Update by Tim Suddard to the
Austin Mini Cooper S project car
Jun 16, 2014
The next step on our 1967 Mini Cooper S was to clean and assemble our headlights. We chose them to restore first, as they take up way less room when assembled and are fairly fun to work on.
Once the chrome was wiped down with 0000 steel wool and polished, we carefully cleaned, painted and put together our headlight assemblies. We ran the original wiring pigtails through our ultrasonic cleaner. Man, this tool does a nice job on trim and wiring. It’s also safe to use, as long whatever you are cleaning is sealed, so no water gets inside.
Upon testing, we were saddened to learn that one of our original Lucas headlight bulbs was not working on low-beam. Not to worry, the Import Carlisle swap meet was coming. We would surely find a new Lucas bulb there.
Next, we started cleaning and organizing the glass. We were tickled to find that not only was our glass all-original to the car and correctly date coded, but it was all in usable condition, too. The many years our Mini was off the road had served us well, as we had very little pitting or problems with the glass.
Part after part, we methodically cleaned, painted and repaired until we had nothing left in our boxes. From there we transferred our now empty boxes to our storage shelves and slowly refilled them with nice shiny, restored Mini parts, ready to go back on our car, once we got it came back from the paint shop.
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