Engine out without disconnecting the Brake Servo?

These days CooperRoadMini is in a bit of a holding pattern as my lovely assistant is due to give birth to our son, literally at any moment now!   Little Xaven (or Xayven?,  Xayvyn?, Xavyn?….still working on it!)  is due day after tomorrow as I write this.  Perhaps to help in that regard,  we are tempting fate by taking a picnic and the 4-wheel drive up to a nearly 8000 foot peak about an hour away. Yes we live in a wonderful place!  We’ll escape early August 90s for spectacular views of several lakes and balmy 70s,  and see if the terrain might help expedite Xavy Cooper’s arrival!  OK, you can have some fun with our choice of middle name, but someday, he may inherit this mess!

Well, that’s the “life and times” update,  but back to our title…. the question has come up again about whether it’s possible to pull the engine unit from a servo equipped Mini without disturbing the hydraulics.  A ‘servo’ is what a power-brake booster is called for a Mini. They were installed at first only on the Cooper S models with disk brakes, different than most cars in that the unit is remote from the master cylinder.  In the Mini, it is mounted on the right side of the tiny engine compartment, right in the way of getting to the clutch adjustment, and generally making many maintenance and inspection procedures much more difficult.  That’s why I chose not to run one on my 66 S…. the pedal pressure is just not significant, even with late 8.4″ disk brakes and 13″ wheels with an early single line master.  In any event, they are widely used and viewed as an upgrade from the S model.

So the answer is YES!   In this short video taken just before I re-installed the engine in our last project, we can see how the servo unit is pulled up and tilted backwards with just a slight twist of the two brake pipes that connect it back to the three way junction on the bulkhead.  I show a little trick for tightening up a small brake fluid leak…. finesse instead of brute force!

Finally, this last week I’ve been helping our friend Steven back in the great state of PA figure out what he needs to assemble the brake pipes to his Mark 1.   He acquired the car in milk crates and coffee cans, so bits like the “three-way connector” are just “junk in a box”!   Here you go Steven, you can see the layout of most of the engine compartment brake plumbing, and your car will be very much like this one!