The Mini Cooper Register and one of its official sponsors Mini Sport, recently agreed to support a dub member with the restoration of their classic Mini. The Club donated £1,000 towards the cost of the restoration, and which was to be held by Mini Sport against parts needed for the restoration of the car.
Mini Sport provide a unique and comprehensive service to Mini/MINI owners, as suppliers of parts from the Cooper Car Company and the exclusive Paddy Hopkirk Collection. They very kindly agreed to provide a much enhanced discount on all the parts bought from them by the competition winner for their restoration. Mini Sport were also very generous in awarding consolation prizes to all the unsuccessful competition entrants.
The eventual winners of the restoration competition, Brent Bartlett and his son Josh, had submitted a joint application to restore their 1975 Flamenco Red 1275 GT Mini. The car, which has been named Brian, came with some supporting history, and having had only four previous owners. The Mini was first registered in 1975, and with the rather unique registration number JFK 578P. Officially recorded as a Morris on the V5c registration document, the car is actually badged as a British Leyland Mini 1275 GT. The previous owner had already fitted new brakes, suspension cones, an electronic distributor and an unleaded cylinder head.
Brent and Josh received their prize at the recent MCR National Mini Day at Beaulieu, and were presented with the Mini Cooper Register cheque for £1,000 by Chris Harper of Mini Sport. Brent, in his youth, undertook numerous Mini rebuilds with his father. Now that Brent is retired, he has joined forces with his son Josh, who is also a Mini enthusiast, to repeat the father and son partnership! After numerous discussions they joined forces and eventually bought 'Brian' in order to undertake a complete restoration of the car. Brent is keen to pass on his 'Mini-skills' to his son and when the restoration is complete, hopefully, in April 2023, they intend using Brian on a regular basis,
taking the restored car to car shows and events.
So, progress reports on the restoration of Brian will appear periodically in CooperWorld following on from the preliminary progress report below.
Words - Michael Evans
We began by discussing how best to approach the time we retired, Josh has less time due to work and family commitments, and we wanted to carry out all the tasks together. With this in mind, we decided to start by setting aside Tuesday evenings, weekends and ad-hoe days to work on the restoration. Having already carried out an engine rebuild, which we completed in August 2020, and a clutch change, we decided to start the restoration project by concentrating on the bodywork. With this in mind, the car has been booked in for sand blasting in September this year, in order to assess the true condition of the bodywork, with a plan for subsequent remedial work and a re spray to follow. Most of the work for this summer will consist of stripping the body in preparation. We are aiming to re-use as many of the parts as possible in order to maintain originality. To achieve this we are going to use a structured approach to the strip down, logging all the parts on a spreadsheet, ready for filing away for easy access and storage. This will also help us to identify any new parts and components that are needed so that they can be ordered from Mini Sport in a timely fashion. Brent and Josh Bartlett
Words - Brent Bartlett
If you would like to learn more information regarding our restoration services, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team of Mini experts. You can speak to us by calling 01282 778 731 or alternatively you can send any questions or enquiries you have to us via e-mail at sales@minisport.com
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