MK1 bodge to Cooper replica

[ORB58]

Looking Great, colour really suits the car.

[Philsa]

Thanks Trevorhp and ORB58 for the kind words.

So accidentilly had an incident with the exhaust coming loose...luckily over a speed hump, so no damage.

Then this happened.

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Fitted the boot script next. Left the two S scripts off for now.

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I am aware that the Cooper look I am after means the car should not be fitted with a expansion tank, still I just prefer to fit it seeing as in SA in summer there is a good chance that the car will need it. So paint stripped a suitable item.

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Fitted.

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Now it was onto the wiper motor. Since I tried in vain to get a mk1 item, I settled for the item removed from the car and besides the wiring loom is for this type of wiper motor. I did back date the motor to the earliest cover that I could find in my stach of about 7 items. Started with this lot.

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[Philsa]

Paint stripper working hard.

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Fully rebuilt and reconned the whole system.
Fitted it.

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Had to import a grille and some other items.

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Glad I got the Paddy Hopkirk acc pedal cover, works really well.
Went a little overboard with the sound deadening.

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Fitted the door straps still left over from the Newton kit. The kick plates does look good. Even dug out some "Polka Dot" door sill/door rubber covers and cleaned them up and fitted them for some more effect.

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[Philsa]

These little beauties was next, did paint strip the brackets first before fitment.

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Was not sure IF I wanted to put some sound deadening on the inside of the firewall, oh well. Just fitted it in the end.

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Took the car to have the new windscreen fitted along with the chrome strips for the rubbers.
Sourced and fitted a choke cable, seeing as it is winter here currently.
Changed the whole accelerator cable setup as it kept sticking and would not idle properly.
Started by fitting a GTS bracket for the linkage.

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New cable fitted and working, still need some adjustment at this point to get max throttle opening.

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Had to solder this little sucker on, as it came loose when I opened the bonnet catch.

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[Philsa]

The boot board was next. Started to do some research on what was available and tried to find some measurements. Deduced that 16mm thick board would be needed.

Got a cutoff from a hardware store.

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Mocked the brackets up... Made a rough cutout of the board.

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After being covered in vinyl, the end result.

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[Philsa]

So time flies when you are having fun.

Ended up fitting the whiskers and chrome beadings from front to rear next.

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Now in my quest to keep improving the car, I had a scratch through my parts hoard and found a Smiths Oil pressure gauge, cleaned it and it was fitted.

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Whilst scratching I also found an even older wiper motor cover, where the park arrow is actually correct for the car.

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[Philsa]

After having done about 2000kms with the car since it was done being rebuilt, the cv joints was losing grease and the car had quite the irritating oil leak on the radiator side. Lastly the SA summer was not kind to the cooling system doing 120km/h on the high way between Pretoria and Johannesburg frequently.

So the decision was taken to remove the engine and drive shafts and radiator etc.....

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New steel cv clamps sorted this problem.
Turned out the o-ring on the distributer, distributer drive holder and the oil seal for the speedo drive was the big culprits.

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Also fitted a anti-leak kit from MS vs the three gear selector shaft oil seals.
I had a 50mm alloy radiator on the shelf that was fitted to the GTS while it had a very highly modified engine fitted so that was used. The core plugs was also replaced and waterways cleaned while all four was out.

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Lastly I fitted the engine steadies back after drilling the sub-frame.
Have done about 1300kms since the engine went back in and I can happily report the car does not leak a drop of oil anymore.

[AndyPen]

Nice to sort these things, but how annoying to have to pull the engine out.

[Philsa]

Happy Happy New Year to one and all.

So the build continues...

I took the 1071 cc block, 1071 cc crank, 1098 cc crank and S conrods in to the engineering shop and as I already suspected the block needed to be machined out to 60 thou to clear the problems and be useable. I had a set of high compression AE 60 thou pistons, so that was dropped off also with new cam bushes. The 1071 cc crank was on 30/30 and would most probably not clear and be useable on 40/40, so the 1098 SA crank was stroked to be used.

Got this lot back from the engineering shop.

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The dry build was done by the engineers and I was informed the pistons stick 2mm out the top of the block.

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This was then machined off and the pistons ended up like this.

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I had some wrist pin buttons on the shelf, turned out they were the wrong shape, so I had some new buttons made up. When I fitted the crank, turned out the 30 thou thrust washers needed 11 thou removed the get the crank end float in spec, so back to the engineering the whole lot went and was surface ground to the correct size.

[Philsa]

The oil pump mounting hole mod was needed for the cam that I intend to use, so...

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Some fresh engine enamel, I went for the Cooper S mk3 look, as I prefer a black power unit.

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Crank threads was cleaned up, after fitting the crank the end float was spot on. Pistons fitted with new rings. The engine turned beautifully.

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Started with this timing chain cover.

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[wantafaster1]

This is great

[Philsa]

Thanks for the kind words Wantafaster1.

So after some wire cup brush treatment and new engine enamel.

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The rockers before receiving some attention.

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I ended up swapping over to a much better used rocker shaft and swapping the holed pedestal over to the RH side. Could not source a new uprated item locally in SA. Even considered a later sintered setup, but decided to stay true to the Cooper S setup.
Looking at my old adjustable vernier pulley setup from my GTS/GT engine and the gears have just had it. Even with a brand new duplex chain the play was just too much, even the Cooper S AEA steel cam gear did not cut it. So ...

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Just bit the bullet and left the false economy of a new chain and on this setup I cannot run a tensioner which on the previous setups I could do. It being the holiday silly season I found this locally.

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Got the timing bang on where I wanted it for the Billet Kent 286 cam that I robbed from my GT engine, only took 3 tries and I had it.

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[Philsa]

So while the engine was at the engineering shop, I looked at potential gearboxes.

Option 1 a 22G1128 item with no diff fitted. 22G927 gearset.
Option 2 a 22G1128 item with a rubber coupling diff fitted also a 22G927 gearset. Badly welded diff cover where selector fork fits, broken bolt in one diff side cover.
Option 3 a 22G1288 item with a broken gearset and the loose diff cover that came with the gearbox I was not convinced that it was for this gearbox casing. Looks like this gearbox was left for quite some time with water in it, so badly rusted and gearset not re-useable from first inspection.

Started to strip option 1, surely come off an engine that had serious bearing failure.

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When I finally got all the gunk cleaned, upon further inspection it was hiding a bit of a problem.

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Beautifull cracks from some nice impact in the past.

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So this casing was left for now. Started stripping option 2 with this welded diff housing to check feasability.

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[Philsa]

Initially this gearbox looked good to be rebuilt.

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Here is the broken off bolt.

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I managed to get the darn broken thing out.

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After cleaning this also immaculately, turns out the RH of the diff, the upper bolt of the two threaded holes closest to the diff, the casing was cracked... So back to square one, I did not want to have to bother to have it welded up and then line bored etc and it was like 15 Dec at this stage.

So back to option one. Had this welded up literally just before the welder closed for Dec holiday.

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[roger mcnab]

hi
talking about impact damage to mini gearboxes when the first cooper s model arrived in australia a local lads father bought one for him well there was a long street in town that had a t junction on the left he was telling all and sundry how incredible the car could cornerso a bet was made that he could not take this junction at 80 mph as he said so he gets setto do it with quite a crowd there to watch comes flying down the road tries to take the corner drifts wide and hits the traffic dome the resulting sudden stop has the gears and oil every where so dad gets him a lotus cortina to drive which he blew the motor it did not end there but the story gets unbeliveble
cheers roger mcnab

[Philsa]

Hi Roger

Yip that sure sounds like some antics we all got up to at some point in our youth....

Had to do the 5/16 holes for the casing as the block was modified as such already at some point in the past.

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Chased all the treads as standard.

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Sourced a central oil pickup, 3rd motion double roller, new layshaft, layshaft bearings and baulk rings.

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Had to modify the casing and remove some casting flash to make the oil pickup sit correctly.

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So I had two almost complete 22G1040 close ratio gear sets (ex GTS 1832 gearbox items) to build one good set. I ended up with the best 1st gear out of 4 options.
I was thinking long and hard about the final drive I wanted to run, I had the option of going 3.44, 3.65, 3.9. So I thought since I plan to daily drive the car still, to have decent amount of accelaration etc the 3.44 was the sensible option. I fitted my MS x-pin diff to the crown wheel. Now I had to choose which items to use for my Hardy Spicer conversion.

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[Philsa]

Some MS goodness for the engine build.

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Ended up using two 22G420 diff covers fitted with new oil seals.

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Next up was the flywheel housing and cover. I looked for a non-breather item and narrowed it down to two choices. The one was AEG stamped and looked the best so I used it. I believe it is a 22G524 item.

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Paint stripper working hard again.

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[roger mcnab]

hi
you are certianly working hard on your project well i started to get into mine around christmas first the upper control arms had lots of fundoing the back nut then the 8.4 disc brakes fitted followed by the coil over brackets from huddersfield spares these are better than the other ones i have seen then started with the radius arms and ordered a boot lid from arc angels which i should get in a few weeks while waiting have been making plug for the bonnet as it needs to clear the 500 weber on the 3.5 rover v8 also need to prepare some brackets to be welded to the engine parts
next is to order the front coil over shocks from huddersfield then get the rear ones from themthey are good as you can buy the bits in sets instead or all at once trouble our dollar is only 50 p in gb
cheers roger

[Dr.Mabo]

hi
you are certianly working hard on your project well i started to get into mine around christmas first the upper control arms had lots of fundoing the back nut then the 8.4 disc brakes fitted followed by the coil over brackets from huddersfield spares these are better than the other ones i have seen then started with the radius arms and ordered a boot lid from arc angels which i should get in a few weeks while waiting have been making plug for the bonnet as it needs to clear the 500 weber on the 3.5 rover v8 also need to prepare some brackets to be welded to the engine parts
next is to order the front coil over shocks from huddersfield then get the rear ones from themthey are good as you can buy the bits in sets instead or all at once trouble our dollar is only 50 p in gb
cheers roger

Hi Roger,
I would really appreciate it if you would pay attention to punctuation and capitalisation in your texts. It is really difficult to decipher your texts as a non-native speaker. The few seconds you save when writing sometimes cost me, and I'm sure many other readers too, plenty of minutes when reading. I also quickly lose the desire to read such texts at all. And that is not only a pity but also regrettable, especially in such a highly informative and internationally used forum.

[Philsa]

Next up was the reconditioned cylinder head. Had new guides fitted and still on 29mm exhaust valves and 33mm inlet valves. I had to remove the kent cam's double valve springs from my unfortunately cracked big valve cylinder head (37mm inlet valve and 35mm exhaust valve).

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Broke my valve spring compresser after 15 years of service 3/4 through the job. Head being masked to paint.

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Sourced a new valve spring compresser and finished the job. Spacered the rockers as best I could over the centre of the valves. Some ARP head stud goodness for good measure. Standard black head gasket.

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Still had some ARP lube for the torque sequence. All fitted and ready to rock and roll. Had to use old style special head bolt on the water pump side.

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Big cast impeller water pump was next, had to modify the pump body slightly at the back to clear the cylinderhead.
Next up was the shimming of the primary gear, unpacked my collection and set to it.

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