Arden Equipe Replica

[anis]

It all started with this picture

[anis]

It was a few years back. I found a cooper s shell and started the search for the parts and the day and night dreaming. I have been reading Paul Costin's Arden Equipe restoration thread on this forum athousand times. Finally the shell is back from the paint shop in the perfect color, thanks to Rachel Nelson. And it looks just incredibly good! This has been made possible thanks to everybody on this forum. Thank you to you all!

[anis]

This is the final look that I want

[anis]

I am a complete amateur in mechanics and restoration on cars. I usually work on humans.
I restored the shell which was a rotten untouched mk1 cooper s, first registered in the US. It is a hydrolastic and had it's life as a week end racer. It was fianlly brought back to belgium to a man who was finally to old to have it restored. It was then bought by a forum member, came back to UK. I bought it blasted with a lot of cool period parts i could use on my daily ride, a mk1 cooper.
It had rust holes in almost every panel (roof, a pillars, a panels, left door, inner and outer wings, floors, windscreen bay) and the rest had battle marks.
I used a m machine complete floor and heritage panels (roof, windscreen bay, left door, inner and outer wings, bootfloor) and reused the original front panels. It took me years to get through. I encountered the usual problems with the wing length and quality of the door but i am finally quite happy with the gaps. I have been mainly working at night because of my family life and of my job. And my neighbours are still friendly to me...

[anis]

The almost finished shell

[anis]

The floor

[anis]

Saved door

[anis]

Roof and pillar

[anis]

New curved doors and battle scars

[anis]

Wing and a panel

[anis]

Wing testing with the dream team

[anis]

Engine bay trials

[anis]

The shell came back from paint shop on friday.

[anis]

The subframes were waiting

[anis]

And so were the original 6x10 mag minilites

[Flygirl]

Wow that's looking great Anis!

Thanks for sharing your photos. I look forward to following the progress on this build.

Great to see another Mini back on the road.

[anis]

Thank you Rachel, the blue doesn't look as great on the pictures as it does in reality!
I am very grateful for your help!

[Flygirl]

I feel the same about the blue paint colour-photos just don't seem to do it justice. Probably true of any paint colour, but out in the natural light it's really nice indeed.

Glad your happy with it!

[Pete]

Arden replica is a great idea that nobody's done as far as I know, there's been a couple of Vita reps, ditto Broadspeed, a few CCC and about 2000 Britax Cooper lookalikes for some reason but no Arden and to my mind they were one of the most striking. Look forward to more updates!

[Richspec]

Arden replica is a great idea that nobody's done as far as I know, there's been a couple of Vita reps, ditto Broadspeed, a few CCC and about 2000 Britax Cooper lookalikes for some reason but no Arden and to my mind they were one of the most striking. Look forward to more updates!

Agreed, my next rebuild is going to be in this colourscheme, but not a replica, I've got the right type of engine at least!