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Thanks for your input Paul!

It's always good to hear from you.

The hoses I bought finally turned up and I took some photos. This is the only "factory" version I know of and fitted with the later horizontal cooler.

Regards
Al

The ones abbove are the ones I would be looking at reproducing. If a suitable sample set can be found.

Hi Mark,
I have a set of the Smiths which you can borrow to copy, the same as the ones on the last photo. I'll pm you my number,
Bill.

All this talk about the correct hoses, and noone to tell you that you should not connect the cooler on a road car

Noobie alert. Please explain Vegard?

Hi Mark

Can you use these ??

Best Regards Kristian

Mark,
Thinking in writing here, the outer skin appears to be just a sleeve fed over the braided hose during assembly. I reckon heat shrink could be applied over standard braided hose before the crimping sleeves were crimped, this would provide a very similar effect and look to the originals. The yellow bands look like they are made from similar stuff to the material you use for the spark plug lead numbers.

Regards
Al

Al,

As they say, great minds think alike

Second thoughts on ST's oil hoses;
Previously I have always taken for granted that race hoses
were of higher quality. Maybe it's just that they came earlier
and the later production hoses where better value,extra elbow and all.

Tulka

SteveG wrote:Noobie alert. Please explain Vegard?

Unless you're doing 100mph on the motorway every time you drive your Mini, the oil will never reach it's proper operating temperature if running a cooler.

I have to blank my oil cooler on my racecar.

Thats why Coopers fitted with an oil cooler came with a little cardboard cover to go over them.

It's also why I never fit a cooler to any of my cars.

Agreed. I spend a lot of time talking people out of installing oil coolers.

Managed to pick up a nos pipe at Malvern today, the angled one for £5.

Due to the new project I have had to put this particular exercise on hold for the moment.

The oil cooler was introduced as standard production on the 1275S only so that it could be used on Group 1 competition cars, especially rally cars with the "works" sumpguard. Later aftermarket guards (such as the one Tony Fall marketed) were better designed than the works "Scottish" guard and had better cooling (and were used by the works eventually?).
As has been mentioned, it was not required for standard road use.
The ST/"works" coolers were an example of overengineering that made them less suitable for purpose. It was vital to protect those hoses by wrapping with wire, unless you were preared to carry spare hoses in the competing car. Most other contemporary manufacturers' applications used push on jubilee clip connections that were technically a "poorer engineering solution". In practice those didn't have leak problems if fitted properly and you could carry one piece of hose, without fittings, to fix damage. The Mini cooler often got damage on forest events. I'm sure so many were sold by ST only because (like alloy panels) the price was subsidised. I'm sure I wouldn't have been using the ST one if a push on fittings aftermarket one was much cheaper.

In another earlier post it is said that additional competition parts for Group 1 and 2 cars had to be listed in parts lists. This applied to some items that were homologated extras but some parts in Gp1 and a large number of parts in Gp2 were allowed by the "freely permitted" clauses in Appendix J, so did not require homologation or part listing. I'm pretty sure oil coolers were in the latter category for Gp2 (but not Gp1).

Old thread with good info. Found some hoses and want to share the looks of them.Never used them since I thought that the rubber had gone soft and also that they get marks from rubbing against things.Reading this,ORX7Fs thread confirms that they should not be used as is.

Tulka