1972 Innocenti Cooper 1300

[Ronnie]

Land Rover (60's +) fuel tanks are all soft soldered, how it stands up to E10

[Peter Laidler]

Nice to see old fashioned lead loading being used. Similar thing happened to another mini owning pal in Newbury in the 70's. His 998 Cooper had a r/h tank fitted from new by the dealers. But instead of sitting the tank on the steel tank stand with a strip of mastic or rubber between the tank and support, they just sat the tank on a strip of wood!!!!! Within a couple of years the wood was impregnated with water and had caused the tank to rust through in the shape of an 8" x 1" wide or so strip of pin-hole leaks along the bottom.

The tank was knackered really but he repaired it by flattening a 8" length of copper water pipe through a set of rollers, tinning one side, bead blasting or sanding down the whole pin-hole area and tinning that too. Got a decent fit between repair strip and tank and a specialist motorbike tank repaired along Bone Lane sweated the two together and tested it. He was doing a fair few MGB flat-top tanks that way too.

[MiNiKiN]

Nice to see old fashioned lead loading being used.

Thx Peter
I quite like lead loading in certain applications, where you really want a strong bond between the base metal and the levelling compound, i.e lead. Or where you need to weld a repair panel onto one that is already a bit thin from corrosion. Always a bit difficult to weld as I only have a rather basic MiG-welder with only 4 power settings. Welding thin sheets I usually have the choice between burning holes or lack of penetration. So to embellish my sub-perfect welds I like to add some lead on top.

[MiNiKiN]

Still waiting for the engine and gearbox casing to come back from the machine shop. (I already got it back next week 4 times )
Time to do some panel work, whilst the sun is out and temperatures are bearable for outdoor work.

Selfmade boot floor repair panel. The aftermarket Mk1 repair panel that that closes the hole towards the rear has a really poor fit or the Innocenti boot floor is so different. Needs a lot of fettling to make it fit. Update on this once I can be ar*ed to do the job.

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Next on the RH floor repair panel. First a piece of extension for the floor repair panel was necessary. Making corrugations to fit the shape of the original Innocenti pressings. For this purpose I 3D-printed a dolly (a cupping die, so to speak) and formed the corrugations on my quickly re-purposed cider press, converted into a hydraulik press (I hardly drink cider anyway ).

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Next step was to re-shape the pear-shaped corrugations (pretty worn press tooling or what?) so they match the intact section of the original Innocenti floor panel .
The dolly was also useful when re-shaping the corrugations in this repair-panel.
In the following 2 pictures you see the mismatch between the rather trapezoidal Innocenti shape and the "pear-shape" of the repair panel.

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[MiNiKiN]

Bob's you auntie.Top up motivation and do the LH side.....

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[olifdez]

Can you send us an update? It’s a lot of time without any news from you!

[MiNiKiN]

I will once I make progress again - project has been on halt for various reasons.
One beeing the missus - project relationship had to be prioritised some more
Second on is I bought myself a sensible daily driver - an MGF - which is more of a project car than I expected it to be.

[Peter Laidler]

Round these parts, Abingdon, the ancestral home of real MG cars, they say that the much maligned MGF will be the next collectable - without any doubt. So if you've got one and intend keeping it, start collecting cheap spares while you've got the chance

[MiNiKiN]

Round these parts, Abingdon, the ancestral home of real MG cars, they say that the much maligned MGF will be the next collectable - without any doubt. So if you've got one and intend keeping it, start collecting cheap spares while you've got the chance

I intend to keep it, yes. It is an MGF 75th anniversary, fitted with a TF bumper and headlights and a trophy rear spoiler and 16" rims - I like the rims and the spoiler - not so sure about the TF-Front.
Once I have finished fixing the MGF's issues I will carry on with the Inno cooper ...

[MiNiKiN]

Hi all. As mentioned in my last post, other stuff has taken over most of my time and, more importantly, my financial means.

My engine has yet laid at at the machine shop for almost a year (he is good in machining and a nice chap, but the least organised person in the world )
so I said I come over for some team-work machining - I hand the tools (aka spanner monkey) and Michael (the engine refurbisher) does the machining.

He had already replaced the valve guides previously - but it showed that all the valve spring seats had been pocketed to different depths (maximum of +-1.2mm) from factory
So we knocked back the new valve guides and face milled the spring seats to equal depth.

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Then we fully removed the guides and thereafter I took the head home, and did some more porting on the exhaut ports, because I was way too conservative at my 1. attempt.

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Back at the machine shop we fitted a set of NEW valve guides. We also managed to dynamically balance the crankshaft assembly (I had already statically balanced the flywheel itself) and it showed to hardly need any more balancing.
The cylinder block has already been bored and honed to +40 Thou and I power steam washed it all - particularly the water ways - to get rid of any trapped, loose rust detritus and debris.
Progress, but very little....

Next is skimming 2mm of the head, asembling pistons with rods, replacing cam bearings and cutting the valve seats again (to equal depth)

[MiNiKiN]

I quote myself, dated March 2021:

Still waiting for the engine and gearbox casing to come back from the machine shop. (I already got it back next week 4 times )

- Good things come to those who wait..taking the waiting time this engine must be the cat's whiskers

After various visits to my engine builder, where we straightened the con rods and fitted the pistons, "skimmed" 2mm of the head, ground down the crank axial bearing by 0.05mm (on a professional grinding machine) as it had literally NO play. BUT: Finally all my engine bits'n bobs are back from the machine shop in the home shed and I have now started re-assembly.
More than two years after the strip down, I had a few moments of "bloody hell, where have I put these fasteners" with longwinding searches afterwards. I thought I had kept order, and labelled everything...

So my aim on the car is to only fit period items, or replacements which are in line with what would have been available back then in '72. Though this is not always possible (from a monetary or availability perspective I had to make shaky compromises)


All newfangled pistons along with crank and camshaft fitted

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The crank assembly, almost standard - just lightly cleaned the surfaces and all balanced and matched the MG Metro rods of course

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Measure twice - cut once everything painted in black enamel, as original on Innocenti engines

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Well if you buy used stuff you shall be prepared for surprises. This chain needs to be replaced after 4kmiles, obviously.

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2Bcont'd...

[MiNiKiN]

NOS head gasket - guaranteed NOT asbestos free

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Longman 1.5 rocker gear on a fake Longman GT7 head (who's this MiNiKiN forger ) with shrunk NOSS rocker cover gasket

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Ordered a few more bits to carry on - i.e. the chain and missing fasteners - oh, and one valve cotter that my cat kicked off the work bench, right into nirvana

[colonel mustard]

Looking good Marcus, well done!
I’m just at the engine building stage for the Innocenti T, when I have time!

[AndyB72]

Looks great, worth the wait! Is that a reverse light switch on the back of the gearbox?

[MiNiKiN]

Looks great, worth the wait! Is that a reverse light switch on the back of the gearbox?

Indeed it is! Innocentis already had reverse lights from 9/68 onwards, switched like that until when the remote gearchange was still fitted (i.e. up until ~3/72)

[AndyB72]

I've seen aftermarket magic wand and remote switch kits that bolt near the gear lever but didn't realise there was a factory fitted switch.

[davidnutland]

my mk3 Cooper has the same switch feb 1972

[MiNiKiN]

my mk3 Cooper has the same switch feb 1972

Did the Mk3 Cooper S originally come with reverse lights? Or is this some upgrade that was added?

[Ronnie]

my mk3 Cooper has the same switch feb 1972

Did the Mk3 Cooper S originally come with reverse lights? Or is this some upgrade that was added?

NO options were > 4.5" wheels, sump guard, rake adjusting seats, heated rear screen, fresh air eyeballs.

[MiNiKiN]

my mk3 Cooper has the same switch feb 1972

Did the Mk3 Cooper S originally come with reverse lights? Or is this some upgrade that was added?

NO options were > 4.5" wheels, sump guard, rake adjusting seats, heated rear screen, fresh air eyeballs.

No offense meant! I now realise that David probably has a Mk3 Innocenti Cooper - that makes all sense then.