Rotisserie
Dear All,
As you see I am new to this forum. I am looking at an appendix K Cooper 'S' 1964. The car has been raced and rallied since the late '60s and is alleged to be still on the original shell. To be honest it looks as if it probably is the original shell, it certainly has the early style riveted on brackets in the boot and the voltage regulator is in the correct place for an 'S'. One of the doors is the original without the embellisher under the handle the other must be a later replacement as it has it.
To be honest it is cosmetically ok to race but in the medium term it would really need doing. Being an old racer it is very banged about and poorly repaired but I would like to keep the original shell. I would need to pay to have the shell professionally done as I lack the time and skills. I'm trying to get a rough idea of what it would cost to have done so here is description:
The best aspects of the car bearing in mind the thrashing from hell it has received over the decades seem to be:
1.the fact that it does not appear to have been over on the roof. Having owned a couple of lesser racers when they get rolled the roof collapses onto the cage. The roof gets banged out but witness marks remain on the inner skin / doubler structure. None on this car. You can see the areas that have been repaired due to the crudeness of them and this is not one of them.
2. The main central part of the floor looks original and pretty straight. That's about it the rest are badly executed repairs from hell:
Generally speaking all the areas that rust have been repaired badly.
The outer part of the floor / sill area has been repaired crudely with those god awful pattern panels that do not match the originals.
The inner wings have been totally mullered where it has had numerous front end shunts. Needless to say the front panel was replaced years ago in fact I bet it's had several.
Nearside rear quarter has been whacked and is hanging with pud. In fact being a racer I'll bet it's been whacked many times.
Offside rear corner ditto, the boot floor is distorted in that area and bears witness to more than one impact from that angle.
This is one knocked about shell and I'm trying to work out in round terms what it would cost to have it repaired properly. I don't mean a mallet and pud merchant, that much I can do and that's what it's had up to now. Hoping there's somebody out there who specialises in minis and knows how to work a hammer and dolly, shrink metal, lead if necessary, do it the old school way, fit new panels as necessary, gap them, and send the wee thing for paint. Would be a rotisserie job, no doubt there would be some jig work too it is an old racer.
So how much would it hurt the pocket? Need to be realistic here, would rather take the pessimistic view. If it works out a bit less so much the better, but in my experience things always end up over not under....
I do realise it's like asking how long is a piece of string, but how much are people paying to have the roughest shells done properly these days??
