My 1967 Mk1 Austin Cooper S

[apblake]

Here are some beauty shots

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[apblake]

The angled front panel stiffener needs to be painted black - probably a project for next Spring.

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[apblake]

In September I decided to go to the "British Invasion" car show in Stowe, VT, which is the largest British car show in the United States (I believe over 600 vehicles participate). Although I don't really consider my car to be a concours vehicle because it has not had all of the imperfections removed by a complete restoration, I decided to enter the car to see how it would do. I was very excited to win 1st place in the touring car class - I think the judges liked and valued the blend of originality with elements that have been restored on my car.

I don't think I have ever seen anyone post a photo of themselves on this forum, but here I go breaking that unwritten rule. This is me with my family who all did the 450 mile round trip with me (I had a chase vehicle). It took about 6 hours each way with stops and the car performed flawlessly. Apologies for out outfits in the photo - we were supposed to dress like British people and apparently this is what we think you all dress like (sorry!).

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[Peter Laidler]

Is that THE Boston where they're really rockin' in, an' Pittsburg PA, deep in the heart of Texas to Californi-a. Or am I hearing that Chuck Berry song too often.

Love the family photo too. While I was working in Australia, they real Australians thought England was just like Coronation Street!

Great thread....

[apblake]

Is that THE Boston where they're really rockin' in, an' Pittsburg PA, deep in the heart of Texas to Californi-a. Or am I hearing that Chuck Berry song too often.

Love the family photo too. While I was working in Australia, they real Australians thought England was just like Coronation Street!

Great thread....

Absolutely. Thanks Peter!

[apblake]

So, while I didn't have any problems with the car on the trip to Vermont, the next weekend when I went to start the car, I couldn't get it to start. As previously mentioned I spent the whole weekend going thru everything trying to figure out the problem and I couldn't figure it out. I had fuel. Having just parked a working car I found it hard to believe that the timing could have magically changed, and when I tested each spark plug I had spark. I thought I had flooded the engine so I tried using a propane torch to burn off gas on top of the cylinders, I changed spark plugs. Nothing. Then Iain1967s said he thought it sounded like a bad distributor condenser and so I changed it to the Dr. Distributor one (which I had on hand) and sure enough it fired right up. I guess mine was going bad, but was not completely failed so I was still getting a spark.

However, playing with all of the ignition side of the equipment made me realize that I might be able to improve general operation by just going thru the whole system. To date I had been sticking with the bumblebee ignition cables, but I decided to go thru the entire ignition system and replace almost everything. New distributor condenser, new main coil (I went with the dry Viper coil which seems good so far), new ignition cables from Green Spark Plug company, new NGK BP6ES spark plugs (those are getting really hard to find in the States since they stopped making them and switched to the resistor version so I stocked up because the car ran noticeably better with them than the Champion N9YC spark plugs that were in the car).

The spark plug cap issue that has been talked about elsewhere on this forum was a challenging one to navigate. I realize that it is quite possible that by the 1966 build date of my car they had switched from the Champion WC548 plug caps, but I'm not fully convinced yet that was definitely universally the case and I really like the WC548 plug caps, so I went with those. I was able to find a NOS Lucas distributor cap and vintage WC548 plug caps that actually came with the ignition wire terminations which came in really handy. I hadn't realized that those are really required and that many other terminations simply won't fit those caps. Although I didn't try them, I also bought as a backup some unused LBER NGK spark plug caps that have a very similar termination that I think might work if someone needs to find a termination. Lastly, I was able to obtain some really nice ignition wire labels from Mark - thanks!

At this point on a completely unrelated note, I'd like to point out the oddly colored wiper motor on my car. Has anybody ever seen one that color? Maybe from another car? My wiper motor appears to be original as it has the correct date stamp on the car and when you look at the aqua colored paint it is the correct crackle finish and there is no indication of somebody spraying over an old one. Based on the condition of the car when I bought it, I don't know that anybody would have sprayed it. So either it was original and this was just a quirk in the production colors, or maybe somebody swapped the guts from some other wiper??? Unless I get really convinced that it couldn't have been a variation at the factory I think I'll just keep it as is.

Here is the current state of the engine bay after going thru all the ignition components and changing plug wires, caps, etc.

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[apblake]

As I brought up in a separate thread on this forum I started noticing more and more a tendency for the car to pull to the left a bit when braking. Long story short I first rebuild the original Lockheed brake calipers. By the looks of everything I think the brakes had not been touched since 1990 (other than a brake pad and disc replacement perhaps). So while the brake caliper rebuild didn't fix the problem, I do think it still needed the job to be done. The replacement of the front brake hoses solved the problem. I then replaced the rear brake hoses as well. Those brake hoses caused a lot of swearing. What should be a 5 minute job took me hours due to lack of accessibility. Even the rears are a pain to do - especially if it involves cleaning years of gunk build up - which mine did. Rebuilding the brake calipers on the other hand was very satisfying. No big surprises there and everything came apart as it should.

Couple of before and after shots.

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[apblake]

While I was working on the brakes I decided to replace the tie rod bushings since those clearly haven't been touched in at least 32 years. Of course when I took the tie rods off they were actually both very slightly bent. This doesn't appear to have been enough to cause the car to pull to one side under braking since road tests indicated otherwise, but obviously it isn't helping the handling of the car. So, I just ordered new tie rods and I'm currently waiting for those to arrive.

And with that you are now up to speed on my car. We have hit present day and my posting in this thread will likely slow down quite dramatically until the next projects come up. If I can, I'll post a photo when the new tie rods are in place.

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[Peter Laidler]

Weren't some MGC engines that green colour? Might be from an MGC or another 3 litre car - or something like that

Added a bit later: The slightly bent track-rod arms look to me as though they have been used to support the weight of the front of the car in the past. Easy to straighten

[timmy201]

It looks so much better now without those plastic wheel arch extensions!

If you want BP6ES there’s literally thousands for sale here in Australia and no sign they’ve been discontinued?

[apblake]

It looks so much better now without those plastic wheel arch extensions!

If you want BP6ES there’s literally thousands for sale here in Australia and no sign they’ve been discontinued?

Thanks for the comment and good to know on the BP6ES plugs. I stocked up from minispares - it made me nervous that you basically can't get them in the States anymore.

[apblake]

One more project I undertook over the winter that I forgot to mention was the seatbelts. The seatbelts on my car were from 1990 and so I wan't to replace them with a period correct set. There was just a single hole drilled into the floor to accommodate the floor mounting point so I opted to go with the Kangol magnetic belts since they have the same single bolt mount. I was able to source a pair of used belts from a forum member here (thanks again rolesyboy) and I sent them to FDTS for refurbishment. I know it has been mentioned before, but it is worth mentioning again, FDTS is a truly amazing resource that must be a one of a kind. When they received my belts they promptly sent me back a 12 page detailed report (including photos) of literally every single nut, bolt, washer, plastic part, etc. with a list of options for what I could do to refurbish each and every part. They also have the knowledge of what is potentially missing and how the belts should have been setup when new. As others have discussed on this forum the webbing for the Kangol belts is no longer available so I chose a slightly darker (really a black instead of a gray) webbing as a replacement and had everything either cleaned up, or re-chromed. When i got the belts after a little more than a month of work I could not have been happier with the result.

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[apblake]

I finally finished sorting out the bent tie rods. Once I had the tie rods removed I noticed a huge amount of play in the lower suspension arms. I could easily tweak the front suspension just by hand. So I ordered the poly bushes with metal sleeves in the center as well as new pins (one of my pins had damaged threads). I guess someone upgraded my lower suspension arms to the mk2 arms at some point.

I don't know how long the red poly bushes for the lower suspension arms have been manufactured, but if I had to guess these bushes have been on the car since 1990 which would mean that they have 24K miles on them. You can see in the photos how badly worn they were.

I got everything on the front suspension degreased and looking spiffy, painted the lower arms, and got the new tie rods on with the purple and black bush set. Everything went smoothly except for the fact that I had to place 4 different orders for parts due to slowly uncovering more and more stuff that needed to be replaced. Note that I'm aware the tie rod bolts are in upside down - I just couldn't get the bolt in from the top and I used a nyloc nut so I'm not too worried about it coming off.

Anyway, I took the car out for a test drive and the handling is massively improved! I used to experience a lot of roll, especially when diving into a corner under heavy braking, that would cause the car to get into an oversteer situation a little more unpredictably than I would want. Now with the front suspension all tightened up that excessive roll is totally gone. What a difference.

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[apblake]

I also was able to get to an upholsterer this week. The original gold brocade in my driver's seat started to get a little tear in it and I didn't want it to get worse. The upholsterer was able to take the seat apart and glue sunbrella material to the back of each of the brocade panels and then apply another piece of sunbrella across all of the panels in order to fix the existing tear, to hopefully ward off any future tears in the other panels, and to reduce the stress on the stitching (which was opening up in places). You can see in the before picture how the fabric was torn in a couple of places which was causing a lot of stress on the vinyl stitching.

After restitching the panels and putting everything back together the tear is basically unnoticeable and everything is much tighter and stronger. Hopefully this will last a long time.

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[apblake]

Couple of small updates:

I started getting a bit of a knocking noise while the car was relatively cold at idle (when the engine vibrates the most). I tried to determine what was hitting, but couldn't actually see anything. It almost sounded like it could be coming from the engine steady itself (maybe hitting on the inner sleeve or something).

So I decided to replace the engine steady bushings since that isn't something I had touched. When I took them out I could see that on one side were some poly bushes that seemed to be in decent shape, but the person who replaced those apparently didn't bother to replace the other side. On the other side were some pretty worn out rubber bushes. I replaced both sides with the poly bushes from minispares. Once tightened up it eliminated the knocking noise. I hate the purple color, but for now function will have to win over form (they aren't very visible anyway). I might change them for some black poly bushes at some point in the future if it really bothers me.

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Also made up a new brake servo hose and routed it the correctly beneath the heater air intake hose.

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[MiNiKiN]

Awesome story, I appreciate how stubborn you are in your research - I can totally understand your obsession to research previous owners. I too have this obsession to find out about my Inno's former keepers, but with an Italian language barrier in-between and literally no records of its previous live

side-note: You must be sponored by "Frog Tape"

[apblake]

Awesome story, I appreciate how stubborn you are in your research - I can totally understand your obsession to research previous owners. I too have this obsession to find out about my Inno's former keepers, but with an Italian language barrier in-between and literally no records of its previous live

side-note: You must be sponored by "Frog Tape"

The Frog tape comment got me to laugh out loud. I do in fact go thru quite a bit of that overpriced stuff.

I never expected to be so interested in the car's story, but when it is too cold to work on the car it really seems to pull me in. Good luck in your Inno quest for info!

[apblake]

Another small update. From time to time I would get a smell of fuel in the trunk, and the flexible fuel lines looked to be very old (possibly not ethanol proof). In addition, I noticed some short sections of just plain fuel line (not protected by a metal sheath) under the car that I wasn't thrilled about. Also, at some point somebody changed the clamp for the fuel pump to a incorrect part that was a hard mount (rather than cushioned by the foam rubber piece that went with original fuel pump clamps.

So I replaced all the flexible fuel lines in the rear of the car (that now means that I have replaced all of the flexible fuel lines for the car) and changed the fuel pump mount to the correct type with the pad. Someone installed a fuel filter at some point on the car, but I kind of like having the additional protection so that stayed in place.

Before:

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After:

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[apblake]

I finally completed a restoration of my handbrake.

I noticed some time ago that my handbrake had the incorrect chromed metal button on it instead of the white plastic type. In addition, the rivet that secures the pawl to the handbrake handle had been replaced at some point with a screw and the whole assembly had clearly been painted black at by someone since everything including the zinc plated parts was covered in black paint. It doesn't show in the photos, but the black paint was fairly badly chipped off down to bare metal on a lot of the handle so I decided to restore the whole thing since there was no originality to be preserved.

Removal of the pawl and rod with the button was easy in my case because all I had to do was remove the screw and the whole thing slid out without any need to split the handle (something referenced by another member on this forum). I ground off all the paint, including the paint on the zinced main base where I was able to save a nice patina'd coating under the black paint. I did not drill out the main rivet about which the handle pivots. This part is no longer available, I didn't want to have one custom machined, and I feel I was able to still get a very satisfactory restoration without removing it. The starlock washers (that frequently get ruined during removal) were easy to find, I was able to find a white plastic button, and my assembly was missing the anti-rattle felt washer, but that was also easy to source from a standard hardware supplier along with rivet and washers for the pin holding the pawl.

Very happy with the result. Some before, during, and after photos below:

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[apblake]

Just finished doing a complete rebuild of the rear brakes (the pistons were seeping brake fluid). Refurbished the backplates, the handbrake cable brackets and then replaced the pads/cylinders/springs. Most time was just spent degreasing 40 years of gunk.

Before:

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In process

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After

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