Most liked posts in thread: Austin Cooper S - USA sale brochure image

Its not BS. It didn't use steel springs. The springs were replaced with rubber that had oil inside. Hydro for the oil and lastic for the rubber. oil isn't compressible and rubber is. The oil was displaced from the cavity in the rubber and traveled through a tube to the opposite corner of the car. The right front was connected to the left rear and the left front was connected to the right rear. Ever hear oval track racers talk about wedge. The corner being depressed moved weight onto the diagonally opposite corner. There were mixed reviews about the way it worked. The Wolf formula one car used a similar design very affectively. Unfortunately for Wolf, Lotus had developed ground effect cars at the same time. Jody Sheckter was the class of the field except for the lotus.

 

Thanks for defending BMC's Hydrolastic syspension.

Actually though... it was not oil (perhaps you are thinking of Citroen?), but Hydrolastic used a water/anti-freeze mix. And there was not a cross side connection - the RF was connected the RR, LF to LR. The idea was to greatly improve the ride comfort on BMC's range of small cars.

Here's a gif showing how it worked (using the classic Mini's slightly bigger brother, the Austin/Morris 1100)

 

Hydrolastic... I love the BS "engineering" terminology marketing guys came up with back then.

CD

 

Welcome aboard, lots of good info from knowledgeable individuals willing to share.

Advertising isn't what it use to be that's for sure. Kind of reminds me of the old scale model box art, but missing the 1:1 scale. That would be a nice piece for the garage, wish I had a garage

 

I've owned a ton of BL cars with the Hydro suspension. Even a Avonbar Turbo metro which was fun.

 

^^^ Well stated. The education of others is always the best of all things.

 

Another great bit of info in clarification, Bruce...

I really like the way my car rides. Sure it could be stiffer, but who gives a rip. It's a rare street car worth much more than it sold for new and I have no reason to alter it.

 

^^^ Nope. Not enough to make a difference or seem uncomfortable.

 

Thanks for the correction. I never played with the old Minis, but I did ply with race cars that used the system. On a home built sports racer I helped work on when I was in collage the connecting fluid was between diagonally opposite springs. The point was to change the wedge as the car cornered. The car actually had hydraulic cylinders with springs so the effect was tunable. I am not sure how the Wolf F-1 car was configured because I was never close enough to see.

 

By the way, the Hydrolastic suspension only appeared on classic Minis for a limited time. Basically from 1964 to 1970, and only on the Mini saloon bodystyle only (never on the long wheelbase vans, pickups, wagons, or on the Moke either). It was much more expensive to manufacture than the rubber cone suspension and that extra cost eventually killed it. So it was the rubber "doughnut" on Minis from 1959 to 1964, Hydrolastic from 1964 to 1970, then back to the original rubber doughnuts from 1970 to 2001 (end of Mini production).

To me, riding in a Hydrolastic Mini reminded me a little of being in a speed boat. The front end of the car would rise slightly upon acceleration like a boat, and the back end would rise slightly when stopping quickly. But when just driving, it was smoother over bumps than a rubber-suspended Mini.