1968 mini cooper

[madkayaker]

Aw that's really sh**** Marky! guess we all got excited by the nice pics of your mini we forgot to warn you on that...
(a guy i worked with did the same thing once with an angle grinder...)

once managed to blow a class door grinding!

 

[chrisg3103]

my rear windows are rusting away nicely can get replacements easy enough but it realy dosnt bother me. think most of the embedded steel has rusted away now so its just rough glass i have, maby one day whe i start taking care of my mini ill get new windows

 

[Marky]

latest photos

boot lid

 

[Marky]

and I had noticed an outline of a circle on the rear panel for some time so i took the wire brush to it to reveal that this mini once had a rear wiper and water jet !!!!

[ no minis came with this standard ] but may be that was the craze at some point in its 41 years ..... I think the beatles radford minis had rear wipers in the late 60s...

 

[Marky]

next job ... doors

this car never had mirrors on the doors as standard . But like the rear wiper they were fitted as an extra at a later date . To keep it as original as possible I am removing them from both sides . so these holes are next to get the welders attention .

also poked a hole on the door frame

 

[metaljoiner]

can i why you question it ?
its certainly genuine mate Iv owned the car for 4 years and can trace its whole 41 year life . It also has a notable first owner .

the cooper "s" is a common car to be replicated and not many of them have survived .

Marky, I wasn't suggesting that your Mini wasn't genuine or anything like that, over the years these little cars have been messed about with so much it is hard to call them genuine mini coopers, even the one's that have been restored, people have had genuine/original cars, the body have practical dissolved with rust so they go and buy a whole brand new shell and swap it all over, so all they have left is the original cooper engine, an example of this was when I was in the Cortina 1600E club quite a few years Back now, the club chairman rebuilt a Jeff Uren MK2 Cortina 3 liter savage, he changed virtually every panel apart from the floor pan on that car, at the time there was a bit of controversy as to whether his car was genuine, nothing was left of the original car that left the factory or Jeff Uren workshops.

 

[Marky]

Marky, I wasn't suggesting that your Mini wasn't genuine or anything like that, over the years these little cars have been messed about with so much it is hard to call them genuine mini coopers, even the one's that have been restored, people have had genuine/original cars, the body have practical dissolved with rust so they go and buy a whole brand new shell and swap it all over, so all they have left is the original cooper engine, an example of this was when I was in the Cortina 1600E club quite a few years Back now, the club chairman rebuilt a Jeff Uren MK2 Cortina 3 liter savage, he changed virtually every panel apart from the floor pan on that car, at the time there was a bit of controversy as to whether his car was genuine, nothing was left of the original car that left the factory or Jeff Uren workshops.

I know what you mean . the only "original "paanels is the floor /quarters / pillars / roof . everything else was replaced with new parts ....

 

[Marky]

welded the hole didnt just fill it btw .... just forgot to take a pic ....

heres the next problem .... where the external hinges were there are stress bends on the door skin so im not sure how to tackle this .... may be the panel hammers ?

 

[bucko]

nice mini cant wate to see it finished. another car i like but will probly never own

 

[Marky]

got the boot looking resonable today but Im still not happy .....

 

[Marky]

above is a wee update , not finished yet I need to give it another skim but you get the idea . I had to make a more secure mount for the oil cooler [ non standard fitment ] .

 

[Marky]

bulkhead was alway poorly finished so i spen 2 days getting it super smooth and flat , by using hammers and filler .

 

[Marky]

remember guys if you see something im doing wrong i'd rather you told me so i can learn from all the knowledgable experienced people out there .

 

[malcolm]

remember guys if you see something im doing wrong i'd rather you told me so i can learn from all the knowledgable experienced people out there .

I've not looked - photobucket pictures never seem to load for me unless I wait around for 10 minutes. I'm always dashing off to moderate something and miss out. There's a thing somewhere about loading photos directly onto the forum for speedy display.

 

[Robotstar5]

I've not looked - photobucket pictures never seem to load for me unless I wait around for 10 minutes.

I'm afraid I don't wait for pictures to load, just go to another thread - it's interesting what we expect today as when we were on dial-up you would sit and watch a picture appear almost line by line!

 

[Marky]

right sorry guys ill try look into it to make it easier .

 

[Brianmini]

Looks like you know what your doing. Looking good! Although i'm a bit concerned with your early picture showing the offside sill, looks like an oversill to me. No vents you see, I know really early mini's had no vents, but then didn't they also have smooth sills, and I thought they'd changed the sills by time the Cooper was released.

 

[Marky]

Looks like you know what your doing. Looking good! Although i'm a bit concerned with your early picture showing the offside sill, looks like an oversill to me. No vents you see, I know really early mini's had no vents, but then didn't they also have smooth sills, and I thought they'd changed the sills by time the Cooper was released.

mate the car is 41 years old its probably had 3 sill replacements by now ! but i can tell you that they arent oversills , you can see that if you look inside the drain hole/vent etc inline with the door may be you missed it [ just visible in that pic] also the minis from 1959 - 1966 had the smooth sills .... mine is a 1968 and is the mk1/2 sills. cars from 1966-1969 are still called mk1s but there "phase 2" if you like the sills on mine are what you would find on an mk2 until 1970 and then they changed again .

same as below from a different angle

 

[chrisg3103]

hate to tell you this but the thing you think is a drain plug is the jacking point and those are oversills. the square bumps are supposed to be open at the bottom, there the vents.
the other picture you posted above looks like proper sills, you can see the spot welds were it is welded to the inner sill, yours will be welded under the floor

 

[Marky]

hate to tell you this but the thing you think is a drain plug is the jacking point and those are oversills. the square bumps are supposed to be open at the bottom, there the vents.
the other picture you posted above looks like proper sills, you can see the spot welds were it is welded to the inner sill, yours will be welded under the floor

they arent oversills !! lol [ its my car ] I also fitted the floor in it .... There are 3 sills available for a mini . If you car to look at this diagram you will see mine are the 9" wide sills and dont have vents . Thats why i was unsure about what you ment by "vents"