I've been lurking around here pretty much since 1/1/2013. Here's my story: In November 2012 I wrecked my last car, a 2001 Mitsubishi Eclipse GS. I was pretty much through with that car and the maintenance it was requiring anyway. I searched on the internet through much of December for *ANYTHING* that had a manual transmission. Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, VW, Scion, Subaru, Infinity and Mini.

I had difficulties finding anything which was stick and a coupe. Mini was the only dealer I found which had A car which met my requirements. When it came to Mini, I knew I didn't want an S based upon many things I saw in Consumer Reports. Mini had an end of year sale and I discovered the car was below invoice. I knew the car was a good deal, test drove it, and NEEDED to have a new car. I had my rental for 1 month and was now paying for it out of my pocket.

I was amazed the car only had 15 miles on it during my test drive. I learned it was a transfer from Mini in Murray, Utah. I guess my dealer agreed to take quite a few Coupes and Roadsters (cars which were not selling fast) from Murray to move up the que in getting new cars they REALLY wanted. The nice thing is my car was pretty loaded with Sport and Cold weather packages, Xenon headlights, 1 yr. Sirius, and Harmon-Kardon sound. There was only one thing which stopped me from signing the paperwork.

The original pictures of the car on the dealer's website showed black wheels. When the car was brought out of the back, the first thing I noticed was the wheels were silver. To me it TOTALLY cheapened the look of the car. The dealer would not just swap out the wheels from a car which had them. I finally caved in and paid $350 more to get THE wheels back on. I picked up the car on 1/3 and have been lurking here since.

Thanks to this site I received the information to do the mods I've done. 1. Hood insulation (just want to protect the hood paint even though heat is not a problem) 2. Craven dipstick (because the original dipstick IS a problem) 3. Rear fog switch (installed but not coded) 4. Interior LED set (just ordered, not received) and 5. USB/OBD II Cable for coding.

The cable is the reason I FINALLY had to sign up on NAM! A member recently posted one FS for a reasonable price which worked on his R56, and I NEED ONE! Thanks to the Forums I discovered all cables are not the same, even though they may look the same. On Ebay it appears most cables do not work with our cars. I'm both worried and excited about learning to code. As someone who's fairly computer literate, I will consider it a challenge.

So this catches me up to the current time. My next week or two should be packed doing my LED swap out, and my future coding adventures. I really should get out and drive more as I just broke 2500 miles yesterday!

 

We can feel all the lurkers, it's like being haunted. Welcome to the land of the posters.

 

Looks better with the black wheels! Good choice.

Did you get the LED through ECS? Let us know how that turns out and post some pics!

BTW, welcome!

 

Yes, I did purchase from ECS. In hindsight it seems like it was overpriced. Some coworkers think I'm crazy because they say they pay about $2 each at a local place. I do think it's good to support ECS though because their documentation is pretty good. I didn't purchase the plastic trim tool set from them. Just picked up a 5 pc set on sale at Harbor Freight for just over $5 with tax. Ready to go when it arrives! I will take pics and time myself on the total job.

 

Welcome. Sounds like a great car and an excellent start into the MINI world.

 

Good call on the wheels on that particular color combo.

 

Yesterday I did a test to see how long it would take to pop out the lamp in the boot using the trim tools I recently purchased. It took less than 30 seconds! I missed my LED shipment today. I should have them tomorrow. I don't think the rest of the lamps will be as easy.

Today I received the cable so I can do some coding with NCSExpert. I should have no problems getting the cable to work. I took it apart so I could compare it to the working cables I've seen. The R4 and C6 in the center of the board are what a working board looks like. A cluster of resistors in the same area are what most Ebay non-working cables have. During my cable shopping process I even tried sending sellers on Ebay a pic of the circuit board I wanted. I never received a response. The connector also does not have a soldered connection from 7 to 8. As soon as I finish reading and re-reading the how-to docs for the 10th time I will bite the bullet and try coding. I'd like to thank the people in the R60 Coding forums for making the cable situation clear for me!

 

 

normally not a big fan of black wheels, but in this color combinatie it is indeed a great improvement, so consider it $350 well spend :-)