1965 Morris Mini Minor - Jay Leno's Garage

quite Lively what a pisode of Jay Leno's Garage the car were featuring today a 1965 morris mini-minor you know when I was a kid I used to see these all over New England now they're extremely rare you don't see them at all especially in this kind of condition and the fun part is this is a car that lives maybe five miles from my garage here I never knew it it's been here for like 40 years it's been with the same gentleman that whole time it's a great story he bought it as a kid let's hear it Steve Nelson come on in Steve how I am my friend I am great Jay hey thanks for bringing this I love there my pleasure now you you bought this as a teenager as a kid yeah I was 17 years old yeah very impressionable bit of an Anglophile yet at that point in time and started combing through the newspaper articles and seeing what was available for sale came across this car it wasn't my first choice the first one actually was a 1275 s mark to write pretty much the car that everyone would have liked to have but me and mom and dad were a little bit late and we drove up to the gentleman's house and saw the happy new owner walking out with keys so bit of desperation set in because you know when you're that young you have to have the car so we went over to Westwood and this gentleman had imported several cars including this one obviously and we went and took it for a look and I said you know what I'll go ahead and have the 850 now what do you figure you why the third owner second owner fifth owner or any idea I don't have any idea even though I do have a heritage certificate that they use fill out the form and you get it and send it back from England and and at the car was a Bournemouth car went straight to Bournemouth can cook who I purchased the car from bought it in Bournemouth so I'm pretty sure that it stayed in that local area the whole time does many of us know a car from England with all that rain gets pretty rusty right let alone born let's do it Alex is it gonna this is it cause the brilliant engineer who designed this it's 850 CC right you know it's front-wheel drive it's mounted transverse with the transmission kind of like the lamborghini miura so ii copied this idea with their v12 all right you know except it went through the rear wheels and this was a revolutionary car that shows safe to call it kind of like the Model T of England a little bit I mean it was the real people's car they were hugely popular I mean the Beatles had them and members of the royal family had them because they were cute and fun and quite fast right that's right yeah and different guises they got even faster the 850 was never known for its speed it was always kind of the what we might call the shopping mini you take it down to the local store and they fill her with groceries and gone on home you know my wheelbarrow ever needs a new tire I know where I'm stealing it from what what's what size is that it's not a 12 or 13 it's smaller yeah right it is it's a 10-inch diameter in it so getting tires a little bit tricky yeah the old Honda and six hundreds had 10 inch wheels okay a little different bolt pattern but yeah it's a 10 inch diameter wheel these rims that are on here are actually five inches wide with 165 70 HR ten tire the stock size was 145 so a little bit narrower but I know in building the car you want it to look a little tougher than than it did original more threatening yeah yeah it comes steve-a back away that's right drum brakes are distant from originally it came with 4-way drums after driving the car through these years put about 46,000 miles on it there was some features in the car I didn't want to repeat one of those were the drum brakes and even though they were the twin leading shoe so it had two wheel cylinders first side they just were a pain you couldn't keep them adjusted you'd go out and drive it kind of hot on some day or whatever you had to come back and adjust the brakes immediately so I wanted to go with disc brakes so this car during its rebuild ended up with the seven and a half inch disc brakes that would have been found on the Cooper S so this was what the second car you looked at would you say yes oh that was correct second now what kind of shape wasn't in was it were your eyes bigger than your then your wallet so to speak oh I got to have it you know or did you were you disappointed what you got at home was it everything you thought it was tell us a story actually I could probably say maybe I was so disappointed or nervous to drive it that my dad drove at home oh yeah I didn't even drive it till the next day well how come no why is that I don't know I just think I was nervous driving a right-hand drive car and and I didn't want to find out that it would break on the way home and then it would be like what the heck did I do was it in pretty good shape then or was it pretty rusty what was the story it was bad it was bad yeah and you know but again at 17 you don't really know all the ins and outs of cars it was not this color it was a bronze copper color right which I think was really appropriate for the car because it may be masked some of the rust yeah it did pass the MOT which is a test for anybody in England but the way that they get that to do it is not that great you know you had big patch panels and the inner fender wells it had an over sill which is like you take the old rusty original cell and then you throw a bigger sill over that so it's like it passes oh I see yeah keeps passing the rest of the new one okay so as a kid did you start restoring it right away or did you just drive it until something broken then you fix it pretty much you know when you're on a kid's budget there's not a whole lot you could do the one thing that I did start doing right away was collecting parts cuz that's relatively cheap so you if you found something that was either well wouldn't be online but if you saw a newsletter or something like that it had a good price you picked it up because when you get a car you go through those stages elation and then depression and then oh god this is more than I thought what made you hold on to it all these years was there a point where you just put it in the garage and said that's it let me move on to something else and then you came back to it or were you always enthusiastic for the what do you had it 40 years uh-huh yeah 40 years next June they're definitely around it's it's course of enthusiasm when you first got it it was wonderful it was my only car so I had to use it I've had to work so when things broke you fix them even on a you know $5 an hour job that you might have had at that time sure but the goal was always to restore always to have it look the best that it possibly could he never had an accident with it oh yeah that accident oh you can the only really only one but it was kind of a crazy one and I don't know if you're familiar with the Newport Beach back bay right at the time you could drive on it I'm time around 1:00 a.m. in the morning I was playing rally driver or something and judged when turned too early so it went to the off into the ditch it hit a bump shot out all the way on the other side and off the road and into a small standing thing get out earth after midnight nope yeah so I smashed in that fender put a dent in the roof and needed a recovery tie to get it back home so did you have it off the road for an extended period how long did it sit it's at UM from 1995 to about 2000 and 3000 so it was it was off-road for quite some time okay and the reason behind that is one another early morning about 5:00 a.m. driving home I heard a Bing Bing Bing Bing and then the car stopped running yeah and what had happened is one of the exhaust seats and the head had fallen out and shot out the exhaust so that was pretty much it because it became a three cylinder 850 language is not going and what was the stock horsepower when it was new 34 34 and what's it got now we're guessing around 60 yeah that's it's earth shattering yeah it's nearly double no no it's a beautiful car and and you know and you did the smart thing because a lot of people they give these to climb at the Shell station to work on or something when they and they're learning on your car and you went to our friend Graham Reed he he has heritage garage he sort of our mini expert you've seen him on this show before he does a beautiful job restoring he's just wonderful and he did this one didn't absolutely and your point is well-taken because in the process of collecting estimates and getting an idea of how much this whole project was gonna cost you could go to just you know Joe Schmo at the body shop yeah I can do that but these cars are tricky I mean they're small and right they're pretty simple but there's a lot of body that if you don't really know what you're doing you're gonna mess it up yeah you always want to go to a specialist when you have a car you just don't want to go to a body shop that's right I mean my favorite sign is it a shop down the street it says we specialize in all makes of cars well I think you specialize in everything right but they just just makes me laugh whereas Graham this is his whole life I'm not sure he can read or do anything else but he knows these cars he does a beautiful beautiful job on it if you have a mini he's the guy to see let's bring him in Graham come on in here I hate to compliment Graham but he's very good at what he does it immediately goes to his head sarcasm is free yeah sarcasm is free well you just did a wonderful job on this what did you think when you first saw this car was it what did you go no I thought it was beyond even bothering about really yeah it was pretty bad now what how did you take that news I kind of expected it because it really was you know the the fenders were rusty the sills were rusty the floors were marginal and I had dance the the drip rails were rusty but it's just it's like as I tried to explain to Graham the the thing about it is is it's it's my first car I can't get rid of it right he wanted to perhaps Rochelle it and then transfer things over but it's like it would lose the essence of what I originally owned right and I wanted to be as a savior as it were to this car well let's open the hood let's start there that let's see what we got here this so being totally stock was not an issue for you correct right so that's correct you did tasteful modifications it's the stock block and everything else correct it's a 850 block it does have some changes in it so it has a steel Center strap for a little additional strength has full cam bearings because the cam was gonna be a little hotter and you didn't want it to seize in there has 998 Cooper rods and the 998 Cooper cylinder had another big challenge with all this mix which I had read about as a kid through David Vizards book was that yes this can be done but the big problem was getting the compression ratio high enough yeah and the stock pistons were like split skirt Pistons so it's just it's like well you don't want to run those and have them shatter so with Graham's help we ended up having custom-made one-off 850 Pistons by Ross racing and in California and we got the compression ratio up where it needed to be because and that is the big compression ratio it's about nine and a quarter okay so runs on premium oh yeah yeah now originally did they have 2's use no it was a single one right okay so when I bought this car it came with a box load of parts which it needed yeah and included in that or these carburetors which are twin one-and-a-quarter s use from if you look up the numbers on them from a 998 Cooper I love any car where the carburetors are bigger than the head it just makes me laughs like a guy with a giant head it's funny now is this the stock block color the green huh okay yeah that looks that looks really nice I I kind of remembered that but didn't know if that was Factory and it cause the plastic yellow fan that's the way they came that's right cause the mini it was so innovative in its day with the radiator off to the side nobody ever thought to do that you just put it in the front because that's where the air flow was and and the fact that the packaging in these cars it's what's really amazing you could be six foot four and drive this thing no problem because everything is right up here you know normally you're going this way with transmission and everything so you and you sit with your feet off to the side you know where is this thing it's like a full-size sedan inside that's kind of the fun part about it right now it's okay and you've got your giant generator down there is that it generator Alton it really is a generator that was one of those questions that we had putting this together it's I go with an alternator we can scrap the guts in the generator and make it look like a generator it's like I never really had a problem keeping the car charged when I'm driving so yeah the generator we have a guy named Don Allen he does a thing called a generator he takes your generator turns it into an alternator so externally it looks totally stock right but it's an alternator and I've done it to a bunch of my cars and it's just fantastic because I've got my corn every time you come to light the lights would dim and the radio would go off you know and they've got a Revit getting the light would come on you got a Revit keeper and he just took my stock core put an alternator inside it can't tell the difference so pretty little boxes of parts that Steve showed up with in the shop though was what was pretty spectacular he'd been collecting for 40 years man so you start showing up with a new old stock cylinder head that he paid 50 bucks for that I'd give 500 for today right and there were boxes and boxes and boxes because in his travels to England he was raking this swap meets our boot sales and bringing him back what would now be the holy grail of parts oh sure yeah yeah yeah yeah I got kind of crazy for a while because as this process went forward and I realized gee these guys down at Heritage can really make this car look like I've ever dreamed about now it was like trying to find Lucas parts with the correct date stamp that was close to my car was produced it got a little nuts now many minor is sort of rare isn't it here in America we always just hear the words Mini Cooper and Mini Cooper S this was I'm trying to think what the equivalent would be in America would this be like the 6th similar Mustang compared to the Shelby Mustang you know what I'm saying no I think what happened with the introduction of the Mini has you pointed it before how unique they were think they were concerned about selling it to the public friendly so I think when they introduced the cars in 1959 the Austin's they called in Austin 7 which was a takeover from the old Austin 7 right and the minor they've used minor in this because I think they're trying to keep people thinking this is a continuation of two loved cars right then after a couple years when it became a car in its own right all that went away the minor get dropped the 7 got dropped and that became minis because I think it was a marketing tool I'd have to believe that was just a matter of trying to convince the public this is the same old car we sold you in 58 well one thing I find fascinating aleksander gonna was one of these innovative engineers but like a quirky guy he didn't like radios he didn't think we should listen to the radio while they were driving you should pay attention so you couldn't get one with the radio so dealers were like they had to sell the car had to go somewhere else the to get a radio to put it which just sort of makes me laugh standard it's a four-speed transmission right yeah and this one was updated a little bit cuz I Ridge '''l II had a crash first gear so no synchronizer in first night now it's another one of those items driving the car for those miles where it's like yeah I'd be kind of nice to have a synchronizer in first right so that was at it in and then the other piece is the remote gear change so that's more like a Cooper S or right normally the gear changes up yeah I was like coming up from the center part of the called a pudding stirrer yeah a magic wand and no roll-up windows just sliding with oh yeah very practical okay and these were very inexpensive in England at the time being compared to other English cars one thing mm-hmm yeah I think there was maybe 800 pounds or something yeah well it's just beautiful thank you do you have discs on the back as well I know just the mini Finn drum aluminium bar okay okay alright let's add but it's actually quite roomy isn't it let's see yeah we can close the hood here this is sort of a process for me I'm so leery of chipping the painter I notice that the distributor it's right in front uh-huh you think for water that would be a problem you know it can be they sold a a rubber sleeve that would go over that would help but I don't have to worry about this because this has never seen rain really yeah yeah let's go to the back of the vehicle here let's take a look at the boot or the trunk um do call it and it's pretty good-sized look at that yes a couple of suitcases in there a couple of golf banks sure and the other thing about these trunks I don't know when they would do it because it was raining all the time but they would drive with the trunk lid down he could get a little extra counting capacity and then this license frame would swing down oh you would be in compliance with the local constables oh that's funny yeah was that a factory thing is that something people okay how many gallon gas tank six and a half Wow yeah yeah but it's you know over 30 miles a gallon and this car the 850 just had the single tank whereas the Cooper S has had the twin tanks originally it was an option on the Cooper S and then later it became clean filters as well you had to fill them separately or do they no cross over oh that's crazy yeah it's a little crazy so Graham let me ask you but this comes to your shop and obviously if this was a Lamborghini or Ferrari then the value of the vehicle of course is not going to be exceeded by the restoration but on something like this how difficult it is to tell a customer oh boy like was this shell pretty much gone when you got it I went a fact I didn't even let him bring it to the shop I went looked at it here in Burbank yeah and when I walked in to take a look at it it was a matter of really are you sure you want to do this right it was pretty bad initially we were gonna do the bodywork in the middle of work and Steve was going to take the rest of it and do it himself but it was so bad that I had another shell at the shop same era actually the same color that I suggested we might want to start a little closer to zero but he'd say this was his car and had been his car and this is one he wanted to build so we took it on with the understanding it was going to be a big project but I mean sometimes that's not the reason people do restorations they do it for the passion they do it for the right reasons and it was one of these people in it as long as you go into it with your eyes wide open I think that's all I can do professionally is make sure they understand that they're not gonna have regrets half way through and you're an auto technician by trade correct actually I work at American Honda right and I'm in their service Technical Operations for that so what we're basically doing is looking at everything that brakes on the car I'm trying to get a speedy fish so there is some knowledge with mechanics and so on and so forth and it does make it easier when you're dealing with a car guy yeah because at least there's a level of understanding when you run into obstacles and you have things that crop up along the way they get it you can explain things send photographs documents yeah and that's important cuz people watch these shows where they restore you know I had I want to mention there a famous person who wanted to get her husband classic car she said he went down by his birthday and I said well yeah I think it was his birthday she goes Thursday okay really it's you can't paint a car it takes a long time yeah are you talking about a year yeah so how many hours in doing this show I am not even sure yeah it was it was a labor of love for Steve and as we progressed he came down sawed in the middle sawed in the once we got the paint off even worse than it wasn't being dark right and he's right the brown paint was holding other Brown stuff together but the thing was together things structurally solid and is that he showed up with parts that were interesting because the dyes that were made for using fenders and things that he picked up parts decades ago the edges were far crisper than the ones we even buy today from the same supplier yet because the molds are becoming worn and tired so it was a it was a great project to do is very rewarding project to do because of the understanding that we were going to take this all the way and just keep the 850 there was enough quirkiness in the build that just made it interesting to do and I think that is one of the hardest you've had to do yes it was we've done another one since that was equally as challenging but this had way more rust the second one was more accident related Steve said things like the rockers are structural in these cars right prosody are with most cars it's not a chassis car as a monocoque with two sub assemblies so the middle of the car has to be strong it can't just be you know bondo and duct tape which it was before so we cut out huge sections of the car and put in pieces to give the car the car looks as good bare as it does with the paint on it and there's no chassis per se in this correct it's all unibody right well it's a unibody with two sub assemblies okay so the sub assemblies do drop out remotely and they carry all the suspension components but they have to have a body to mount in - right or the back of the rockers or where the front of the rear suspension tie-in and then all the front nose is all the sub assembly and I guess most of the rust and corrosion was while it was in English correct in California you're fine yeah it was pretty good except every time that I drove it because then I had to drive it in the right I'd have to also come home and pull all the carpets out and hang them out to dry and yeah it leaked like a sieve because there were there were holes in the upper part of the the fender area so the wheel would kick it up and it would just drain right down inside the car so yes most of the rest was from England but it continued to rust and did they have the two multicolored taillights as that later this would be for a UK or European spec 65 they did have okay because that looks it looks so modern now you know I would assume they were just a red tail light because it's 1965 but in England they were red and then the difference of this car versus a u.s. spec car is the front turn signals are also orange they auto clear here and then the parking light would also be used for that turn signal here the parking light is in the headlight well let's go to the interior so that's a custom steering wheel as well mm-hmm you added the tachometer autos right and the spirometer went to what about 190 190 no just just 90 90 yeah and that's that's a unique to the 850 the Cooper S I think was 120 maybe years is that in miles per hour kilometers miles per hour okay yeah you case is on miles oh that's right of course yeah of course that's right in 90 with an 850 is downhill with a tailwind yeah yeah that would be pretty tough yeah yeah well let's take a verse man so fun that seat might need a little adjustment for you so I put the door opens nice and wide yeah kind of step into it oh yeah we could go back look at the towel bar it might be a little stiff let me see okay like it hang on so you know I given this thing here here we go all right gotta get lady around there way huh you've got all kinds of room tons of room gonna wear a big cowboy hat sound quite good doesn't it mm-hmm and not like it used to sound in the old days there we go oh yeah so much fun yeah there we go you know on this show we're always trying to find unique driving experiences and then you see why these were fun I mean it is funny than like I said before royalty had them the royalty other members of the royal family loved them the Beatles had them the average person Adam I think Twiggy remember her she was a fashion model of the 60s she had one it was like that whole Carnaby Street and of course you had that movie Italian Job with all the minis and it would she has really cemented the whole it's an awesome oh yeah yeah you haven't tried any of those maneuvers in this car I think they could be while the handbrake turn throw oh yeah you know I need something I don't want to take it nice now you look underneath the car that's like completely clean and you're gonna like man that's like five hours worth of work every time but I think too much efforts gone into it these have the rubber suspension I'm glad you brought that up because it's originally the the cars original early meetings have the robber comes right and then this finder lasted I started in 64 and then this car when I redid it it was like you know what those pieces that the splicers aren't available and it'll be my luck that'll put it all back together and they'll lose the pressure right so we went ahead and used a coil spring fashion so those coils and shocks yeah I think that's fine I think it's a good idea and if more than keeps up with modern traffic we've got to take this up the crest I know absolutely you know the roads it's so beautiful up there they're so smooth there's no traffic and it's really perfect the horn even worked night son it's amazing how many cars guys restore and I go my friend oh yeah I didn't hook that up you know if people are so anxious God drive the car to get the hook at the you don't want to go into collision it's pretty much the original horn as well yeah it's a remanufactured car and I would like to see if I get the original or yes I still got it yes seat belts to the original seat belts are the Kangol magnetic yeah can I have like a book just sort of tension held you man these are awfully nice well the funny thing about these car is the sensational speed you know I got a spirometer 50 is where 60 normally would be you know straight up and down so you just go 50 yeah but that the stock exhaust system all stainless so you have a sport really yeah you know but oh yeah we're three miles from the shop how could you never be here I don't know yes sir it was the the scary north or something it's hilarious yeah now the jaggedness of the mountains and everything it's just like that's pretty wild enough to come back your house is like right over there yeah you've been up to the crash damage oh yeah many times in this car yeah yeah yeah drove it up there one time and lost the generator luckily the battery was fully charged I was able to think yeah I've only seen its fair share of shenanigans doesn't pull left-to-right drives very nicely comparing its of honor guards that seem like it could use a fifth gear you know and you don't have a lot of power you don't have a lot of torque you don't want to keep you out of gears yeah yeah so one of his car costs knew back in 79 get him by who you bought at second and I'd roast around $1400 and what was the guy asking about that so you drive a hard bargain is where you say it kept I might have gotten some deals on the parts but yeah I got a buddy in my life daddy car was 1,500 I said would you pay is it 14.95 oh you got a knockoff five but I'm in you know he was so intimidated oh really well good record businessman if you find you have to kind of constantly explain to people it's not a mini-cooper ahead and attempts it's a morris mini-minor they go either by bad that growing up is archive area morris mini-minor Lima one of those Morris Minor well it's like a Mini Cooper oh I get it yeah yeah it doesn't sound like some kind of hand puppet pooris mini-minor well it is kind of 13 right trying to sell them anyone here just yeah great yeah straight to the chase and call it a mini confirm right probably as powerful as if any Cooper has his that it's just enough to say yeah yeah but it's funny cushy caps you have to explain to people why I say I went to see a Bigfoot president yeah you're always making that explanation exactly this is total Rhodes his car was made for the greens yeah for late you could Bob through 50 miles an hour like you're going 100 exactly because the sensation speed is as much fun as the speed itself right if you're going to school and evening this is what your fourth-grade teacher would have driven counselor Ellis isn't exactly well Steve thanks for saving this piece of history it's really great to see that dedication of preserving it is really wonderful she just don't see these anymore and of course want to thank Graham breeded heritage she does a wonderful job if you got one of these minis get his website to give him a call because he just does beautiful work as this car will attest drives nice Anna you got to get out and drive it now it's so nice now you see yeah I'm trying to shame you when to getting on the road with this thing I think the biggest shame is human and Laura and I have so there you go we should continue that you leave with me and up with the miles on it thank you very much my friend thank you thanks again see you guys next week [Music]

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 763,862

Rating: 4.929009 out of 5

Keywords: Morris, Mini, restoration, classic cars, 850cc, Alec Issigonis, Heritage Garage, Graham Reid, British cars, Mark I, Italian Job, before BMW, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, compares cars, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, car gear, McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder, Camaro Z28, jay leno garage, jay lenos garage, car collection, cnbc, episode, motorcycle, ford, corvette, tour, dodge, lexus

Id: FGr-I_hDSjA

Length: 32min 39sec (1959 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 27 2019