Can you get your finger under it to feel if it has actually been stamped?

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Are you able to be more specific about the ID plates & stamped numbers you have found so far.

What do the plates look like and where are they located.

This may help as their locations changed over the years.

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68 Morris Cooper S Mk1 (*ex 78 1275 LS 4th last built, 70 Morris 1500 OHC & 70 MiniMatic)

Ill post a pic of the plates but im sure neither of them are genuine.

Upon closer inspection, the radiator shroud has no numbers and is definitely not factory, its poorly tacked in.

There is only a hole in the floor for the magic wand, not for a rod change.
I assume magic wands and twin tanks are mutually exclusive.

Ill pull the tank out tomorrow as I change the shocks but I expect it will not be factory.

Would be interesting to know what happened to this mini, but I wont be treating it as anything special.

It's a Mini so it's already special

It's extra special because something interesting has happened to it.

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68 Morris Cooper S Mk1 (*ex 78 1275 LS 4th last built, 70 Morris 1500 OHC & 70 MiniMatic)

Ive gotten back to stripping this mini. My other one has taken up all my time.

So the second tank turned out to be a complete dud, it was a poorly converted left hand tank. I was pretty dissapointed. There are none of the compulsary cooper parts in the boot either i.e. extra tabs and second tank.
Its certainly not a cooper.

It seems to be an early 850, Its original colour is saxon green. There are two numbers stamped in the firewall.
One behind the plate: 23110
And one below it behind the master cylinders: 22978.

It would seem the "compliance" with the incorrectly stamed numbers matches these firewall numbers.

Are there any other body stamped numbers I can look for?

Two numbers, the hidden one is the body number. The one that matches the ID plate is the car number.
I would say it is a late 62 or very early 63 Morris 850.

What do you mean incorrectly stamped numbers?

As I said earlier in the thread, I have two compliance plates on this car.

One stamped with the common forward stamps, and one with the factory style reverse stamps. (I.e. stamped from the back protruding up on the side you see)

The "ID" plates were stamped by hand till around car 24000 with a couple of trial runs of the stamping machine before that.

Did they not use reverse stamps even by hand?
What sort of date was car 24000?

[quote="kirby"]Did they not use reverse stamps even by hand?
quote]

No...they re-trained left-handed apprentices

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"Show me the Mini!"

Good job for me......I'm a bit backward.

Bang on Phill! That was the reason alright.

Furthermore, I had a 1969 Morris Mini 1100 (Mini K) which i sold about 2 years ago and i just checked a photo, and as suspected, the brace on the apron panel was vertical. Another point is that on the Cooper S there is the flattening of edge trim to accommodate the oil cooler bolt holes.

But as we have discussed many times they did weirdo things in the factory, not thinking we'd be playing detective 40 years or more later. Wayne

Silly me - I didnt go to the end of the post and made the above comment to the end of p.1

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..still waiting for the Italian Job sequel to see if the bus went down

a response to this quote.

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..still waiting for the Italian Job sequel to see if the bus went down

Great... My 68 mini matic has a diagonal brace, now how on earth did that get there!! Ah well, I learn something new about this car every day, and a new mystery arises every second day hehe