Folks-
Help! I'm in some danger of actually buying an LBC.
I'm going to look at a Mini on Monday. I haven't spoken to the owner,
just his wife (who knows zip about the car) but the advertisement says
it's a "'67 Mini Cooper." No engine size or anything in the ad.
Now, I know that to some people _any_ Mini is a "Cooper," and that to
certain others there's an insuperable temptation to raise the resale
value of a plain Mini by applying "Cooper" badges.
Yup. Not as common as fake GT-350s but still worth looking into.
So, my question is, how do I tell if it's a _real_ Cooper?
Brakes and head studs. Coopers from '67 will have front disc brakes
with 7.5" discs and an eleven-stud head (instead of nine). The extra
two studs are on the ends of the head, one near the thermostat and
one between the heater valve and the #4 exhaust port. In addition,
the Cooper 1275S engine has the early-style camshaft covers under the
intake and exhaust manifolds; the non-Cooper 1275 has a solid casting
on the side of the block under the manifolds. (This all assumes that
it's a 1275S, which it should be as a 1967, the smaller displacement
engines having been superseded in 1964.)
I assume the serial number will tell something; what is the key to a
real Cooper serial number?
Rats, can't find that information specifically till the Seventies.
How about the head casting number? I have Vizard's "Tuning the A-
Series" book (though I can't find it at the moment), so there's no need
to duplicate that information, but what heads did the various Coopers
come with?
The Cooper 1275S head is actually something of a problem compared to
the non-Cooper 12G940 head. The #2 and #3 exhaust valves are much
closer on the Cooper head, which can lead to overheating and warping
of the head where it should separate those two cylinders. Take a
compression tester and check those two cylinders for leakage if you
have any questions after driving it. (Actually, the most reliable
head for A Series engines is the post-1968 smog version of the 12G940,
at least of those heads commonly available in the US, because of the
extra metal added to deal with the higher temperatures found in smog
engines. The MG Metro Turbo head is even better but hard to come
by in the States.)
Any other easily-detectable, hard-to-fake "Cooper" clues?
The extra pair of head studs is the hardest to fake.
BTW, the car is RHD with a sunroof, so maybe it will be sufficiently
roadster-like to provide the true LBC experience.
Ah, but in this case, the C doesn't have to stand for Convertible, it
can stand for Cooper.
--
HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY, HAPPY HAPPY JOY Scott Fisher
HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY, HAPPY HAPPY JOY sfisher@wsl.pa.dec.com
HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY, HAPPY HAPPY JOY DEC Western Software Labs
HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY JOY Palo Alto, California
|