North American Motoring

hey everyone, new mini cooper owner.

my wife picked out an 05 mcs which has a few issues, some we were aware of, one big one we were not, so we are trying to work through fixing everything for less then the cost of the vehicle. unfortunately, that is the story of day two of mini cooper ownership.

luckily, most of the repair cost will just be parts as labor is considered free when the wife has you doing it.

anyways, the mini has moved to the top of the priority list of vehicle repairs needing done, over repair of grand cherokee front end and finishing wrangler v8 motor swap.

but, since this is an intro, lets stay on topic. :)

i live in south south texas. if you look at the map and look towards the bottom, you will see corpus christi right on the edge of the gulf of mexico. that is where i live. my wife and i both work aviation here, helicopters. she builds engines, i supervise people building transmission gearboxes.
we moved to the cooper from a gas hog four door wrangler and (minus the transmission issue) love the little cooper, it is exactly the type of car we wanted. we have two boys who think the car is a blast, also.

our euro experience is a background in bmws. we have had many. i used to race solo2 scca running e30 bmws. i was the driver and mechanic plus, i would buy e30s and e21s around the city for 100-350 bucks each and put them back on the road for high school kids and younger families who wanted a dependable inexpensive car. i have had probably 12-15 bmws i got back on the road and resold. (i actually raced two from stock to street modified classes, as the years went on) i have done everything from tune ups to motor swaps and everything in between so i feel totally comfortable working on a mini cooper.

our coolio little cooper is a chili pepper red 05 s model with (what i think) is every option. its got a ton of stuff and we could not find another with all the stuff this one has in the week we searched after test driving this one. we searched houston and san antonio but this was the one we liked. so we bought it. i think it will be a great vehicle once we fix its little troubles and its one big trouble.

ummm, hmmm. i cannot think of anything else at the moment so anything else you guys want to know, ask.