My 1967 Mk1 Austin Cooper S

[apblake]

My first big job (at least big to me). The plastic fan was driving me nuts and the car was also leaking a fair bit of oil from what looked like the timing chain cover. Also, the fan pulley and spacer were not painted the correct yellow and black colors (also driving me nuts). So I pulled the radiator out, replaced the water pump, redid the timing chain cover, installed a proper metal fan, stripped and painted everything and put it all back together. I think I reread the instructions for doing this on this forum about 100 times. What a terrible job. The hardest thing for me to do was to get the last bolt in (either the engine mount or the back bolt for the lower radiator support - I can't remember which). There just was no way to get the nut on the bolt. I finally got it after more than an hour of trying by taping the nut to the end of my finger and just barely hooking the threads with the bolt.

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[apblake]

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!

Thanks for the suggestion! BTW, I should have mentioned this before, but if anyone has ANY suggestions I would love to hear them. I am still learning about these cars and you will not offend me.

[apblake]

Forgot to mention that by now I had also replaced the throttle cable with a black one and installed the throttle cable bracket that connects to the rocker cover bolt that everybody says not to install due to increased friction with the throttle cable. In my experience it has been totally fine. The first couple of minutes with the throttle cable it was sticking like crazy, but with plenty of lube it settled in after a few minutes and there is no noticeable stickiness to the throttle response.

I also cleaned up the bolts that hold the rocker cover down and you can see the original lathe marks on the heads - I'm sure they must be original - super cool.

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[Peter Laidler]

Back to your throttle cable - and push-pull cables in general. Always worth remembering that they ALWAYS operate better when left to follow their own natural line-of-least-resistance route. As a rule of thumb, we would only clamp or guide them to keep them out of harms way.

Great progress. Re the engine mounting nuts and bolts. I seem to remember that there was a good idea to tack weld the nuts to the engine mount - or something like that. Hopefully someone will jump in to remind us.

Once you start getting into the mysteries of the hydrolastic system, can I just say, however difficult it LOOKS and SOUNDS, don't let it frighten you

[apblake]

Back to your throttle cable - and push-pull cables in general. Always worth remembering that they ALWAYS operate better when left to follow their own natural line-of-least-resistance route. As a rule of thumb, we would only clamp or guide them to keep them out of harms way.

Great progress. Re the engine mounting nuts and bolts. I seem to remember that there was a good idea to tack weld the nuts to the engine mount - or something like that. Hopefully someone will jump in to remind us.

Once you start getting into the mysteries of the hydrolastic system, can I just say, however difficult it LOOKS and SOUNDS, don't let it frighten you

Thanks for the tips and encouragement!

[apblake]

In the early 2000's someone had installed a plastic brake master cylinder that looked horrible. I bought a newly aged metal one from Fred at Nippycars and then read all the debate on this forum about the difficulty of installing the cotter pin for the clevis pin and whether it was safe to install a r clip instead. I even bought the special tool to help install the cotter pin, which didn't really work for me. In the end it was easiest for me to just use some long needle nose pliers and the true cotter pin was not too bad to install. The metal brake master cylinder looked sooooo much better than the plastic one.

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[apblake]

Here's a photo of one of my LP883s in the shop that straightened them. It's next to some wheels that are more typical for him to work on...this is how we roll in America.

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[apblake]

I took apart the distributor and ensured all the weights were moving properly, lubricated the weights and the shaft, set the gap on the points and all seemed to be in good shape. Little did I know that the condenser in the photo below, which had just been installed by the guy I bought the car from, was total junk and would later fail on me costing me 2 days of scratching my head to figure out what the problem was.

Some people have tried to convince me to switch to electronic ignition, but for now at least I kind of like the mechanical nature of the points. Maybe my opinion changes later if I have more issues...we'll see.

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[Peter Laidler]

If your electronic points fail at the roadside 200 miles from home - as they did on my Norton Commando, you are what we polite engineers call '....xucked'. Whatever you do to them in the future, make sure that in the spare wheel well you have the old get-you-home fix-at-the-roadside mechanical set.

And remember what one of my old electronics chums told me after listening to my sad tale of the Norton Commando. Electronic ignition is no better than a properly set up mechanical system. Even worse, who wants to break down in Leeds of all places!!!!!

[apblake]

If your electronic points fail at the roadside 200 miles from home - as they did on my Norton Commando, you are what we polite engineers call '....xucked'. Whatever you do to them in the future, make sure that in the spare wheel well you have the old get-you-home fix-at-the-roadside mechanical set.

And remember what one of my old electronics chums told me after listening to my sad tale of the Norton Commando. Electronic ignition is no better than a properly set up mechanical system. Even worse, who wants to break down in Leeds of all places!!!!!

I was trained as a mechanical engineer so I'm completely onboard with you!

[apblake]

The last thing I did when I put the car away for the winter last year was take the carbs off. I sent them to a specialist named Joe Curto in NY who has just been doing carburetor rebuilds for decades - he is the go to guy over here in the States for this type of thing.

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[apblake]

Over the winter I was able to source a correct steering wheel for the car that was pretty close to my car's build date. Not quite NOS, but not too far from it - it had been in storage for decades as part of a group of mini parts that had been acquired as a lot. After removing the tape residue from the horn push, it was in great shape. The moto-lita wheel that I bought the car with is beautiful and I will certainly hang onto it since it has some history with the car, but I really enjoy the stock look more.

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[apblake]

I finally got my wheels back from being refinished and installed some new Yokohamas (I know many of you would rather put a more period correct tire on the car, but this is where I wanted something more optimized for driving today). Iain1967s just happened to have a couple of rear drums with the correct spacer that he gave me (thanks again!). I love the look of the original wheels over the minilites - they just bring the car back to the 60's so well.

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[apblake]

OK, I wasn't going to admit this on this forum, but I changed my mind. Maybe some of you will get a good chuckle out of this.

At this point, it was becoming clear that the engine was going to need some paint if I was going to get the engine bay looking the way I wanted. BUT, I really didn't want to pull the engine. Yes, I know that some of you can do this faster than I can read a forum post on how to do it, but I'm not there yet.

So what did I do? I painted the engine in place.... So the answer to the question that nobody asked is: yes it can be done! This took way more time I'm sure than pulling the engine would have, but I did it anyway. It took hours to degrease the engine carefully and to then tape and mask off everything that should not have any paint.

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[apblake]

Painted the engine steady and mounting plate black.

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[apblake]

I decided while the carbs were off to replace all of the gaskets in the inlets and exhaust manifold. Then I got the carbs back and they were really beautiful. Joe Curto does some really fine work.

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[apblake]

Carbs back on.

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[apblake]

A while earlier I had obtained some PCV valve hoses and the heater air intake reducers and associated hoses from catmint. Mark, who runs this forum, was actually nice enough to ship the parts to me when I bought the floor mats from him (at the time catmint was not shipping to the US). Unbelievable dedication to helping the community to restore and take care of these cars.

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[apblake]

Since I had first gotten the car, my indicators were not self cancelling. I thought this was just how the car was built and so when I finally realized that they are in fact supposed to be self cancelling, I took apart the steering column to figure out what was going on. Good new, bad news. The good news was that the indicator stalk has the correct date stamp on it (6 66) so it is original. The bad news is that I have the problem that has been talked about elsewhere on this forum where the little bolt that does the self cancelling is 180 degrees out of alignment. I took the steering column out to see if I could switch it 180 degrees, but the spindle in my car only allows the clamping bolt to be in one position (the spindle does not have a groove all the way around the circumference on my car).

I don't want to drill a hole in the steering column to move the bolt and I'm not going to pull the rack out to try to fix this, so for now at least the indicators will remain non-cancelling. The only upside to all of this finagling was that I was able to reposition my indicator stalk to the correct position (either 2 o'clock or 3 o'clock - I can't remember) - it had been too low.

[apblake]

The next big project that I tackled was the paint. As I mentioned earlier, the paint on my car is from the paint job it received in 1990. It is a single stage paint and although the car has always been garaged, it clearly could benefit from some paint correction. I also wanted to remove the plastic fender flares and the black plastic side mirror to go back to stock. So I did a 2 stage paint correction on the car - it probably took about 30 hours. Yes it is a small car, but no I am not a professional detailer. It was a lot of fun to get up close with the paint. There are many flaws in it that I could not remove, but I'm OK with that. Even though the paint is not original (I don't know if anybody has paint that old that could look decent today), it does have history and I think it really has a lot of character. I hope to avoid a repaint if at all possible. Anyway, after the paint correction, it is hard to show in pictures, but the paint came out awesome. Also added a new period correct mirror and the plastichrome strips. The first photo shows a before of the paint with a harsh light. The paint also had tons of micro-scratches that I don't have good photos of.

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