Hi!

I'm a general surgeon and family guy living in the Phoenix area, with a long list of hobbies. I recently bought a 2017 Mini Cooper S hardtop 5 door with very low mileage off of a Toyota lot, and have been reading on this forum to learn more about it.

I have some previous history with 4WD fabrication and mechanics, so if I go down the rabbit hole of NASA/HDPE, I'll at least start with some garage capability. Right now I have zero modification plans, as the stock vehicle is already the zippiest and most fun vehicle I've ever driven.

With that said, I'm off to go browse and search. The rear license plate bracket holes were destroyed by the dealer and I have to figure out the best way to remove the plastic inserts.

 

Hi and welcome to the NAM family! Ain't they fun!
Show us some pics of that bad boy!

 

Sorry about the lag. They don't let me out much... but when they do, I'm GONE.

2017 MCS with only about 14.7k on the odometer at signing. That was 2 weekends ago and I've already done a couple of mini road trips to experience it glued to the road around some pretty nice turns.

I grabbed my wife and ran from Phoenix, up through Wickenburg, Yarnell and Prescott to go over the hill to Jerome (for a decent cup of coffee) and then back down. Nobody even noticed we were gone. The next weekend was Flagstaff and back down through Sedona.

I managed to figure out how to get those pesky damaged plastic inserts for the rear license plate bracket out, but it required a combination of hate and love. I had to destroy the old ones with a needle nose(with aggression and hate) but already realizing that it would likely result in the loss of the interior half of the plastic into the door, I already had the interior door panel off (removed with love). As expected, the broken bits rattled in the door between layers of sheet metal until, after a couple of openings and closings, they fell through an opening adjacent to the latch. Yay! Of course I could have just let them rattle in there forever, but it would have been like the Telltale Heart of Edgar Allen Poe to me.

I'm not OCD... I swear.

Next, I have to figure out what the heck happened to the "click and drive" cell phone holder. I already got a replacement for the clamp that actually holds the phone because the previous one was broken in two. Next I got a shortie iPhone cable to plug into the USB outlet on it's side. However, no joy. It doesn't appear to be hot. I can feel a cable coming out of the back of the device and snaking into the dash, but if it was installed correctly, it should have power and it appears not to. I really don't want to be going through dash panels (auto electrical is the stuff of nightmares as far as I'm concerned), so this may be a job I get someone else to do. I've seen some mention of splicing the click and drive system into the actual "Mini Connect" input which it otherwise does not contribute to. I'll be doing more reading here this week. There's no reason to cut any wires until I'm versed in the relevant literature.

Finally... racing stripes. As you can see from the image above, I don't have them. There's so much love and happiness in this car, I just feel deprived without them. This task I may need to do for myself, and spend some quality time in the driveway.