No matter how much I think I know about the amazing Mini something always comes along to show that there's more to learn. This week I was talking to a colleague who mentioned he'd seen many Mini fuel tanks, both left and right handed, that had a dent the size of a small fist in them (see pictures below, courtesy of two of our members). These tanks were fitted to the initial production of the Mini Clubman, including the GT.
Some people thought the tank had been attacked with a hammer by a previous owner as the workmanship was a bit rough, but I now know the modification was done by the factory prior to fitting the tank to the body on the production line.
Why was it done? The answer lies in the fact that they were tanks designed for the round-nose body and fitted to the initial production of the new Clubman style body. With the Clubman came larger tail light assemblies that protruded further into the boot space than the round-nose lights. It was determined that the electrical terminals were so close to the fuel tanks that a rear-end collision could result in sparks, not a good combination with petrol nearby.
In case there was any doubt on the reason I discovered the factory had annotated the engineering drawing for the round-nose tank (part AYA2136) with a description of the rework needed for it to be used as an interim Clubman tank (part AYA2137) pending manufacture of a new left hand tank. All right-hand tanks fitted to Clubman bodies (essentially Clubman GT's) were old-style tanks reworked in this way. So if you have a Clubman GT it should have re-worked tanks to be totally original.
