Mk 1 Cooper S steering arms and Ackerman angle

[Mike]

This may not be helpful to you Vegard as you are selling a pair of arms and I do apologise but I now have a couple of sets of the heavy duty early Mk1 arms spare as we removed them from my FIA type racer.

The reason, the Ackerman angle is wrong and was the cause of the handling problems we had suffered for two years since we started racing this car, firstly with a 970 and latterly a 1275.

Donington Park Masters was the first time we raced with the later Mk2 arms, also changing to a Mk2 steering rack, and the car was transformed, qualifying our Mini as fastest amongst the pre-66 up to 2 litre race and on pole by a second for the all Mini race.

I know when the arm geometry was changed BMC's publicity said it was to facilitate a change of turning circle but you don't need to change the Ackerman angle to achieve this.

Was it because the boys racing on the circuits discovered this at the time and the factory took action accordingly but offered a smoke screen reason? I'm sure someone will have the answer.