Hi All, I picked up a (pretty much) rust free, straight Mini K yesterday, with the view of building up with MK2 S running gear. The previous owner has already done a fair bit of work. My question is, there seems to be a lot of factory looking holes on the R/H/S of the engine bay, I know there's mountings for the brake booster, and maybe the voltage reg etc.. butr was wondering if anyone knew which of these are redundant, and if I need to add new ones?

Cheers, Tom

Your flitch panel looks original with only factory holes.

Some of the holes are for earlier models, such as the mounting for the voltage regulator for the dynamo. Your Mini K had an alternator instead and the regulator was smaller and mounted above where the dynamo type would have been.

The size and shape of the panel remained substantially the same across round-nose Mini models (the bonnet prop locator was repositioned at one stage), with only the presence, size and location of holes being the difference. Rather than having numerous and only slightly different panels BMC simply kept the same part and left unused holes vacant. For a factory original look you should leave all the existing holes as is.

This diagram from my ex-NSW Police MK II S may assist.

Tooling holes appear in many panels and aided the accurate positioning of the panel during pressing or drilling operations.

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

Awesome, many thanks for this, and the finite explantion - I thought there may've been a difference between the 'K' and MK2 'S'..

Cheers winabbey

The top two holes might line up with the fresh air heater Doug? Plus there’s one or two lower down

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And the bonnet stay was located on top of the heater?

I guess, if the panels were largely the same across the models, regardless of weather the heater was there or not, the holes would remain?

I'm going to use a MK1 S heater..

Yes around the bonnet stay. They’d be incompatible with a brake booster that’d be fitted to an S.

But it would make sense to have holes for both if the panels are shared across the range

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Good point. Needs someone with a heater to check.

If a heater does use those existing holes we have a chicken and egg situation. Were the holes drilled for the heater or was the heater designed to use those holes?

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

That’s a good question! The earlier version of the fresh air heater had them in a slightly different spot as the bonnet stay was a bit further forward. You’ve previously sent me the fitting diagram for early cars with no prior holes and they were all in a different spot (HYA2700). There was also a change on the bottom from a single bolt hole to twin holes and a handle type bracket (possibly the lower two holes also marked as tooling in your photo)

But as the heater would have been locally made & designed it’s a good guess as to which was there first.

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Looking forward to watching this one come together.


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Zulu...

1967 mini Cooper S

Early mini K didn't come with a heater although the 2 holes on either side of the bonnet prop bracket were there. So were the internal metal ducts behind the dash, in preparation for the heater being fitted by 1970(?) ADR.
I fitted a Mk1 S heater too.

Excellent... all good points, I'm glad I raised a somewhat 'interesting' discussion around holes!

For my build, everything looks factory, holes look punched not drilled so I'll just leave everything as is..

You can always take a look at my S Tom when you come to get the doors and glass.


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Zulu...

1967 mini Cooper S