]Heat up here.

[00:46:18]throwing flames there.

[00:46:25]I think it's dumping too much fuel.

[00:47:03]Yeah, I think it's dumping too much fuel there.

[00:47:23]All right, let's try to get this carb off.

[00:47:26]All right, so gas line coming off first.

[00:47:36]Is there a hole in that?

[00:47:56]have to do to get the carb off. There's bolts underneath here. This cover way down there.

[00:48:03]We're going to take off the bowl here and just see if we can clean out those jets.

[00:49:17]There's the float.

[00:49:21]Little needle in there. Grab that out.

[00:49:30]There's the needle.

[00:49:35]Interesting carb.

[00:49:40]All right, that's what we're looking at.

[00:49:41]So, there's a little jet right there we can take out. We're going to soak up the gas with a rag. It looks like there's some gunk at the bottom of the bowl.

[00:49:52]Now, this carb is not the easiest one to take off.

[00:50:19]floating around.

[00:50:25]So, let's go ahead and try to clean this up as best as we can. Get that jet out of there.

[00:50:33]Yeah, there's some pieces floating around.

[00:51:09]Found the problem.

[00:51:14]Huh?

[00:51:24]I found the problem. [snorts] Piece of plastic in there.

[00:51:48]So check this out.

[00:51:51]This was the problem here. So here is the float and here is the piece that got broken off of it.

[00:52:00]So somehow the float broke apart in there.

[00:52:07]And I'm guessing that's not shutting off the fuel and uh it's flooding out the engine at least uh when we're first giving it gas.

[00:52:22]That's why it's only revving out at full RPM cuz it's using that gas in the bowl. It kind of has a hard time idling and uh when you give it gas, it just kind of spurts and sputters and then finally goes But that was the problem. Good thing we tore that apart. Otherwise, we wouldn't have ever figured that out.

[00:52:42]I've never seen that before. That's just broken apart.

[00:52:47]So, I'm guessing we can find one of those and replace that part hopefully.

[00:52:55]Let's try to get that little jet out of there, too, while we're in here.

[00:53:14]Yeah, a couple of these were clogged.

[00:53:18]Little holes down there. See that one's partially clogged there. [snorts] So, we're going to blow through everything with the compressor.

[00:53:30]I can see through it now.

[00:54:07]All right, there is the float we're looking for. So, it's 40 bucks. We'll order that up. All right, let's put it back together and see if it's any better at all now that we cleaned out the carburetor. I'm guessing it's going to be about the same because of the float, but we'll see.

[00:55:06]That line's really hardened up there.

[00:55:40]All right, let's see if it runs any better here.

[00:56:10]Heat.

[00:56:32]Heat.

[00:57:10]Heat.

[00:57:30]Heat.

[00:57:35]Heat.

[00:57:57]Heat.

[00:58:29]Heat.

[00:58:43]Heat.

[00:59:22]Heat. Heat.

[00:59:52]That is bumpy.

[01:00:11]Heat. Heat.

[01:00:56]Heat. Heat.

[01:01:21]Rattles the rim pretty good.

[01:01:41]Heat. Heat.

[01:02:11]Heat up here.

[01:02:26]Heat up here.

[01:02:40]Heat. Heat.

[01:03:03]Heat.

[01:03:21]Heat.

[01:03:51]Well, this thing's starting to kind of run like crap. I think that float is just allowing way too much fuel and it's not shutting off that fuel because uh you know right off the gun it's pretty bad. But once you get going, we're probably going like 3540 mph down the stretch here in the sand and it wasn't bad. I mean you can corner this thing as sharp as you as sharp as you want and it will not tip. So it's it's engineered for racing for sure. Um so I'm guessing it's just engineered for oval track racing and this thing would be sweet at the track. I mean, it would be awesome on pavement. All we have to test it on is a sand track. And it wasn't horrible.

[01:04:29]You know, I'm guessing top speed on this thing's probably right around like 50 55 miles an hour in a straight stretch. And yeah, it doesn't have any wheel wobble, nothing like that. So, it's pretty steady at those speeds. What would be really cool is if it had a bigger engine in it. I think like a VW engine like 75 horsepower or something would be awesome in this thing. maybe in the future. But, uh, I think once we get that float for the carb, this thing will be a lot more peppy and a lot more fun. But, it is not bad. You know, riding this thing isn't too bad. Um, I don't think you want to be like over 6 ft riding this thing cuz my head cannot fit underneath the roll cage here with a helmet on. Without a helmet, it can, but with a helmet, it can't. So, you probably want to be under 6 feet to drive this thing. Otherwise, it's pretty uncomfortable.

[01:05:20]But it's pretty spacious in here. Um, plenty of room for your legs and stuff.

[01:05:24]It's just the seat's not very comfortable. And the roll bar cage here is just a little bit too short for me.

[01:05:31]But other than that, I mean, this thing rips pretty good.

[01:05:35]It's really fun to drive. It'd be awesome if like a couple people had these things and we could go race them at the track, you know, have the same engine, have the same everything. And uh, that'd be pretty fun. you know, top speed of 55 mph, you really can't get hurt too bad. So, yeah, this one was pretty cool. Um, we're going to wait for that float to come and then put that in there. And this should really rip a lot better than what it's doing right now.

[01:06:38]All right. Well, this thing is at its new home in the pole building until we can get that new float for the carb. So, yeah, this one was pretty fun to work on today. If you guys know anything about this car, let me know in the comments.

[01:06:50]I'll show you guys the sticker one more time.

[01:06:54]This is the company that supposedly built the car. So, if anybody knows anything about it, let me know in the comments. Definitely a really cool car, and it was pretty fun to pick it up, do the first start and the first ride on this thing today.

[01:07:12]really really cool machine. I'm guessing extremely rare. Yeah, we'll wait for that float install that and do an update video on this thing later on.