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Hello NAM (and the rest of the lurkers on the interwebs) ...
As someone who never even thought of owning a MINI for the past two decades...I recently bought one a few months ago! It has been quite a journey, and I thought I'd share the story with those who would appreciate it the most.
VERY long post alert. You've been warned
Chapter 1: The Predecessor
My previous daily driver of 10 years was an E46 M3. This was an awesome car, and I put about 90k miles on it over that time. In early 2020 it started developing what sounded like a ticking in the valve train. I figured it was overdue for valve adjustment and/or something vanos related had begun to fail. I generally do all my own maintenance & repairs on my vehicles, but this one was a little beyond my expertise and had the potential to get complicated, plus a friend of mine was working for a former BMW master tech so I figured I'd let him handle this job.
Well, I took the car to his shop, and about a week or two later the whole world shut down for the pandemic. Then later on when the shop re-opened the M3 got neglected because it was just a back-burner job for him, and the walk-ins always took priority. It did get a partial tear-down, but never a full diagnosis. Between me not needing it while working from home, plus the out of sight/out of mind factor, I often didn't follow up for months at a time, so that didn't help. Finally in mid 2021 I wanted it back and was going to take it elsewhere. Well after sitting for a year it developed a handful of new minor issues (dead battery, the starter literally fell apart inside, fouled gas, etc.) so that was a fun ordeal to get it back into my garage, but I managed.
I fixed the smaller stuff & did some further diagnostics of my own, and the mystery noise got more pronounced -- and seemed to have moved more to the bottom end. Final determination was that a rod bearing was failing, and getting worse quickly . So at this point I got some estimates for a rebuild and/or engine swap, and it was just simply way more than I wanted to spend, and parts were hard to come by as well. After not having it for over a year I had lost any sentimental attachment, so I decided to sell it as-is to someone else who wanted to rebuild the engine. My saving grace was that it was a highly sought after model (2006, 2dr, 6sp, low-ish miles for age, etc.) and the used car market got stupid, so I actually got a fairly decent amount of cash considering the expensive engine repairs needed.
Chapter 2: The Hunt
With the M3 officially gone, I needed a new daily driver! I had been driving my "street-legal track car" and my "fun weekend toy" in the meantime, and putting miles/wear on them that I'd rather not continue doing. I started looking casually, but am just completely disappointed with what the car industry has become with all of its gadgetry, touch screens, spyware, subscriptions, size & weight bloat, etc. I am not the general public, whom those cars are made for, and do not want all that BS. My checklist went something like this:
Small
Light
Manual transmission
High power to weight ratio
Stiff suspension
Fun & safe to drive in a "spirited" manner
Good air conditioning (it is hot & humid here ~8 months of the year)
No touch screens
No smartphone app
It was surprisingly hard to find something that checked these boxes. Pretty much any car made in the past 5-7 years was an instant strike out. So I continued looking at stuff on and off for about 8 months, at which point I ran across a rarity that intrigued me:
I thought, "Really, a MINI? Well it does seem to align with my checklist pretty well, let's entertain this idea..."
But this was not "just another mini" though, it's a JCW GP ... with some upgrades. Now to be honest, I had never even paid enough attention to minis know that John Cooper Works was a thing, much less the GP model. I did some research & started to like what I was finding in regards to the GP, as that suddenly makes the mini much more my style. But in stock form it still seemed a bit lacking on the power. But this one I found had a larger turbo, intercooler, downpipe, and a proper tune ... which addressed that last concern.
Great, let's go check it out...oh wait, it's over 2000 miles away
So this is GP #396, which a quick search on NAM turns up that it was originally owned by kk moto from Arizona. He mentioned putting it up for sale in 2020, and eventually did sell it in 2021 to a dealer in Nevada. They then sold it to another local dealer who put it up for auction a few months later. That auction was won by a dealer in Washington -- the owner of that place supposedly bought it for himself, but later decided to just sell it. Through all this it racked up a whole 350 miles, at which point several maintenance items were performed and it was then put up for sale.
So this past summer I found that listing, and after a couple weeks of phone calls, emails, and video chats I decided to go ahead and purchase it and have it shipped down south.
Chapter 3: Complications
It took a couple weeks to get the shipping lined up (too many places out there trying to screw people on the cost). There was also a bit of a miscommunication with the shipping company, where someone in the office told me it hadn't been picked up yet even though it had been. So I got a surprise a couple days later from the truck driver who was calling to arrange delivery that next day. So delivery day comes and, despite the 2-3 months of drought we had here, literally 5 minutes before he's at the drop off location we get the worst rain storm of the past 6+ months.
We waited that out for a bit, and then I got a ride over and picked up the car. However, due to the weather, I just drove it straight home (about a mile). Much later that night the rain had stopped & roads dried up, so I went out for a proper test drive. It was awesome...until it wasn't.
I got to drive it for about 5-10 minutes before it broke . It had suddenly lost power, turbo wasn't building boost, and it just didn't sound right at all (a whining noise). So I carefully limped it the mile or so back to my house to investigate, and found this:
Sound clip: 3_1_howl.mp3
Possible cause, a loose intake pipe: 3_2_loose.mpeg
Which lead to the discovery of this:
Spoiler
Well that's not good. Very not good, actually.
At the time I had no idea what that debris even was, but later learned that it was the rubber seal that goes around the turbo inlet where that plastic tube attaches, hence why it was so loose in that video. Hindsight & analysis reveals the thing had apparently been secretly drying out & cracking for who-knows-how-long, and truly was just bad luck that it finally gave up & broke apart right after I bought it.
Chapter 4: Turbo? More Like Turb-oh-no!
Now the tube/rubber seal isn't a huge deal in itself to obtain a replacement part, but the real problem was all the secondary damage. Immediately obvious was that the compressor wheel itself had lots of bent fins & a couple of missing chunks. So I dug deeper to assess the extent of this mess.
The only good news from all this is that I found no damage to the pistons, cylinders, valves. There was one tiny little piece of the rubber that made into one of the cylinders. It was maybe 2mm across? I was able to extract it with a custom made shop vac attachment
This whole time I'm just feeling sick after spending a small fortune and this being my first experience. And I also knew I was about to invest more $$ and lots of time & effort into it, with no guarantee of good results.
Chapter 5: "We can rebuild him; we have the technology"
The turbo is from Owen Developments, so I got in touch with them about the situation and they said to send it in for a rebuild. That's when I learned that shipping a turbo from the US to the UK is also great way to facilitate the transfer of money from my wallet to UPS .
While the turbo was out, I got to work on a major cleanup operation of the entire intake path from air filter to intake manifold. Also, since I have completely disassembled all the intake & exhaust parts, it was a good time to replace all the gaskets/seals, studs, nuts, etc. that are "one time use" and/or have 9 years of corrosion. Amazing how quickly all those little things add up in cost, but still worth it in the end as a preventative measure.
A month later I got the turbo back ... ooo shiny!
Turbo & all the exhaust stuff re-installed. Intercooler, bumper, intake manifold, charge pipes, airbox all re-installed. And then we are back to my original nemesis, the intake tube...
Chapter 6: A Series Of Tubes
So I have this new intake tube, but it's the OEM JCW part with that green seal. The opening for it is about 45mm, and there was simply no way I could get it to fit over the 51mm aftermarket turbo inlet. Somehow the original one was stretched or otherwise forced to fit, and I think that may have been one of several contributing factors that led to the failure.
I spent about a week or so trying to find some kind of solution for this, and basically determined there is simply nothing on the market that works for this particular application. I got excited for a moment when I found something listed at ECS as having a 50mm opening, but speaking with them we confirmed that was an error, and they promptly corrected the item description.
At this point I was approaching custom silicone tubing territory, which I knew was kind of messy due to the PCV stuff that is needed to keep the computer happy. I found the M7 intake tube + electrical parts, which covers all the bases except for the opening being 45mm as well. However, after speaking to someone there, they suggested that I get that one and sand/grind it a couple of millimeters as it has plenty of material due to the extra thick construction. That would get me most of the way to the 51mm, and it'll slightly stretch the rest of the way for a nice tight fit. That sounded like a good plan so I ordered it right away.
While waiting for the M7 tube to arrive I designed and 3D printed a custom tool for boring out the tube in an even & controllable manner. This all ended up working extremely well, and I was finally able to finish the last bit of reassembly without any trouble.
Chapter 7: Back In Action
Primed the turbo, topped of the coolant, reviewed all the work triple checking everything, and held my breath as I pushed the button ... it started right up, and nothing exploded. Whew!
I let it idle for 10-15 mins & still all good so I took it for a test drive. Lots of smoke and smells as all the grease, oils, etc. burned off the hot parts, yummy. And that 10 minute drive I got in 2 months prior wasn't a dream, it really is a beast. Sounds so good, and boy is it quick.
It's been a couple weeks now and it's going strong, putting a smile on my face every time that turbo spools up
10-21-2022, 01:35 AM
. So at this point I got some estimates for a rebuild and/or engine swap, and it was just simply way more than I wanted to spend, and parts were hard to come by as well. After not having it for over a year I had lost any sentimental attachment, so I decided to sell it as-is to someone else who wanted to rebuild the engine. My saving grace was that it was a highly sought after model (2006, 2dr, 6sp, low-ish miles for age, etc.) and the used car market got stupid, so I actually got a fairly decent amount of cash considering the expensive engine repairs needed.
. It had suddenly lost power, turbo wasn't building boost, and it just didn't sound right at all (a whining noise). So I carefully limped it the mile or so back to my house to investigate, and found this:
.
