as Starman famously said.


Hello all, first time mini owner, NOT first time forum user, so I hope to not commit any transgressions.

Was looking around for one for a bit because,well, they’re fun.
test drove a pile of Shhh 04 mcs on Thursday, but it was fun enough…

found one on FB marketplace posted recently but 4 hours drive away on Saturday afternoon, messaged and they responded that they still had it, amd provided vin and some more pictures which I ran thru mdecoder to check the options.

wife gave the ok and we all got up super early Sunday am, drove up there by noon and it wasn’t as nice as it looked in photos ( isn’t that always the case?), but also it wasn’t heavily molested. Just some minor things like cravenspeed strut defenders, which are a Good thing, and a pulley.

the bad: it sounds like a tractor and you can feel the exhaust pouring out from under the car so I’m pretty sure it has the (what I know now to be common) cracked/ weld split pre cat, and It had literally bald tires on the rear. And it was filthy with a whiff of devils lettuce inside.

so we bought it, found a gas station and filled it up, and found a used tire place open on a Sunday, got two decent used rear tires on it, took my son (almost 16 and a big fan of initial D and drifting) to get his back to school haircut while I scrubbed at least a solid mm of grime and gunk off the steering wheel shift **** and pretty much every touchable surface, and then drove it the 4 hours back home while my wife drove my lowered F31 for the first time Behind us.

So now I’m now a the owner of a 06 JCW MCS manual as a project car for me and my second son to work on and fix up. it Did come with the belt changing lever tool, and an uninstalled as of yet x force header, and the de-riguer check engine light… luckily I still have my BMW diagnostics and coding computer from my e46 wagon (now eldest son‘s) so I converted DIS to mini and have some research to do on that.

it’s a full factory JCW, even has the funky but cool JCW carbon wing, heated seats, auto air, sunroof, xenons, the add on driving lights, the two piece wheels(r90? or r99?) and the bonnet stripes, which have cracked and given up the ghost and are slowly being inch by inch removed so new ones can be later applied. and the horn worked until I cleaned the engine bay last night so probably gonna have to do hellas on it.

my car history:
as a younger and more single man, owned a 73 and 74 MGB , learned to wrench, tune side drafts, and did some solo 2.
Then sold and owned an AWD DSM (heating! Ac! A roof!) back before forums &social media when you got info from mailing lists. those were the hottest most tunable thing on the road before F&F and the Supra big power craze happened.

owned one of the first e34 wagons and Was one of the first to manual swap one back in the day when I had two small children, and it was euro’d OEM+ to the max, (manual tilt headlights anyone? first to figure that out). Sold it for a Tahoe because I had plans of family camping and such. Things didn’t work out and First wife kept the Tahoe in the divorce to spite me and wrecked it twice. (Karma).
got the fully loaded 04 e46 wagon second hand when I was newly single but had the boys to tote around to go skateboard and such on weekends, it was eventually converted to emulate euro spec even down to the factory tv tuner ( which btw will also work on nav equipped r50/52/53 since they are electronically mostly e46) And learned some ncs expert coding. Brought my little girl home from hospital in it a week after I pulled two all nighters finishing the rear fogs, city lights, euro switch, and other retrofits. Even learned how to Virginize an LKM to put in a euro switch. Couldn’t bring her home in a stock vehicle! That one I gave to my eldest non car person son last year.

once I hit 200k + convinced my new wife who had @ the time an 04 e83 sport (she’s great) that I was time to invest in getting me something newer and more reliable and economical and bought a 2015 (last of preLCI with active xenon’s actual replaceable bulbs and remote flashable ecus) f31 diesel MSport wagon, with every package but drivers aids And HK. Then retrofitted some m3 and LCi interior goodies, 335 brakes, lip, diffuser, lowered on KWs with 19s, match up7bmw amd earthquakes with my own personal DSP tune (24 hours of tuning in that alone) etc.
it’s a Wednesday car so it’s been dead nuts reliable. Learned to use ESYS to code that one. Like all my prior wagons has no amber parking light, rear fogs, fogs with high beams, euro switch, and remote window closing.

And here we are, almost full circle. Now back with a relatively impractical but fun little “british car” with German engineering except this time it’s eventually for my teen who I hope will learn to like grip vs drift, as I wasn’t going to pay the JDM+drift tax.Before we got to the sellers house he wanted any old car.
When I pulled 6.5k leaving the sellers house, up shifted and let it pop & bang on overrun, he smiled. About 2 hours into the trip back as we were learning about the car together, seeing what was in the glove box, figuring out the controls on it, and he was reading the pelican fix it book that came with the car, he said I like this car. By the time we were home, he Said he REALLY liked this car, was happy we bought it, and was excited to work on it and drive it.
And that folks is a big win.


yes, yes, pics. I know, here they are, what little I have of the r53 and one of my f31 that my son took on the way back from ABQ.

 

Congrats and welcome!

Looks like you found a good one, has the aero kit too so that's a big bonus.

These cars are indeed great fun, I'm an older guy and my R53 has made me feel like a teenager again as well as becoming re-enthused for turning wrenches.

It's actually fun to work on, although very frustrating too at times, so it'll be a great platform for your son to learn on --- they are very responsive to modification as well and it's very rewarding when you feel the positive difference after giving it some love.

Looks like y'all got some nice twisties around there too and that's where these things shine the brightest,
so be sure and take it blasting full-throttled yonderways down them crooked backroads!

 

Great Find!! Still love the first gen MINIs the most. Enjoy this beauty and beast!~

 

Thanks for the warm welcome. I cant wait to do some coding on it like remote window/sunroof close from key, turn on the clown nose, and maybe a few other things.
It’s a long work week to wait for my weekends to see him.

but I did resync the key and get that working already for him, and have been doing some initial interior cleaning with my detail brushes And microfiber towels while I wait.

As you can see it was filthy filthy… first time I wet any surface, I get a smell of marijuana so someone used to smoke out in it at some point, and I want all that gone before he comes to help with it this weekend so when we do a good detail and clean and apply protectant we aren’t sealing that in, or getting a contact high, lol.

Filthy interior! Within 30 minutes of purchase I was already cleaning it, before I even drove it home.

 

F.Y.I. The 2-piece wheels are R90s as you indicated. Same wheels as my MC40 that came in an Anthracite color. Yours may be silver.

 

They are and thanks. (Edit, used ecs to find they are actually R98s but thanks for the assist..)

got a nice surprise when I cleaned out the glovebox…

some sort of visor mount MINI Bluetooth speaker made by alpine and it’s manual , plus the JCW card,
and a FULL set of original manuals, including the road atlas, plus the original sales reps business card.but sadly no moroney sheet.

That would have been the cherry on top.

 

Nice find!

 

That's cool you got the JCW certificate.

I didn't get mine, but I did get the monroney sheet.

btw
this thread has lots of JCW info...

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...are-there.html

...and it's a fun look/read too!

 

thanks! My cart over there with y’all is getting fuller all the time.
appreciate the years of support and parts on the BMW side of things.
Wish y’all had the scorpion catted headers back in stock sooner than Xmas because I need to get this thing fixed so it can pass inspection and get registered long before then and would prefer the better o2 sensor fitment and increased lower torque of the 4/2/1 vs milltek offering.

 

Welcome,

Scorpion it takes some time as they build to order pallets, its estimated and sometimes they can put it on the next shipment. I can check really quick on inventory in UK.

 

Why not use the x-force 4-2-1 that came with your car with your stock cat? It’s a knock-off of a knock-off, or possibly the same knock-off with a different name, but the original OBX knock-off was based on the SuperSprint 4-2-1. Search OBX header on this or any other MINI forums and you should find tons of info going back at least 15 years.

 

I’m not very happy with the build quality of it to be frank. The welds are not great nor is the fitment of he tubes to the flanges.

but it is an option I’m considering, along with rewelding the precat back together for now… assuming it is that and not the flex that failed.

we arrived home at night on Sunday amd working M-F till 9pm is not conducive to having time to get under the car. Haven’t even jacked it up yet or tried to see if it will clear my rhino ramps. Just done busy work like cleaning the washer and xenon washers put so they work, amd wiping down interior. And reading. Lots of reading.

Cause I’ve got this to fix . Found an unplugged vacuum line near the corner of the IC so need to discover where from.



Yay. So much fun. But I did the test before I bought it so I knew.

 

Our supplier has some stateside at the depo, updated the lead.

 

Yep, the build quality and fitment is definitely not the best but at the price, around $250 compared to around $850 for the SuperSprint, it was definitely worth it if you could put up with those issues. The OBX originally had larger oval openings at the flange and the SuperSprint had D shaped openings to match the head. Later OBX’s, Becker’s, and the X-force were smaller with a step at the flange. I think this was added because of clearance problems with one or two mounting bolts, but that issue still seems to be there to some extent from posts I’ve read after the redesign. Some people use a nut and stud on those points, which I think are the inner holes of cylinders 1 and 4, to make the install a little easier.

Regarding the error codes above, have you run your VIN on the MINI recall page to see if your car has open recalls for the occupancy sensor or power steering pump?

https://www.miniusa.com/owners/tools...rt/recall.html

 

O I had not RB. Thanks for the heads up. None on the mini, but it reminded me to check my f31 again. finally BMW has a remedy on my f31 diesel’s egr.

I was also interested in the scorpion catted because it is plug and play from head to JCW cutback, no trying to find someone willing to modify parts, we could (assuming no broken bolts) install the complete shebang in the garage and have a full working exhaust again in an afternoon.
And It was noted that it did have better fitment than the obx/SS, even if the welds look like they were made by juniors at a votech high school.

Funny story, I took it at 2am to go fill the tank up with gas after I put the dash back together from trying to fix the iPod adapter (defenkt, no sound, just pops) as it is stupid loud and no plates yet. As I’m coming back and pulling up to the house the younger fellow from across the street come sprinting up and knocks on my window. An apology for waking someone is on the tip of my tongue as I roll down the window.

he almost shouts “Hey I know a place we can go to race right now! Wanna go? How many horsepower is it?”

I politely declined and explained it was 210 from factory and still a work in progress and didn’t run right yet… and went inside laughing.

 

Fitment is great with the Scorpion manifold, and truly plug 'n play as you say, was a very easy install too but I had the subframe dropped doing other stuff at that time.

I have the older version that I scored off ebay for a deal as it was new-never-installed but yes the welds do look like crap! otherwise I love everything about it.

Have seen recent pics of the newer version and it appears they've upgraded to TIG or something and it looks much much better...

 

on the Scorpion. I probably would have gone with one if it was available at the time due to the extra bung for a wide band sensor. I ended up finding a good deal on a new SS and went with that. If your stock header needs welding, the x-force would only need the donut flange welded to your stock cat if it’s still good. There are pics here on NAM of the where to cut the cat and measurements for the overall length after welding. Search the various OBX threads if you decide to go with the x-force or check the SS site which used to have a pic also. That’s assuming you got the donut and flange with the car.

On the occupancy sensor, it might be good to check with the dealer about it. I don’t know what build dates were included because it seems some of the 1st gens that have the issue aren’t included in the recall, but Factory MINI parts should have a two year warranty. If it’s not showing up because the PO had the recall done within the last two years, the dealer might fix it for free.

 

Moving continued conversation to r53 forum


https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...ml#post4629387