Next project- 1965 Austin Cooper 1275 S

[Fanfaniracing]

Hej Gary
I have a friend working there at Emil Frey Classics/ Roos Engineering. If you don‘t get any response, let me know.

[Gary Schulz]

Hej Gary
I have a friend working there at Emil Frey Classics/ Roos Engineering. If you don‘t get any response, let me know.

Thank you, I appreciate that. I sent an email to what looks to be their archive department so I will make sure to let you know.

Gary

[Gary Schulz]

Been a long while since I last posted on this project. I did have numerous exchanges with Emil Frey Classics and their curator spent quite a bit of time trying to help me sort some of the history on this car but we came up with pretty much nothing. The car was apparently dispatched to Austria at some point during its life based on the information we can see on that old door panel sticker. Since I am basically done with my 64 S project I decided to dig into this one by beginning the disassembly process.

The good news- I still have a completely rust free shell as the basis of my restoration probably because this car was used rally/racing based on scattered evidence I have (placards from Press on Regardless and an SCCA sanctioned event held near Chicago sometime in the 1970's). No rust at all!

The bad news- the car is battered. It obviously had a pretty hard life during its rally career because the passenger side door aperture is very slightly smaller than the driver's side. The floors are pushed up pretty severely as well.

Not sure how to best address pulling the floors back down and flat again...

Also even the though my Heritage Certificate says the car was originally red with a black roof it is pretty apparent to me that this car was originally white with a black roof!

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[Gary Schulz]

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[Gary Schulz]

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[Gary Schulz]

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[MiNiKiN]

The car was apparently dispatched to Austria at some point during its life based on the information we can see on that old door panel sticker. Since I am basically done with my 64 S project I decided to dig into this one by beginning the disassembly process.
.....
Also even the though my Heritage Certificate says the car was originally red with a black roof it is pretty apparent to me that this car was originally white with a black roof!

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Gary, now we are talking. Have you pls. got a pic of the Austrian door panel sticker. Maybe I can help shed some light on this matter.
I do a bit of research on Austrian race and rally Minis, so maybe can find some traces of yours.
Greetings fom Austria
Marcus

[MiNiKiN]

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...

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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.

The dispatch note says that it had been dispatched from Salzburg main station (Salzburg Hbf.) to Vienna West station (Wien West)

The remainder I cannot descipher, despite cranking up resolution and contrast.

The BMC/Jaguar/Rover concessionaire for Austria actually was in Salzburg (G.B. Auto Import & VertriebsgesmbH AND Autohaus Fieber, Wasserfeldstrasse 15, 5020 Salzburg) for a long time. Autohaus Fieber was their garage, whereas GB Autoimport was the parts and car import branch. I did work there in the early nineties, now it's ceased (no correlation )
I suppose the sticker results from a spare part delivery.

Can you find more evidence?

[Gary Schulz]

[/quote]

The dispatch note says that it had been dispatched from Salzburg main station (Salzburg Hbf.) to Vienna West station (Wien West)

The remainder I cannot descipher, despite cranking up resolution and contrast.

The BMC/Jaguar/Rover concessionaire for Austria actually was in Salzburg (G.B. Auto Import & VertriebsgesmbH AND Autohaus Fieber, Wasserfeldstrasse 15, 5020 Salzburg) for a long time. Autohaus Fieber was their garage, whereas GB Autoimport was the parts and car import branch. I did work there in the early nineties, now it's ceased (no correlation )
I suppose the sticker results from a spare part delivery.

Can you find more evidence?
[/quote]

I am amazed that you were able to decipher this information from the sticker remnants. Do you think that the sticker just shows that the door is a spare part from an Austrian parts depot?

I am afraid I can't seem to come up with any other history on this car. I purchased it around 1980? and I know it was raced in the US in the seventies but can't quite figure out how and why it was from Austria? It is clearly configured as a European or US model with the red taillights and clear front indicators etc...

[MiNiKiN]

I am amazed that you were able to decipher this information from the sticker remnants. Do you think that the sticker just shows that the door is a spare part from an Austrian parts depot?

I am afraid I can't seem to come up with any other history on this car. I purchased it around 1980? and I know it was raced in the US in the seventies but can't quite figure out how and why it was from Austria? It is clearly configured as a European or US model with the red taillights and clear front indicators etc...

Not sure but the indicator section in the LH taillight looka amber to me - depending on light incidence.

I am pretty sure the sticker can only be related to the door itself, rather than the whole car. In the right of the sticker it states "die ganze Sendung besteht:" with I suppose a number below in handwriting. This translates "the whole shipment consists of" with the number of items of this batch below.

No traces of dealer stickers, except for the Solothurn one? Have you been checking for any remains of a dealer sticker in the rear window? I assume you have already done this sort of forensic investigation.
Who knows which parts of how many different cars went into this one during its hard racing life....

I suffer the same sort of trouble in my attempt to trace back the pedigree of my Innocenti Cooper - it seems someone in its life thoroughly covered the tracks of its previous life.

You could try digging into old photo archives - I mean how many Minis have been raced in the US in those days? dozens, hundreds?

[mk1]

If I had a car that had competition history and that had never had any replacement panels, alarm bells about the shell would be ringing very loud indeed if the heritage certificate said it should be one colour but the shell was obviously a different colour.

Not saying it has had a shell swap, but it would be MY assumption.

[Gary Schulz]

I think the term "competition history" may be a bit grandiose in this case. From what I remember being told the car was run by a college student back in the day. Don't have any evidence of how it fared one way or the other but who knows, maybe there are pictures lurking out there someplace.

Yes, the disconnect between the Heritage Cert and what I see is puzzling to say the least. I have evidence of this door with the sticker indicating it may have been a replacement part all the way back in July of 1965. The replacement may have come from an Austrian BMC parts depot but the car was originally exported to the port of Baltimore in April of 1965. Perhaps it was owned by someone in the military who moved it around with him?

I wish the car could talk...

I found one of the placards that was attached to the old dash that was in the car when I found it-

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[jay weinstein]

In the 60's and 70's a lot of colleges had sports car clubs. SCCA also put on low speed slalom,autocross events using college parking lots.
They were quite popular. My girl friend called me the king of the cones....hit them all !

[MiNiKiN]

Off the record and just a wild speculation - as Mark already implied - Gary's S may at some point have required a bit of a re-shell. God knows how, a spare white car of Swiss/Austrian origin seems to have been sourced. Looking at old photos there were plenty of Cooper (S) used in local rallies and possibly one of these made its trip to the US.
Luckily yours isn't Niki Lauda's former Cooper S, because IIRC that wasn't white. I still have a chance to unearth this gem...

In the 60's and 70's a lot of colleges had sports car clubs. SCCA also put on low speed slalom,autocross events using college parking lots.
They were quite popular. My girl friend called me the king of the cones....hit them all !

You apparently confused autocross with bowling

[Gary Schulz]

I decided to take the next step in this project by working through some preliminary tasks. The first thing I started working on is a body fixture with accurate mounting points for the front and rear subframes. I decided to build the fixture using mainly 3" x 2" x 0.25" thick steel angle. Fortunately I have what I believe is a perfectly straight original shell (rusty but straight) that has never been hit. The shell is from a 64 S that I disassembled quite a long time ago and it has been sitting unused. I figured it would make a good reference point for checking and adjusting the current restoration project that seems to be a bit bent out of shape.

Here is a quick shot of the progress so far...

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I discovered a number of things while working out how to assemble this homemade fixture. The first thing I never realized is that the front subframe tower tops and bolts are at an angle. I made several measurements using different methods and have concluded that the tops are inclined at a 5 degree angle from vertical. I also now can see that the sides of the car make for a poor reference datum to do wheel alignments since the car seems to taper from front to back. The frame I made is exactly square so this becomes readily apparent. Best way to do wheel alignment definitely is by establishing a true center line from under the car!

I am now pondering if I want to weld sections of the jig or just bolt things together. It will be very easy to distort the frame because of the welding heat and I am trying to hold very tight tolerances so if anything gets welded it needs to be done in a very carefully planned sequence to not pull everything out of alignment.

Seems like a lot of work but I really want to make sure I finally get this old car straight and running true...

Any thoughts on welding vs. using bolts to final assembly?

[Gary Schulz]

Another couple views-

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[Gary Schulz]

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[Gary Schulz]

Fixture is done. I verified the subframe "hardpoints" against the shop manual reference dimensions and it seems to check out within tolerances so I can now confirm my reference body shell was perfectly straight. Next step is to do a test fit of the bent shell on this fixture to find out what needs to be adjusted in order to get the alignment accurate.

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[Gary Schulz]

Getting close to mounting the shell on my reference fixture. I thought I would take a closer look at the subframes for a little change of pace. The front subframe is rust free but has the usual signs of abuse from jacking in the wrong places etc. It also has some strange heavy steel plates welded onto a couple areas. The plates look to have been used as some sort of reinforcement for additional jacking points so will need to be carefully removed. In my mind it is always worth saving original subframes given the issues people seem to have with both heritage and repro subframes.

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The rear subframe is also relatively rust free and looks great on the top side-

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The bottom is in very rough shape because someone a long time ago took a crack at "welding" some tie-down rings and basically destroyed the bottom sheet metal on both sides (very ugly!)-

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Have any of you taken the trouble to rebuild rear subframes by replacing sheet metal? Seems like it would be a lot of work but if replacements are junk maybe it is worth all the work?

Thoughts?

[MiNiKiN]

Why not. I have replaced a piece of the upright longitudinal girder where the cone runs along. This is a section that accumulates grime and hence starts to rust first.
I cannot see why you could not replace the piece on yours - probably a good practice to remove the top metal layer to get rid of the rot between the sheets of metal.
Only reason not to repair would be German TUEV - as they do not allow repairs to "supporting structures".
Which is imho BS, as the rear subframe needs additional welding anyway, given the 7cm distance between spotwelds (on a Firsat frame)
And if you weld and finish it nicely, nobody will notice Ubi non accusator, ibi non iudex