My first Mini.....2002 MC auto tranny. It has 74,000 mi. Dealer replaced battery, brakes. What else do I need to look for as far as possible problems? The midland??? Not sure if its the standard they talk about or the auto like mine? Also, why do we need to run high test gas in these? What simple mods can I do to give the non-S model a little more HP? I want to replace the stock white wheels with these......maybe. The dealer also said run synthetic oil in the Mini.....
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/18-XX...em280226035927

 

Welcome!

If you have the automatic tranny....it's not a midland, it's the CVT transmission. The midlands is the 5-speed manual transmission in the early models.

Some nice mods for a cooper are an intake and exhaust....they give a little bit more pep and make the car sound great.

 

So the auto trannys are reliable?

 

Not really....people have had problems with the CVT and because of its complex nature, most tranny shops and the dealer refuse to re-build them...so they want to just replace it with a new CVT transmission. I wouldn't go as far as to say that the CVT is un-reliable....but it does have its own weaknesses.

MINI2.com has a full area devoted to the CVT: http://www.mini2.com/forum/cvt-automatic/

And here is a thread devoted to the DVT failures that are worth a read if you're curious about the transmission's reliability. People chime in with how well their tranny has held up.
http://www.mini2.com/forum/cvt-autom...n-failure.html

 

Would one assume...at 74,000 most of the "bugs" had been worked out of the car? I guess like anything, you never know, but I know some makes and models seem to have things go wrong with them at certain miliage numbers. As a new/used Mini owner, I wonder if the same applies to these little cars? The good thing is the dealer give a 6th month 7500 mile warrenty on all his vehicles, so I'm good to go for a while.