Next project- 1965 Austin Cooper 1275 S
Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2019 2:46 am
Even though I am certainly not done with my current project (1964 Austin Cooper S), I have begun thinking about how to deal with the next one in line. Here is the brief story behind this one- I bought this car around 1980 from a guy here in northern Illinois who was really into mini’s. He had this car sitting in a backyard along with 4 or 5 others. He also had cars stashed all over the northern suburbs of Chicago so I am uncertain how many he actually owned. When I found this car it had no engine (I was told the original engine was blown up) and it had a history of being used in SCCA rally racing in the late 60’s and later in the 70’s was used for what many of you guys would call rallycross. Needless to say it had seen a pretty hard life!
I bought this car when I basically could not afford to do a genuine restoration because I was in college and of course penniless. I did receive the title for the car and the VIN number confirmed that this car was a 1965 Austin Cooper 1275 S. What I found was a rolling chassis with many of the right parts still intact including a rollbar and a white paint job with a Union Jack painted by hand on the roof. When I bought this car, I was driving around in a rusty Austin America (1300), which I had converted from an automatic to a manual transmission. This 1300 eventually wound up donating its powertrain for my initial attempt at “restoring” the Cooper S.
When I got the car home, my dad and I pulled some of it apart to check out the body. What we found was a completely rust free car however the front end was battered with Bondo used to flatten out some of the waves in the panels. I think it was possible that at some point at least the fender on the drivers side (LHD) was replaced or repaired because the wheel well was wrinkled slightly and eventually I figured out that the door aperture on the drivers side was an inch or so shorter than the passenger side! Also probably because of the cars racing history, the floors are a bit pushed in in places and the rear valence is irregular and the doors had dents filled by more Bondo. Given that I was young, naïve and penniless, all this body distortion was pretty much ignored during the process of turning this into a driver. To make a very long story short, the body was stripped of much of its paint by hand and after a little ugly gas welding of sheetmetal and a paint job in the family garage we were ready to go!
At the time of this original so-called rebuild, I never touched the suspension bushings etc even though it looked like much of the rubber was squeezing out around the ends of the arms. After dropping in my 1300 donor engine, I figured out that the original hydrolastic suspension was pretty much flat so that is when my father came up with the idea to convert a grease gun into a pump (this was long before the internet so who knew that others had invented this same technology long before?). We wound up pumping up the suspension using antifreeze coolant just because it seemed like it should work nicely. The suspension surprisingly pumped up just fine but always had a decidedly tail-high attitude. At the time I didn’t have any idea why this would be the case (I now know of course that this was due to plenty of trapped air in the system!). I drove the car this way for many months but in an effort to get the car to ride more evenly, I made the fateful decision to remove the displacers and replace them with an old set of rock-hard rubber cones I accumulated. I remember being pretty “clever” in devising ways to reuse the rear suspension arms by cutting off the pins that held the helper springs and then drilling and tapping the inside of the stub axles to accept a bolt that I used to attach shocks. I can remember quite vividly the day the junkyard tow truck came to collect my derelict Austin America and I threw a bunch of other junk in the boot including what I now know was a perfectly good set of hydro displacers for my 65 Cooper S! If I could only go back in time and correct some of those poor decisions…
Fast forward 38 or 39 years (time flies) and now I am treating my old car as a barn find in need of a proper restoration. Over the years I did acquire a few of the parts I would need to get this car back into its original condition. I obtained a decent 1275 S motor with what turned out to be a cracked crank. After buying 3 cranks I managed to finally get one that was not cracked so I have a good start on that.
Here are a couple of the major items I still need:
Original gearbox (3 synchro I would guess)
Complete set of 4 displacers (is it possible to source these anymore?)
Mk1 Servo
Steel rims
Front seats
I am sure there are 100 other things as well but those are the big-ticket items. I will probably be digging into this next project later this year so there is time to find the missing parts…
Displacers, anyone??
Here it is "as-found" the second time around-
I bought this car when I basically could not afford to do a genuine restoration because I was in college and of course penniless. I did receive the title for the car and the VIN number confirmed that this car was a 1965 Austin Cooper 1275 S. What I found was a rolling chassis with many of the right parts still intact including a rollbar and a white paint job with a Union Jack painted by hand on the roof. When I bought this car, I was driving around in a rusty Austin America (1300), which I had converted from an automatic to a manual transmission. This 1300 eventually wound up donating its powertrain for my initial attempt at “restoring” the Cooper S.
When I got the car home, my dad and I pulled some of it apart to check out the body. What we found was a completely rust free car however the front end was battered with Bondo used to flatten out some of the waves in the panels. I think it was possible that at some point at least the fender on the drivers side (LHD) was replaced or repaired because the wheel well was wrinkled slightly and eventually I figured out that the door aperture on the drivers side was an inch or so shorter than the passenger side! Also probably because of the cars racing history, the floors are a bit pushed in in places and the rear valence is irregular and the doors had dents filled by more Bondo. Given that I was young, naïve and penniless, all this body distortion was pretty much ignored during the process of turning this into a driver. To make a very long story short, the body was stripped of much of its paint by hand and after a little ugly gas welding of sheetmetal and a paint job in the family garage we were ready to go!
At the time of this original so-called rebuild, I never touched the suspension bushings etc even though it looked like much of the rubber was squeezing out around the ends of the arms. After dropping in my 1300 donor engine, I figured out that the original hydrolastic suspension was pretty much flat so that is when my father came up with the idea to convert a grease gun into a pump (this was long before the internet so who knew that others had invented this same technology long before?). We wound up pumping up the suspension using antifreeze coolant just because it seemed like it should work nicely. The suspension surprisingly pumped up just fine but always had a decidedly tail-high attitude. At the time I didn’t have any idea why this would be the case (I now know of course that this was due to plenty of trapped air in the system!). I drove the car this way for many months but in an effort to get the car to ride more evenly, I made the fateful decision to remove the displacers and replace them with an old set of rock-hard rubber cones I accumulated. I remember being pretty “clever” in devising ways to reuse the rear suspension arms by cutting off the pins that held the helper springs and then drilling and tapping the inside of the stub axles to accept a bolt that I used to attach shocks. I can remember quite vividly the day the junkyard tow truck came to collect my derelict Austin America and I threw a bunch of other junk in the boot including what I now know was a perfectly good set of hydro displacers for my 65 Cooper S! If I could only go back in time and correct some of those poor decisions…
Fast forward 38 or 39 years (time flies) and now I am treating my old car as a barn find in need of a proper restoration. Over the years I did acquire a few of the parts I would need to get this car back into its original condition. I obtained a decent 1275 S motor with what turned out to be a cracked crank. After buying 3 cranks I managed to finally get one that was not cracked so I have a good start on that.
Here are a couple of the major items I still need:
Original gearbox (3 synchro I would guess)
Complete set of 4 displacers (is it possible to source these anymore?)
Mk1 Servo
Steel rims
Front seats
I am sure there are 100 other things as well but those are the big-ticket items. I will probably be digging into this next project later this year so there is time to find the missing parts…
Displacers, anyone??
Here it is "as-found" the second time around-
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