Just picked this up - only had 5200 miles on it - orig owner bought it at SEMA couple yrs ago and didn't drive it much.
Thinking about removing the CooperS decals on the side (but keeping AC Schnitzer decals) and also have plans to black out the chrome headlight rings, door handles and the grill surrounds. Only thing is - I don't want to remove the entire bumper, so I may just remove the upper part of the grill and paint that portion of the surround black. Also either gonna paint the cowl scoop black or just upgrade it to a larger Palo Uber scoop in black or CF. Tell me what you think

 

It takes only about 5 minutes to remove the front bumper. Go ahead and do it the way you want it.

 

is there a DIY for both the bumper removal and removing the grill surrounds on the bumper?

what about the headlight surrounds - I pulled the headlights out the other day and started to remove the surrounds, but it seemed like the tabs were too easy to break

 

The tabs that hold the headlight rings on are pretty fragile and can break. Use a small flat head srew driver, wedge it in between the tab and the lens at an angle, and carefully twist. If it doesn't pop, work on another. Just work on the three smaller tabs, once those are free, then you can slide the ring down to free the other tabs.

For the lower grille, it is held on by a number of tabs and some glue. Remove the glue, and then pop each tab out. It helps to us a flat head screw driver of some sort. The top grill is held in by tabs as well, minus the glue.

Hope this helps!

Lyle

-Vinyl Styles

 

The red wheels aren't really my thing, but it looks like you picked up a pretty cool car overall. And a good starting point for sure

 

I completely agree - I'm not a huge fan of red wheels either. In fact, I hate colored wheels with a machined lip. I bought some black wheel decals for the lip, like those used on sport bikes - but didn't like how it looked. Eventually, the wheels will be powdercoated black, or I'll just upgrade to a different wheel altogether.

thanx for the input

Lyle - thanx for the info on removing the surrounds - if paint doesnt work out, I'll be hitting up your website for vinyl - btw, is true that the door handles are the worst thing in the world to remove?

 

that car has some serious potential. It just needs to be less busy.

If it were my car i'd peal the stripes, roof graphics, side graphics and go with red mirror caps. Then maybe paint the center kidney area of the bumper black.

edit: eh after looking at this pick... maybe not on the kidney grill... but those wheels are awesome red or not.

 

Looks like someone wishes MINI was owned by Audi instead of BMW. . .

 

Yucca - that's a good point - I've definitely thought that the ACS grill gives the MCS an Audi kind of feel. But one thing is for sure - it makes the car look very aggressive! I think if the grill surrounds were also black in that picture then it would look really good - but then again, I'm not much of a chrome fanatic. My GF thinks i'd decorate the inside of a house with CF if it was available

Minimusprime - I agree - this is the busiest car i've owned - previous car was an Imola Red 330ci zhp coupe. Car before that was a black Porsche 987. The MCS by far get's more looks, comments and conversation - one girl at a Starbucks drive through asked if it was a special edition and then said it looked like something outta japanese anime

I'm 85% certain the side decals are coming off. I change my mind daily about the bonnet stripes, although once the grill & headlight surrounds and scoop are updated, this may be an easier decision. Red or CF mirrors would be cool. The top decal - I don't know - it's different, unique - but a CF decal might be pretty hot! Plain white roof tho is tooooooooooo normal for me!

 

Actually - is there anyone who could photoshop it minus the side decal, bonnet strips and black out the grill, grill and headlight surrounds and maybe black out the wheels?

 

Mach,

I agree that somthing needs to give. It is very busy, but that is what you expect from a car that was made to be shown at SEMA.

I'm looking again and think that if you removed the side decals and replaced the checkerboard mirrors with white/red/black, it would make a very significant difference and the rest of the over the top stuff would not seem so busy. IT seems that the theme of the car is red and white and the checkers just seem like they were added at the end of the process.

I'd love to see a photo showing the roof. I think that graphic probably looks great.

 

I'll shoot a pix of the roof later today and upload it - it is a really cool graphic - I haven't seen another Mini with it.

 

Yucca, here ya go:
https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...6&d=1196290580
https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...7&d=1196290580