Pimple the Mini is squeezed

Pimple, the 1990 RSP Cooper (red body and white roof!) had gradually developed a menacing stance, hunkered nose down and tail up like a leopard about to pounce, or a pro-stock American dragster. The actual degree of menace is limited to a 1275cc MG- Metro A-series though, and the stance is due to the collapsed rubber cones possibly – make that probably – being 30 years old. They have sagged in parallel with Gary Glitter’s career and are now in a similar condition, except that they have also turned to stone, like dinosaur bones. The ride is brutal, and the only suspension left is the tyre sidewalls.

I postponed, sidestepped, circumlocuted and prevaricated about doing this job, as the RSPs are not only the rarest of Mini Coopers, (76 times as rare as the earlier Mini Coopers in fact,) but also the most rammed with extra underbonnet kit. In fact the Cooper-signed RSP bonnet only just closes on all the stuff that’s jammed underneath it, which makes engine access on an injected Jaguar XJ12 look as easy as a British Seagull outboard motor in comparison.

The export RSPs only number 600 of the initial limited production run of 1650, and the Japanese export models are even rarer and more exotic: there are about 200 of them, and they have air conditioning as well as the other RSP luxuries. That means a big compressor pump under the alternator and above the extra oil cooler, another radiator on the other side and various other receiver cans, hoses, pipes and widgets. The rest of the system, evaporator and fans, is inside the car by the passenger’s shins. I don’t like air conditioning much, preferring open windows, sunroofs and speed, and I may conduct an airconotomy and just box it up for posterity, although that brings drive-belt complications.

To make matters worse, 1990 saw many concomitant and complex pre- cat approaches in an effort to get a late-1940s engine design through current emissions testing, with carbon canisters, corralled crankcase fumes traversing a tube system more complex than the London Underground, and assorted widgets of mysterious function.

Having got the car into the garage and removed the bonnet to avoid splashing blood everywhere when scalp

ABOVE: Pimple sits lower than a politician at the front on collapsed cones.

RIGHT: The subframe nut is completely invisible beneath 1990s emissions and air conditioning widgets. Iain just had to keep digging until it appeared.

Iain Ayre Contributor An expat motoring author and journo resident in Vancouver, Iain was unable to resist the opportunities that comprise his fleet of projects, but is also unable to muster the focus, energy or organisational skills to complete them.