Jeff Steindler's Journal

This is a history of my Cooper S - from the first owner up to present day. This journal should prove to be a valued addition for when it is sold on Bring a Trailer.com when I become too old to drive it. This journal will be mostly many disjointed entries which, over time, will be eventually coordinated into a coherent story.


SPRING1970 - Jim McVey and I ( both 15 years old ) decide to go and watch a movie at the Kearse Theater while visiting the downtown area of my hometown of Charleston, WV. We watch a double-feature: Ace High ( with Eli Wallach and Terrance Hill ) and The ITALIAN JOB. We had no idea what either movie was about when we chose to go to the theater - I am really glad now that we did. When I left the theater, my life was about to change because I wanted to buy a Mini Cooper.


SEPT 1972 - I had been riding off-road motorcycles ( Hodaka and Bultaco ) since 8th grade, so I already had gasoline flowing in my veins [ and some mechanical-repair aptitude] and a desire for speed.

A Mini Cooper remained my first choice for my first car with a Ford Mustang Mach 1 fastback as my second choice. But where would I find a Mini Cooper?

One day, out-of-the-blue, my high school classmate ( 11th grade ), Harry Bell drove by in his red MGB-GT and gave me a hand-prepared flier showing a 1967 Mini Cooper S ( owned by Henry Mingledorf ) for sale in downtown Charleston. Henry was a member of the local SCCA car club here in Charleston and he circulated the fliers at the last meeting.
I called the guy and found out where he lived. My father and I dove to his apartment house the next evening to look at it. I had never seen a Mini in person and as we walked-up to it I was very put-off on first sight - a tiny, little car with this steering column and steering wheel sticking up by itself and NO dashboard. I was SO put-off that I didn't even want to talk to the owner. We drove home and that was that.

After stewing over that first impression overnight, I called the Mini Cooper owner the next day and went to his apartment after school that afternoon to see it again. We walked around the Mini Cooper and the owner showed me the engine and talked-up its 628 racing cam and 7500 RPM redline ( ! ).
Then came the test drive! The previous owner ( a Mini Cooper racer in Kentucky ) had installed 4:11 ratio differential gears for autocrossing and this Mini would really accelerate. Combine that with an old, loud glass-pack muffler and things were looking better. With Henry driving down Kanawha Boulevard along the Kanawha River, I asked if it cornered well. Without warning he suddenly yanked a hard right turn on to a side street at-speed with no consequences. I was sold!
The asking price was $1600. I was working part-time at Young's Feed and Seed store making $1.60 an hour, so my finances were tight. After some back-and-forth on the price, we settled on a price of $1450 and I drove my new Mini Cooper home.



On February 26, 1968, Gregory Morton bought my Cooper S new at Waldron Motors in Del Ray Beach, Florida, It was later sold to Damon Pleasants, who was a dentist in Louisville, Kentucky. Mr Pleasants was also a Mini-racer and bought the car for the late-model Cooper S engine. He wanted the nitrided and cross-drilled crankshaft, the thick-flange engine block and the spicer u-joints for his racing Mini. He removed the original engine and replaced it in my Mini with another Cooper S engine some 10,000 engine numbers earlier. It had the 628 racing camshaft with, as it turned-out, a worn-out exhaust lobe!. Used, lightened tappets ( more about those later ) had also been installed along with the 4:11 differential gears.

My new Mini Cooper was only 4 1/2 years old and was well-used:
1) It had already been painted a non-original blue color because it had a replaced left front fender and body-work over the left rear fender
2) The original grille had been replaced with a home-made wire-mesh grille
3) The driver's seat was replaced with a well-used leather racing seat
4) The fresh-air intake tube in the engine compartment was missing
5) The original steering wheel had a broken spoke and was replaced with a Pep-Boys 12" steering wheel
6) Both door-straps were broken
7) The exhaust system had been replaced with a custom exhaust from a muffler shop
8) The original carpet was worn, torn, and coming apart
9) Rust was present on both sides of the front floors with some perforation at the front seam. The rocker panels were also rusted with several holes present. Rust was also present on the left front door hinge panel and several other places on the body. This is what quickly happened to cars of this era located in the rust-belt.
11} The chrome-trim-connecting rivet joints around both rear windows had rusted apart.
12) Both rear suspension trailing arms had very worn-out pivot bushings
13) And the un-synchronised first gear was failing. It would jump out-of-gear upon acceleration unless it was the shifter was pushed-forward and held in gear with your right hand



Despite all this, it was MY Mini Cooper and i was so happy with my first car! It was a big hit at high school. For a while, I had to go look for it in the parking lot because my classmates would move ( carry ) it to a different place in the lot.


SUMMER 1972 - My Mini Cooper became my daily driver to high school and my after-school job at the local Suzuki motorcycle shop. Highway driving was limited to about 50 MPH because the 4:11 gearing made the engine really, really scream at speed.
Everything went along fine for a few months - I lived with the first gear FLAW , but it was slowly getting worse. Then one day, as I drove my Mini Cooper to high school, i noticed that the oil pressure gauge read ZERO.
Further investigation led to a probable oil pump failure, requiring removal of the engine. Since I had learned to do all of my own repairs on my motorcycles, I moved ahead and did this repair myself.
One of my car-repair mentors, John Fisher, has already said, " ......just follow your shop manual religiously and ask when you have questions ". There were many specific questions and they were answered by Mr. Fisher and another local mentor, Jay Coleman, who was a Mini Cooper SCCA RACER who lived in town.

Jay Coleman was quite a character. He was Vice-President of Parco Steel in Charleston and raced a white Cooper S ( white with a purple roof - named 'SAM" ) in east coast SCCA races and local autocrosses. Somewhere along the way, he had tragically lost his left leg and as a result he had to make a special modification to race his Mini Cooper: He rigged the gear shift lever with a MOTORCYCLE CLUTCH LEVER which operated a clutch master cylinder which operated a Cooper S brake booster ( on the right front floor ) which operated the clutch slave cylinder. And it all worked splendidly - and he was FAST !
I would eventually own this race-Mini after he sold it to his friend, Dave Salisbury. When Dave retired from racing it, he stripped the car for some reason and was going to JUNK the body. He asked me if I wanted it and I said, "CERTAINLY". I used it to draw attention to my imported car repair business, the Sports Car Clinic. I placed it on the building's roof, near the front door.

John Fisher and Jay Coleman were always available for advice and guidance as I proceeded with this, my first major car repair, which I undertook at home in my parents' garage.


Upon removal of the engine and separation of it from the transmission, I found that metal from the failing first gear had ruined the oil pump. The repair involved replacement of the oil pump, the first gear, laygear, layshaft, and layshaft bearings. I finished the repair by replacing the 4:11 gears with stock XXXX gearing.
Everything went back together with no problems. Now, highway cruising at 60 MPH was no problem with the engine taching at 4300 RPM.




The front floor rust allowed water to soak the floor when driving in the rain. I cut-out all of the rust and welded new 18-gauge sheet metal in its place I had already taught myself to weld as part of the rust-repair project that my other Mini ( 1967 Austin Mini 850 van ) became.
The rust repair was finished with a liberal coating of Rustoleum RED METAL PRIMER.


Sept 1973 - After high school I went to college at Virginia Tech, or VPI, at Blacksburg, Virginia, studying Mechanical Engineering. My Cooper S was my daily driver and I drove it the 140 miles each way between my home in Charleston, WV and VPI every weekend.
This weekly-commute was two-fold: to see my girlfriend back at home AND to ride my dirt bike every Sunday. This required some very-late Sunday night driving, but that was never a problem because I had installed ITALIAN-JOB style SEV-Marchal driving lights ( with 120 Watt bulbs ) shortly after I bought my Cooper S. Additionally, driving between Charleston and Blacksburg requires driving the West Virginia Turnpike - a TOLL ROAD with $3.75 in tolls each way. A cost-saving measure I quickly adapted was to drive a different route which by-passed the Turnpike ( adding 25 miles each way ). Those extra miles were GREAT sports-car miles over Sandstone Mountain and Deepwater Mountain where I could really push my Mini Cooper to its limits.

FEBRUARY 1977 One cold, snowy Winter Monday morning, along my way back to VPI, at a stop sign in the town of Oak Hill WV, I slid 60 feet on ICE and rear-ended an AMC Javelin. My Mini Cooper sustained a bunch of front-end sheet-metal damage and smashed lights, but it still ran and drove. I turned-around and drove back home, straightened-up the hood and fenders, installed new headlights, and continued on my way back to VPI with a new project ahead of me: collision repair and a whole-car paint job.....................


FALL 1977 I drove my Mini with the make-shift repairs until late summer when I started the final repairs. The right front fender, front valance panel and front bumper were replaced and the body was prepped for painting.I removed the lights and as much of the trim as I could and wet-sanded ( ALL by hand ) all of the body ( except for the roof - it has remained original white paint ) down to either the metal or to the original paint. I paid a painter at the local Pontiac dealership to re-paint it in its original Island Blue color.






JANUARY 2023....more to come..........