Next project- 1965 Austin Cooper 1275 S

[Gary Schulz]

Even though I am certainly not done with my current project (1964 Austin Cooper S), I have begun thinking about how to deal with the next one in line. Here is the brief story behind this one- I bought this car around 1980 from a guy here in northern Illinois who was really into mini’s. He had this car sitting in a backyard along with 4 or 5 others. He also had cars stashed all over the northern suburbs of Chicago so I am uncertain how many he actually owned. When I found this car it had no engine (I was told the original engine was blown up) and it had a history of being used in SCCA rally racing in the late 60’s and later in the 70’s was used for what many of you guys would call rallycross. Needless to say it had seen a pretty hard life!

I bought this car when I basically could not afford to do a genuine restoration because I was in college and of course penniless. I did receive the title for the car and the VIN number confirmed that this car was a 1965 Austin Cooper 1275 S. What I found was a rolling chassis with many of the right parts still intact including a rollbar and a white paint job with a Union Jack painted by hand on the roof. When I bought this car, I was driving around in a rusty Austin America (1300), which I had converted from an automatic to a manual transmission. This 1300 eventually wound up donating its powertrain for my initial attempt at “restoring” the Cooper S.

When I got the car home, my dad and I pulled some of it apart to check out the body. What we found was a completely rust free car however the front end was battered with Bondo used to flatten out some of the waves in the panels. I think it was possible that at some point at least the fender on the drivers side (LHD) was replaced or repaired because the wheel well was wrinkled slightly and eventually I figured out that the door aperture on the drivers side was an inch or so shorter than the passenger side! Also probably because of the cars racing history, the floors are a bit pushed in in places and the rear valence is irregular and the doors had dents filled by more Bondo. Given that I was young, naïve and penniless, all this body distortion was pretty much ignored during the process of turning this into a driver. To make a very long story short, the body was stripped of much of its paint by hand and after a little ugly gas welding of sheetmetal and a paint job in the family garage we were ready to go!

At the time of this original so-called rebuild, I never touched the suspension bushings etc even though it looked like much of the rubber was squeezing out around the ends of the arms. After dropping in my 1300 donor engine, I figured out that the original hydrolastic suspension was pretty much flat so that is when my father came up with the idea to convert a grease gun into a pump (this was long before the internet so who knew that others had invented this same technology long before?). We wound up pumping up the suspension using antifreeze coolant just because it seemed like it should work nicely. The suspension surprisingly pumped up just fine but always had a decidedly tail-high attitude. At the time I didn’t have any idea why this would be the case (I now know of course that this was due to plenty of trapped air in the system!). I drove the car this way for many months but in an effort to get the car to ride more evenly, I made the fateful decision to remove the displacers and replace them with an old set of rock-hard rubber cones I accumulated. I remember being pretty “clever” in devising ways to reuse the rear suspension arms by cutting off the pins that held the helper springs and then drilling and tapping the inside of the stub axles to accept a bolt that I used to attach shocks. I can remember quite vividly the day the junkyard tow truck came to collect my derelict Austin America and I threw a bunch of other junk in the boot including what I now know was a perfectly good set of hydro displacers for my 65 Cooper S! If I could only go back in time and correct some of those poor decisions…

Fast forward 38 or 39 years (time flies) and now I am treating my old car as a barn find in need of a proper restoration. Over the years I did acquire a few of the parts I would need to get this car back into its original condition. I obtained a decent 1275 S motor with what turned out to be a cracked crank. After buying 3 cranks I managed to finally get one that was not cracked so I have a good start on that.

Here are a couple of the major items I still need:

Original gearbox (3 synchro I would guess)

Complete set of 4 displacers (is it possible to source these anymore?)

Mk1 Servo

Steel rims

Front seats

I am sure there are 100 other things as well but those are the big-ticket items. I will probably be digging into this next project later this year so there is time to find the missing parts…

Displacers, anyone??

Here it is "as-found" the second time around-

20190116_140430_resized.jpg

20190116_140354_resized.jpg

20190116_140410_resized.jpg

20190116_140324_resized.jpg

20190116_140315_resized.jpg

[Gary Schulz]

A couple more pictures

20190116_140507_resized.jpg

20190116_140445_resized.jpg

[abri]

Nice looking car!

On the topic of displacers, someone can correct me but I think the early 1275S didn't use any of the special hard type of displacers. So you could fit displacers off any old Mini. I know for a fact that even by late 66 some CKD cars were not fitted with hard displacers, not that yours is CKD, but it shows that the lowly (and more easily available) orange band 21A1804 did just fine.

[Fanfaniracing]

Nice Car!

Is it a Swiss Car?

[Costafortune]

Were these sought after in the US back then? I remember seeing a green/white Austin Mark 1 'S' in Los Angeles in 1982. It was parked up on an intersection on a garage forecourt, flat tyres, covered in dust but absolutely original and rust free. I hope it was saved.

[Andrew1967]

65 S displaced are indeed the same as 850 displacers

[foxy52]

Nice Car!

Is it a Swiss Car?

..Euro import..my thoughts to..foxy52

[iain1967s]

The only source I know for good-used displacers is Ian Kennedy

https://www.facebook.com/groups/Hydrosuspension/

[Gary Schulz]

The only source I know for good-used displacers is Ian Kennedy

https://www.facebook.com/groups/Hydrosuspension/

I don't do Facebook. Is there any other way of contacting Ian? I am glad to hear that this would have used "standard" displacers.

I think I will document the rebuild of this car in a more thorough way as an ongoing set of posts as progress is made...

This car seems to have originally been dispatched to a dealer in Solothurn Switzerland back in 1965 (maybe July 16, 1965 ? ). I have the very faint remnants of a sticker placed on the inside of the drivers door that someone tried to deface many years ago with a date and other indecipherable information in German...

20190116_140233_resized.jpg

What this sticker tells me about the car; I don't know. Have you guys seen this before? I tried to find evidence of a BMC dealer called Keiber Garage in Solothurn but I can't come up with anything on the WEB.

As is usual there is a small dilemma associated with this car because the VIN number on the title tells me that this car was exported to the USA according to my Heritage certificate...

To be honest, these cars were never common in the USA but were purchased by sports car enthusiasts and typically driven hard and "put away wet" so many were scrapped before they became objects of value...

Gary

[Simon776]

I tried to find evidence of a BMC dealer called Keiber Garage in Solothurn but I can't come up with anything on the WEB.

Sometimes you need a good old fashioned real printed book.... and the right name helps :

Urs Kiefer Garage
Vorstadt 4
Solothurn

[Gary Schulz]

Where did you get this information Simon? Maybe I can use this information along with careful reconstruction of that sticker inside the door. Maybe it tells me more information about this car?

Part of my problem was I was reading the "f" as a "b" so I thought it said Kieber instead of Kiefer! Interesting bit of information...

[Gary Schulz]

Here is one of the few pictures I have from the time when I purchased the car as a "roller". As part of the deal (don't forget I was young and stupid, maybe now just older and stupid), the guy I bought it from wanted to keep the wheels. I think it had Cosmic wheels and we threw on a set of standard wheels but I seem to recall there was some sort of issue getting them to even fit just to roll it around. I will look for more pictures before my initial "restoration"...

20190118_091326_resized.jpg

[Highnumbers]

65 S displaced are indeed the same as 850 displacers

But not a year later?

I know my original '66 S had "blue band" displacers on all four, and I think others have the same. Supposedly a difference and the blue type are designated for Cooper models, but who knows what's going on inside the units..

[Fanfaniracing]

Emil Frey Classics in Safenwil Switzerland will cerainly have mor Infos about your Car.
They were Main Importeur of Austin from the beginning here in Switzerland and keept almost all infos
Of every Car that pass by their hands...

[Gary Schulz]

Emil Frey Classics in Safenwil Switzerland will cerainly have mor Infos about your Car.
They were Main Importeur of Austin from the beginning here in Switzerland and keept almost all infos
Of every Car that pass by their hands...

That is really excellent news. Would you mind helping me make contact with them? I am unsure how to approach them on this topic...

EDIT: I did send an inquiry to them and I will see what they can respond with. This looks like a very good contact to have.
Thank you

Gary

[Gary Schulz]

Some folks brought up a few additional questions. One question regarded the presence of the original mounting holes for the Mk1 servo. I went back and tried to take a better picture showing the original servo hole locations along with holes for who knows what? You can see the servo bracket holes in the following picture... By the way, I know the regulator and possibly fuse box are located in the wrong spots. The car has a "homemade" wiring harness and I was unaware of the correct locations for much of this at the time.

20190118_130508_resized.jpg

I also found the original boot lid and hood. Here is a picture of the boot lid that came with the car (at least I think so). The holes for the "S" badge are small because the boot lid was primed with the plastic stud mounts still inserted in the holes. This panel was pretty bent up and I believe I just took a boot lid from another non-"S" donor to make things easier...

20190118_131554_resized.jpg

This is the original hood for the car. You can see why I elected to use a different panel because someone cut away some of the bracing...

20190118_131207_resized.jpg

20190118_131237_resized.jpg

I also still have all the left over interior pieces except the front seats. Some of the old gold brocade is in decent shape...

20190118_130725_resized.jpg

[Gary Schulz]

Here is a little better picture of the speedo. To be honest, I do not recall if the car had this speedo/pod in it or not. Pretty sure it didn't come with any speedo since it looks like this one is from a different car. I think I remember there being a different dash in the car with an odd mix of period "performance" gauges...

20190118_132246_resized.jpg

[Gary Schulz]

I think the instrument binnacle probably came from this poor soul.

20190118_145048_resized.jpg

I think this must have been a 998 Cooper. I wound up parting out several of these cars with very low mileage but complete rust buckets. I suppose today we would have saved all of them! I remember parting out a couple of Cooper S's that seemed to have dissolved with rust...

[iain1967s]

The only source I know for good-used displacers is Ian Kennedy https://www.facebook.com/groups/Hydrosuspension/

I don't do Facebook. Is there any other way of contacting Ian?

Hydragas and Hydrolastic Service Ltd (Ian and Dawn Kennedy) http://www.hydragasandhydrolasticservic ... ntact.html

[Gary Schulz]

The only source I know for good-used displacers is Ian Kennedy https://www.facebook.com/groups/Hydrosuspension/

I don't do Facebook. Is there any other way of contacting Ian?

Hydragas and Hydrolastic Service Ltd (Ian and Dawn Kennedy) http://www.hydragasandhydrolasticservic ... ntact.html

Thanks for the tip...