My 1967 Mk1 Austin Cooper S

[apblake]

In October of last year I purchased my 1967 Mk1 Austin Cooper S on Bring a Trailer (I'm located in the US). The car was generally speaking in quite good condition already, and appeared to be very original (although the total mileage was not known at the time). I spent about 2 years looking for a car, and this one fit the bill so I went forward.

Since buying the car I have spent a huge number of hours (many on this forum) learning about the mk1 cars in general and also researching the history of my particular car. I have subsequently embarked on a number of small projects with my car, all with an eye toward fixing things that were incorrect as far as what the car would have looked like originally. In general I'm a very big fan of cars being stock (as they would have been delivered from the factory), and I'm also a big fan of originality. But, my car is not a show queen so I care a great deal about the ability to drive the car on a regular basis. I have been balancing these 3 factors as I have been making small tweaks.

Anyway, I thought I would share the story of my car as well as the bits that I have worked on in a thread in case others find it interesting (I have loved reading the stories of other cars here). Spoiler alert: working on the car has been a learning process for me as I have never previously done anything more than an oil change and brakes on any of my cars. So you won't see any big welding projects or engine rebuilds (at least not by me), but hopefully interesting nonetheless.

[mk1]

I certainly look forward to hearing / reading more.

Although a rolling restoration can't ever have the dramatic sweep of a rebuild from two wheel nuts & a hubcap, they are often just as good to read & in a lot of ways are more accessible to most home mechanics.

Please tell us more.

[apblake]

So the story starts with the car being built on August 10th 1966 (So I guess it is really a 66, but it was first registered in 67 so I always call it a 67) and according to the Heritage certificate it was sent to Canada. The first owner is the only one I have not been able to track down any information on, but I believe the car was delivered to the Austin dealer in Toronto on 737 Church Street because the car still wears the original dealer badge on the trunk. This dealer also happened to be the head office for BMC Canada (thanks Mark for the reference doc here: https://mk1-performance-conversions.co. ... ers-67.pdf)

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The dealership originally opened in 1949 and apparently cost $1 Million to build:
https://www.pressreader.com/canada/toro ... 3937127613

Here is a photo of the dealership in May of 1959

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[apblake]

The 16 Year Old Second Owner

When I bought the car, it came with some records, but nothing was known of the ownership prior to 1985. Last winter when driving and fiddling with the car wasn't happening I started spending a lot of time requesting records from Ontario to see what I could turn up. The pandemic slowed down the turnarounds, but I started receiving some record copies, but what I received was somewhat limited. After a number of conversations with the very friendly people at the Ontario Ministry of Transportation I learned that they kept all of their records back to 1985 on microfiche and that it could be accessed, but that it required a special request that would take months. I sent in the necessary forms and waited to see what I would get.

What I received back was a treasure trove of documents (in the Spring) that brought a lot of new information to light. I already had a record of the person who had purchased the car in 1985, but I didn't know that the car had actually been off the road since 1970. In the newly obtained records was a copy of the registration that had been signed over in 1985 to that buyer. That registration was a 1970 registration. They wouldn't normally have that record on file still, but because it was attached to the 1985 sale I completely lucked out. Ontario at that time didn't have the concept of a title for a vehicle, instead the registration served that purpose. If you wanted to sell a car the most recent registration document needed to be signed over to make it legal.

The name on the registration document was fairly unique so with some quick internet sleuthing I was able to find a phone number for a person in Ontario with the same name. I gave the phone number a call and the gentleman who picked up confirmed that he indeed had been the owner of my car!

He explained to me that a friend of the family had acquired a Cooper (not the S) and given him a ride when he was 15. According to him they went out and were racing a bunch of muscle cars on the streets and beating them so he fell in love with the car. When he turned 16 the next year in 1969 he found a Cooper S for sale at the Austin dealer on Church Street and bought it as his first car for $1,500 Canadian. He wasn't sure, but the assumption was that it was a trade-in by the original owner and that he was the second owner.

In our conversation he told me that he had installed the aftermarket tachometer that the car still has today as well as some kind of 3" super loud exhaust (which is long gone) that got him pulled over by the police many times for excessive noise. After less than 2 years of driving the car he ended up getting clipped in a minor fender bender on the right rear quarter panel of the car at an intersection (I have done paint meter readings all over my car and every panel is as to be expected except for a section in the middle of the right rear quarter panel that corroborates the story). He simply banged the panel back out, but the accident triggered an increase in his annual insurance premiums so he could no longer afford to drive the car. He subsequently parked it in his mother's garage and forgot about it until selling it in 1985.

One other gem of a document uncovered in this search showed that the mileage on the car was just 30,000 when it was sold in 1985. Now I had a story as to why that occurred and I also had the paperwork to show that the car was in fact a fairly low mileage example. Today the car has a total of just over 54,000 miles on it and the last time it was driven as a daily driver was in 1970.

The second owner was able to find an old photo which he sent me of the car from 1970

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It's amazing to me how bad the paint already seems to be on what is just a 3 year old vehicle. I know British reds were apparently particularly bad and my car appears to have been no exception.

The second owner also let me know that he had kept an original SU Carb wrench on a keychain for over 50 years since he owned the car. He was nice enough to send it to me.

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[apblake]

Getting the Car Back on the Road

As previously mentioned I had a record of the buyer in 1985, as well as the record of the subsequent buyer in 1988. The newly obtained records from Ontario showed that the car had actually not been registered by the 1985 buyer. The second owner told me that while sitting in his mother's garage the wheels had seized and so the car had to be dragged out.

After many hours more of internet sleuthing I was able to find the son of the 1988 buyer who subsequently connected me with his father. I was able to get on the phone with him to hear the story. The 1988 buyer was actually a car collector who had owned a variety of different cars including a total of 4 minis over the years. In 1988 he was having another one of his British cars restored by a shop in Ontario and while visiting he noticed the Cooper S sitting in the shop not being worked on. Apparently the 1985 buyer had brought the car in for help getting back on the road, but was having money trouble and so the 1988 buyer bought the car from him and completed the refurbishment. What he told me was that the car was in phenomenal condition and that it needed very little. The battery box needed to be replaced and the car was repainted in the original colors. This is the paint that the car still wears today and was just the exterior of the vehicle. The wheel arches, engine bay, and interior paint all appear to be original.

The owner was able to find a photo of the car and sent the photo below in 1990 when it was finally put back on the road again for the first time since 1970.

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[12345678]

Amazing story! Glad you’ve been able to get so much history on your car.

[apblake]

The car finally gets a little use for the first time in 20 years

Between 1990 and 2000, the car collector who had refurbished the vehicle used it for pleasure driving in dry weather only. During his ownership in the mid-90's he had Don Sobering rebuild the engine. Don still works on cars today and I was able to track him down and talk to him about the car. He remembered it well because he was friends with the owner. The owner had wanted to potentially rebuild the engine to be more race tuned, but Don successfully convinced him that the car was too original to do anything dramatic like that. Instead he put in a very mild cam upgrade, changed the carb needles, balanced the bottom end and replaced the worn out studs with ARP studs and just did a clean and careful rebuild.

In 2000, the owner decided to sell the car. He had put on just over 18,000 miles in 10 years bringing the total mileage to just over 48,000 in 2000.

A flyer from the classic car storage facility where the car was stored in the 90's (document came with the file with the car)

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[apblake]

A Celebrity Owner is Uncovered...

In 2000, when the car was sold, the person who bought it owned it for a very short period of time and then sold it to a woman in NY state who imported the car from Canada to the US. I had spent many hours trying to locate these two owners but had been coming up empty. I decided to give it another try in the Spring. I messaged tons of people with the correct name on Facebook, LinkedIn, sent emails, placed phone calls, and got no response. Finally I uncovered a new potential phone number for the NY state owner and tried texting. Low and behold I got a response back!

I started texting with the woman and she let me know that she had not actually been the true owner of the car. Instead, it was her boss's car and he had just put the car in her name for privacy reasons. Of course I immediately asked if she could tell me who the owner was, but she said she didn't think she could due to confidentiality agreements she had signed.

Once we stopped texting, I went back to my records and began scouring them to see if I could find any clues. I also did some more searching of the woman online and found some clues that she was likely associated with the movie industry. Then I had a break thru when rereading my files I discovered the name of a company on the importation documents that I had previously missed. The woman had been listed as a "Consignee" and the "Owner" was listed as a company with a NY City address. Some Google searching uncovered the fact that the holding company was owned by the actor Mike Myers.

Excited about this new information I picked the text thread back up with the woman and told her that I thought I knew who her boss was and that I thought it had been Mike Myers. She couldn't believe I had figured it out and confirmed that I was correct and that she had been Mike Myers' personal assistant for 12 years. She then proceeded to tell me more of the story. A friend of Mike's had found the car in Toronto for him and arranged the purchase (the mystery owner in 2000 that I had not been able to get in touch with). In subsequent reexamining of the documents, the original registration documents where the new owner filled out his name actually show that the false buyer wrote the name of Mike Myer's wife at the time and then crossed it out and put his own name (realizing the breach of privacy). Mike bought the car to be his personal car while he was filming the Austin Powers movies. The only problem was that he did not know how to drive stick shift, so his personal assistant taught him how to drive stick on the car. It was no wonder that the subsequent owner had to replace the clutch.

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[apblake]

The Car Moves to a New Home

Mike Myers personal assistant had been maintaining the car at a local car shop, and in 2003 Mike's ownership stint came to an end when he sold the car to the owner of the shop. I had some service records from the shop, but it no longer existed so I couldn't locate the owner that way. However, in 2003 a Heritage certificate had been procured for the car and there was a name on the certificate - I presumed him to be the new owner.

Back to the internet, I spent more hours searching for possible contact info for the right person and eventually stumbled upon a very old posting on a car forum for a car being sold by someone of the same name in NY with a contact phone number. I sent a text message and sure enough it was the right person! We got on the phone and the 2003 owner told me that he had been doing the routine maintenance and eventually he bought the car because it wasn't being used (he had no idea the true owner was Mike Myers - his personal assistance was the only one that he dealt with, but after I told him he said that something had always seemed fishy to him). The car sat in the back of his shop for several years unregistered.

In 2006 he sold the car to a new owner, also in New York state who ended up owning the car until 2021. That owner methodically changed the oil yearly and put about 250 miles a year on the car bringing the total mileage in the Spring of 2021 to 53,100 miles when he finally sold the car on Facebook marketplace to the person I bought the car from.

Here are photos from the ad on Facebook listing the car for sale. The car is in good condition, but far from perfect and many details are a little off from factory spec:

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[Peter Laidler]

Great story.

Just make sure that BEFORE you use that little SU mixture key that you insert a key ring in the hole at the end and tie a bit of string through the key ring that's long enough to go around your neck and allow you to use the key. That's so that when you drop it down the back of the hot engine it a) can't disappear into a thin gap and b) when it does slip out of your hands, it's always tied around your neck so that c) you can pull it back out again.

Been there and lost one but not again! WEAKEN, anti-clockwise. ENRICH, clockwise; WHEN VIEWED FROM ABOVE

[apblake]

Great story.

Just make sure that BEFORE you use that little SU mixture key that you insert a key ring in the hole at the end and tie a bit of string through the key ring that's long enough to go around your neck and allow you to use the key. That's so that when you drop it down the back of the hot engine it a) can't disappear into a thin gap and b) when it does slip out of your hands, it's always tied around your neck so that c) you can pull it back out again.

Been there and lost one but not again! WEAKEN, anti-clockwise. ENRICH, clockwise; WHEN VIEWED FROM ABOVE

Ha! Good tip - thank you.

[apblake]

Buying the Car

The man I bought the car from spent a couple thousand dollars and a little bit of time on the car before selling it. He had the brake booster rebuilt (which had been bypassed). There was a little date stamped tag on the brake line by the brake booster with a correct date stamp that I don't think I've ever seen on another car.

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He also did a tune up, put some new tires on, and spent a few months getting a title for the car from the state of Virginia. NY state doesn't issue titles for cars this old so it took some paperwork and time to get one issued. In this process he also corrected the VIN # on the car. Every record I had on the car, going back to 1970 incorrectly listed the VIN as CA257L892318, which obviously was never a VIN number issued by Austin (the S got transposed as a 5). So when he got a title, the car finally had the corrected VIN of CA2S7L892318.

After putting just over 100 miles on the car the new owner listed it for sale on Bring a Trailer, which is where it caught my eye and I ended up buying it. As mentioned previously the total mileage was unknown at the time, but it was a matching numbers car in great shape. Other than the carpet, the interior was also all original. Most of the various date stamped parts were also indicating the correct dates.

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[apblake]

I had the car shipped up to Boston and was very happy to finally have my first classic mini!

Here was the car coming off the truck

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This was what the engine bay looked like when I received the car. Note that the previous owner had also swapped the K&N air filters for a correct air filter box.

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I knew that I wanted to clean up the engine bay and start correcting anything I could that wasn't correct on the car so I came across this forum and started reading. In that process I also discovered that Iain1967s on this forum lived less than 10 miles from me with a very similar car so I contacted him and he happily came right over to show me his car and to go over mine. He helped me understand what was original and/or correct and what was not.

The car still has its original hydrolastic system which after 1 year still seems to be holding pressure fine (hopefully it stays that way). Seat belts were not correct (from the 90's), The radiator was a correct Coventry one that had been recored at some point by Minispares. The original oil cooler hoses were still in place. But lots of little issues - like the heater air intake missing the reduced section (while also being pretty far gone with large holes), incorrect hose clamps all over the place, a plastic fan, etc. The plastic fender flares were also getting more and more annoying to look at and the black plastic side mirror from the 80's looked horrible...

[apblake]

My first job was....wait for it....the horn.

Keep in mind again, I'm very mechanically inclined, but prior to this I really have never worked on a car other than to do a brake job or to change the oil. When Iain1967s came over I asked him about garages in the area that might be able to help me with the car and he kind of looked at me and said "we generally work on these cars ourselves..."

The horn needed to be cleaned up, the nuts were very accessible, and so I took it off, stripped it and painted it. I started adopting a rule that if I wasn't hurting any originality (an item had likely already been tampered with), then it was OK to repaint or otherwise clean up. Baby steps....

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[apblake]

Next up was rerouting and fixing a bodged fuel pipe by the carbs. At some point someone had run it on the wrong side of the throttle cable and it was cut off too short (maybe that was why they ran it in the wrong place). Iain1967s just happened to have an extra fuel pipe for twin carbs laying around that he was nice enough to give me and also took the opportunity to get new fuel hoses for the engine bay as the ones on the car were not original anyway.

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I also got a few of the parts that were rusted re-zinced while doing the fuel pipe.

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Here is the fuel pipe and new fuel hoses installed

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Then I decided to try to fix the lights that were out in the instrument cluster. My car has the original wiring harness so I had to take apart the binnacle and it took a combination of replacing bulbs and using scotch brite on some of the connectors to get everything working. A keen eye will notice that the odometer doesn't show the mileage that I have been quoting...The owner who got the car back on the road told me that he had a habit of resetting odometers on any car that he refurbished. I wish he hadn't done that, but oh well, I have the documents showing that it had 30,000 miles on it when he reset it to zero.

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You guys getting the sense of my speed/capability yet? No big sheet metal welds or remaking of entire cars here! No, instead I'm starting off with stuff that most of you probably would just take care of without even thinking about it.

[apblake]

While cranking the car I noticed that the wire protective sheath around my upgraded Smith's temperature gauge started arcing to the front panel of the body. Not good. After a bunch of investigation I figured out that the ground from the engine to the body was no good (despite having recently been cleaned up). Looked like the original cable to me, but it was too far gone so I changed it out.

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I also restored the jack

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Are you bored yet? OK I'll try to speed things up.

[apblake]

The engine bay is starting to look a little better. When I took the rocker cover off that is when I discovered that I had the later 12G940 head on the car (as most of you know a common replacement for the original heads that would crack on these cars). I would later find out that it was the 16 year old second owner of the car who was having a little too much fun on the streets, constantly overheating the car, who cracked the original head.

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[apblake]

In Massachusetts we have a special license plate program called Year of Manufacture that allows you to use a license plate from the year of your car if you can find a license plate from the correct year that has not been restored in any way that is in good enough shape to still be used. Up until 1966 the license plates were unique to every year, but starting in 1967 that changed and the 1967 design was used from then until 1971 (when the design changed). There are however subtle differences by year in this time frame and only the 1967 license plates had the Massachusetts writing punched out. I was able to find one and get the car registered under the program (which also allows you to run just a single plate as a side benefit). In case you are wondering (I know most of the people on this forum are in the UK and you guys do things differently), you had to put a sticker in the upper right with the expiration of your registration each year. This plate was last used in 1971.

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[Peter Laidler]

Can I most politely suggest that, see photos 8 and 9, that show the bracket used to support the closed circuit gulp valve and in position. I'd leave this bracket off and allow the gulp valve to support itself on the rubber connecting hose. The bracket isn't needed. Leaving the bracket off allows you to move the valve forwards when removing the air cleaner box without scratching the Coopers sticker on the fixed/rigid gulp valve.

Keep the bracket and bolts in a box for the next owner!

[apblake]

I was able to find a set of 4 original LP883 wheels in California. My car had 1 LP883 wheel in the trunk as the spare so I'm confident that it was most likely delivered with the 4.5" wheels originally, but when the minilites were fitted to the car (likely in 1990) the original wheels seem to have gotten lost or sold somewhere along the way. The LP883s I found were fine, but they all needed to be straightened and refinished. It ended up taking months to find someone who was willing to try to straighten a 10" steel wheel and to get the wheels all done.

Here is a before of one of the wheels

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