Dear Readers,

I would like to let you know of some newly available historic documents now available on line at the National Archives of Australia. A couple of files from the certification process for the Morris Mini Clubman GT and the Leyland Mini SS have now been digitised (at my expense for your reading pleasure) and are now avialable for viewing on the NAA web site. Just Google National Archives of Australia perform a search for Leyland Mini, or Clubman GT. These documents are very interesting if one goes to the trouble of wading through the technicalities.

I have written up my findings in relation to the confusion about what is stamped on the Compliance Plates for Mini as an Article which is now available from my revamped web site http://www.leylandaustralia.com.au.

I might mention that the new web site contains some new online databases. Apart from the large Part Number index, there is now a facility to search titles from the Service Liaison Summaries and Service Bulletins, as well as searching titles for Publications such as Owners Manuals, Workshop Manuals, Technical Publications, etc - anything that has a Publication Number.

I would like to acknowledge Doug Jenkins for providing the indexes to the SLS and Bulletins.

Regards, Tony Cripps

Wow, that’s a fascinating resource that I didn’t know existed. Thanks for researching and arranging digitisation.

A massive 119 pages for the Clubman GT at a time when computerisation was in its relative infancy so lots of manual recording needed.

_________________
ex-NSW Police 1970 MK II Cooper S
VMCI #43

Tony - you’ve created a time consuming monster by mentioning the NAA For example a quick search on NSW Police produced a number of interesting hits, including a video showing what was carried in the Police van (presumably a Mini van) back in 1963.

Hopefully the costs to digitise are not too great.

_________________
ex-NSW Police 1970 MK II Cooper S
VMCI #43

When I was called by Conrad Allen at Leyland to do work on the Minis,Moke and Range Rovers .I was involved in ADRs plus numerous mods eg heater panels Moke. This was in 1974 and 75. The paper work that I raised was an EDD, most of this paper work never went to Peter Davis who was the clerical person at Liverpool. Ron Moss who was at Enfield had some of the paper work which was hand written. I may have some of this information in my storage boxes not sure. This may be of use to John Sneddon for his books. I am not sure if Tony Cripps worked at BMC. Has Tony Cripps also been involved in BMC books I have not seen any.
Allen , 8 years at Zetland Experimental and Product Engineering also did work for Leyland after Zetland closing. Liverpool. Pressed Metal Enfield and,,Revesby Truck and BUS Note I am not involved in Face Book no need to be.

Doug, the copying charges are quite reasonable. Each of the above cost about $40 but they don't send you the file or the images. You have to download them from the web site which is painful. Other documents of interest are the compliance files for P76 including Force 7, but I didn't have them scanned. Curiously the location is shown as Brisbane. It so happens the AMVCB was part of the Office of Road Safety, which in turn came under the Commnwealth Department of Transport all of which was in Canberra. I worked for a time for the Office of Road Safety so it was a little bit of a throwback for me to see the old department logos on the files. When viewing these documents for the first time, they look most uninteresting, but if one takes the time to examine them carefully, there's much to be discovered. Regards, Tony

Bye

_________________
Enjoy your Mini
Regards
John Sneddon

Readers will see that in the documents for the Clubman GT, there is reference (Page 25 of the file) to ADR10B, referring to Ford test report T-7367. This test report (edit: undated) still exists, and was lodged at the City of Sydney Archives. A photo from the report is shown below. The body in this test is of the GT.

Doug, there appears to be a lot of noise on the line which is affecting posting. I am sure Mr Rialto meant to write 1971 in his post but it came out as 1972. Some other poster was trying to talk about himself in the Former BMC Employees thread but it came out on this one. Perhaps something needs checking?

Eightfifty, are you saying that two additional vehicles were built, YG2S8 499 and 500, numbers as quoted per the company paperwork, for test purposes in which case the photo shown is one of these test vehicles, which assumedly were scrapped following the tests.
If this is true then there are two additional GT's built to that originally quoted.

PS - It is not noise but constructive comment based on the original thread.

_________________
Enjoy your Mini
Regards
John Sneddon

The documents specify starting serial numbers in various places as 499 and 500. In a couple of places, Car No 938 is also mentioned. This is the only time I've seen mention of a Car No <501 and perhaps it is the crash test vehicle, I don't know. ADR10A came into force Jan 1971 (Steering column). By the look of it, they are using their results for 10A for certification for 10B which was to come into force in Jan 1973. The date 16/11/72 appears not to be the date of the report, but the date of the submission quoting the report. The tests must have been done much earlier. The dates of the documents are important because evidently Mutch was planning on continued certification for YDO23 in November, but in December, he writes to the Board to say that the model will be replaced by Leyland Mini S. No doubt he sees this as a direct replacement for the purposes of certification and the application kept going until Jan 1973.

Your comment contained an error which I tongue-in-cheek put down to noise on the line. The ignorant comment posted by someone else is noise.

It looks to me like this is a late 1972 crash test for the 1973 ADR changes. The car in this crash test is of a late 1972 design. Looking at other cars the Inner Guard holes start around car 1400. The engine appears to be a 1206 because it has 4 way CCV and Passenger steady.



More pics here - viewtopic.php?f=2&t=85906

Yes I agree. ADR10A involves impact of the steering wheel by a body block, while 10B is a crash barrier test and has more stringent requirements. Since this is obviously a crash barrier test, it is a test for ADR10B which would be introduced in 1/73. Seems a lot of trouble to go to for a car that was going to be discontinued. But, it does sink the idea that the body shown is 499 or 500 unless this was to apply for the replacement YDO22 Leyland Mini S.

Perhaps, unless those two numbers were specifically allocated to the incomplete bodies that were to be crash tested and then scrapped, and hence wouldn't appear in production records as such. Using numbers at the end of the existing sequence for Clubman or Leyland may have caused confusion when accounting for total vehicles built and sold. According to the numbering format 499 and 500 would normally never be used.

_________________
ex-NSW Police 1970 MK II Cooper S
VMCI #43

Interesting read. YG2SB is mentioned quite a few times. Surprising the BMC employees didn't notice the B vs 8 mistake. The 023A2S1M12 looks like it was going to be the 1973 code but never eventuated.

There was a discussion on facebook about the pedal box differences and a few GT owners posted pics of theirs. It appears the 1970 pedal box was modified for less strength in 1971 and 1972 to assist the ADR10A and then redesigned lighter again for ADR10B. That later pedalbox was also used for the leyland minis so they might have used this crash test for the Leyland Mini. I had a look at the ADR correspondence but doesn't list what vehicle modifications were actually needed.

Brad, (edit: the weather has suddently improved), but the bracket on the left is AYG5250 and that in the middle is AYG5258 (July 71) on the right is AYG5262 (August 1972). All parts shown as applyilng for YDO21, YDO22 and YDO23.

The mixup of "make" and "models" just shows how haphazard the identification details were in what is supposed to be official documentation. You can see Mutch is having a problem with trying to find out just what the cars are supposed to be called. Mutch worked in Product Engineering, where Peter Davis was the manager. What's surprising is that Peter ran a very tight ship, and would have never allowed such confusion. However, at this time, the workload in Product Engineering was was over capacity because of all the attention given to P76 so perhaps we shouldn't blame Peter too much for not having his eyes on everything. At least these documents give some idea of where this "MINI" stamp came from although Peter never referred to the Make as being MINI.