Update by Tim Suddard to the
Austin Mini Cooper S project car
Apr 29, 2015
After some fabrication to our manifold, the Mini Mania Rc40 exhaust system gets mounted on our project Mini Cooper S.
Our next step on our project Mini Cooper S is be to figure out an exhaust system. An original exhaust system is no longer available for the 1275cc Mini Cooper S.
The closest, readily available exhaust system is probably Mini Mania’s Rc40 system.
While perhaps a bit sportier than a stock system, we were willing to live with this. We mounted this system underneath our car. But from there things got a bit more complicated.
You see, our car did not come with the original pressed steel, three-branch 1275cc Cooper S header. We only received an aftermarket header with our car.
Fortunately, we had found one of these relatively rare early stock headers on eBay. Sadly, the bottom few inches had either been cut or rotted off.
Our mission was to fabricate, (probably from our after market header), these last few inches. To do this, we would have to mount our exhaust system and our new header and figure out exactly what was missing.
We then tack welded the new piece onto the bottom of the header, pulled the header back off and seam-welded the repair.
Fortunately, unless the car is on a lift, the repair is imperceptible. Even on a lift you would have to really know what to look for, as the repaired area of the header is hidden by the subframe and transaxle.
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