Hey everyone,
I just joined the forum and wanted to introduce myself. I love being part of a great forum and am looking forward to getting to know some of you guys and gals.

I'm a car "enthusiast" with no bias towards any particular maker or model. I just love owning unique and fun vehicles. I'm still learning about my recently purchased 2008 Mini Cooper! Here are some of the vehicles I've owned in that past: 1975 Porsche 214 2.0 / 2001 BMW 740i / 1990 Acura Integra GS / 2000 Honda Prelude / 2002 Mazda Miata / 1990 Mitsubishi Montero ... and several more practical, less fun cars, and trucks too.

I've also owned a few amazing bikes: 1985 Yamaha V-Max and 2008 Suzuki Hayabusa.

As far as work goes, I left the corporate world several years back, and now I currently own and operate www.growleyleather.com, where my family and I make leather goods.

I'm not afraid to wrench on a car...but know when a job is out of my skill set

At risk of making my very first post too long...let me tell you about my Mini!

My 2008 MINI Cooper

About 3 weeks back I bought a 2008 Mini Cooper base in Astro Black Metalic. It's an automatic (would like a standard someday) and it has 108K miles on it. I picked it up for 3K and it runs great! However...day one the engine light came on and alerted me to 15 codes, lol. 10 are stored, a few are pending and some are active. It's possible I bought a lemon, but with how solidly it runs I'm hopeful that I can make her great car

Known Issues:

• Sunroof quit retracting. Previous owner said the gears were stripped and sealed it shut (I'd love to fix this, but the oem part number to replace the sunroof is $2,900, ha.)
• License plate light and latch are broken. The truck still opens but only with the key fob. (I'll probably fix this)
• First gear shifting is odd... It's almost like it's slipping in first, but works great in sport mode. I have a feeling it's maybe a wheel speed sensor or something because it snaps from gear to gear smoothly!
• Low windshield washer fluid light is on even when it's full. (No idea)
• Front driver seat could use to be re-skinned (Open to recommendations!)
• Front speaker grills cracked

All that said, I'm still learning this car and absolutely love it so far. It's a blast to drive. I never thought I'd have any interest in paddle shifters, but I find myself using them all the time. Sport mode is amazing with quick shifting and great use of engine break or downshifting.

I'm looking forward to scouring these pages!

Thanks for having me!

Brian.

 

All the items listed are easy repairs. The sunroof assembly can be purchased used on ebay for around 400. The seat covers can be purchased for around 200. I got a real nice set on Ebay. I will send you a link.
The car in general is not to hard to work on. You can get tons of help from this board. The forum on here has saved me a butt load of money.

 

That's awesome! I'll gladly look at the links. I've replaced seat covers before on my Sequoia so I'm confident I can do that. But finding a good cover is important. I'm also glad to hear you say "the car in general is not too hard to work on". I feel like I've always heard the opposite.

What's weird about the codes is that sometimes the engine light actually goes off and stays off for a while. I don't know if this is a good idea or not, but I feel like clearing all the codes and seeing what comes back and start working from there...Any thoughts on that process?

 

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?m...2F180801048316
Seat covers I purchased. They been perfect. Fit real nice.

 

Those look nice. Thanks!

 

These are the covers installed

 

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?m...2F323524001276
Sun roof assembly

 

Transmission probably needs service.

 

Those look great! Nice work. Makes me want to pull my seats tonight. Ha.

 

Remember if it is only the gears that are bad on sunroof. You can order a used motor an gear setup complete.

 

Good to know. I was under the assumption that it had to be bought as a single unit. Right now I only know what he told me. I’ll have to investigate further.

 

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?m...2F163931612035
Sunroof motor

 

I had it inspected and the mechanic said it might be that it only needs the service, but he said it could make it worse. To me it feels like it's not shifting down from 2nd fast enough stops where you're not coming to a complete stop. One of the codes that came up was a wheel speed sensor. To me, if the wheel speed isn't reporting correctly I can see why it might have some issues knowing when to shift to first. I think I'll look into the wheel sensors and see what that does. ...but I'm also wondering if at 108K miles if the transmission hasn't been serviced at all.

 

Well I know mini stated that the transmission in first gen mini were a lifetime oil. Not true. I had an 05 R53 with automatic. Was shifting real bad. I found out what I needed on here. So i serviced my transmission. Was smooth as can be after that. So I would do a little research on here an see what you can find out about your model

 

I'll do that. I'd love to do the work myself if I can. My car is still so new to me that I don't even know if it's an R50, R5, or R56...or maybe something different, ha.

#Newbie

 

Welcome, they already got you covered on the sunroof, but yes you can get that whole assembly or just the motor.

Transmission, could be a bunch of things: most people change the fluid first and then see how it goes. https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...id-change.html

On the grip handle you can look here for the repair. https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...rking-diy.html

 

Welcome to the forum and to the adventure that is owning a Mini, lol. Congratulations by the way, you will love the car. They are quirky and have their issues. But nothing else is as fun to drive!
One thing you may want to look into buying sooner than later is a good scan tool that can read the proprietary manufacturers codes. Most scan tools will not read them. I cringe every time I see people (especially on FB) to just go get the car scanned at the parts store, or try to argue that their generic $50 scan tool reads them. There are a couple of options out there. I’ve heard that Carly works. I use the Schwaben scan tool from ECS Tuning and can’t think of much that it won’t do for what I need. They are pretty reasonable price-wise and it more than pays for itself pretty quickly.
Good luck and have fun! Enjoy it, personalize it, drive it hard now and then (they like it), and wave at other Mini’s.....if you want to.

 

Thanks for the response and the links! I appreciate it very much. I'm excited to get to work.

Thanks again.

 

Good thought on the scan tool. My friend used to be a master mechanic and has one of the tools you're talking about. His is set up so that you buy the add on for the car you have and then you can scan and program the car like the dealers do. It's pretty impressive.

I didn't know about the auto stores not having as good of scanners though. I had always figured they'd have good ones.

I've already had my first MINI wave (for the lack of a better term) ! I enjoy the camaraderie that comes with cars like these.

Thanks again.

 

Hi and welcome to the NAM family!
Congrats on jumping into a street legal Go-Kart!
Pics?

 

Thanks and Merry Christmas!

 

Happy Monday! So, I've been looking at these along with several other brands. Here's a question I can't seem to find an answer to... Do these just install over the original seat cover, or do they replace the original?

 

They went over the original's.

 

Thanks for the link to the truck latch. I just ordered one and can't wait to install it. It "should" also make my light out warning go away since the lights in that section are bad and no other light seems to be.

Also, I think I'm going to go ahead and get my tranny flushed and see what happens. The more I drive it the more I realize it just takes longer to drop to first gear than it should. If I make an absolute complete stop it seems to start up perfectly. But if it's at all a rolling stop it seems to lag...which makes me think it's in 2nd gear instead of 1st.

Thanks again!

 

Thanks again! I recently bought the grip handle and installed it today. Nothing beats a super easy fix!