I live in a more rural town, and dust is currently my biggest enemy. I can wash my car and by the time I get home there is a thin layer of dust on the boot to the point if I wipe my finger across it I see a noticeable streak in the dust. So I am just curious, how drastic (if any) of mod(s) are required to alter the airflow enough to keep the boot cleaner? A bit discouraging to spend hours to wash/polish/wax and not have it even last a day much less a week or so.

Do more aggressive spoilers help? diffuser tunnels? front and/or side splitters?

Aerodynamics wise, it is currently just a stock r53 with 17" wheels, but my next steps for some more serious personalization might lead with some airflow mods if anything is helpful.

Hell, at this point I'm even open to any suggestions of some miracle wax/sprays that might give me an extra day or 2 of a cleaner looking boot.

 

"Dirty butt syndrome" has been a problem from the beginning on mini's....
Some very entertaining threads....
One tip..be sure to use the rear wash function regularly....the dirt will cake and clog the nozel, then corrode blocking it if you don't.

 

You could move someplace with less dust, but then there's pollen, rain, snow, birds, bugs, and everything else that screws up your hard work. Last week I washed my car three times in the driveway, the last time lasted one day before it rained. My neighbors and wife think I'm nuts, but it's a harmless kind of nuts.

 

from what I understand the rear mud flaps help. I haven't personally tried this yet, I was planning on getting some for the winter. but it got too damn cold too fast for me to want to sit out there and try

 

The MINI boot dust is legendary. I have a MINI and two Miatas, and historically cover all my vehicles religiously wherever I go. I'm in a relatively clean and dry place in CA, and rarely even have to wash the Miatas. I can't even get my clean MINI from the garage to wherever I'm going without the boot getting dirty enough that putting a cover on it would do more harm than good. It's painful, but that's the way it is.

 

A california duster is your solution. $12-$15 dollars at Walmart.

 

Some sort of air diverter would probably be the answer. The thing with a hatchback is that air will form a bubble behind the back and dust will be picked up, throwing it at the boot. School buses and various other vehicles with a fairly square booty have the same problem. I've seen a few school buses with a diverter on top (looks like a spoiler) to push the air down and keep the back clean.

It would probably requires a bit of trial and error, or a wind tunnel. :p

 

The "dirty butt syndrome" is probably the #1 thing that bugs me about my MINIs. As previously mentioned, it's common on any squared off vehicle. From casual observation, it seems to me the MINI's suffer more than most. Over the course of my life, I've owned several station wagons, Jeeps and SUV's, so I've got plenty of experience to base it off of.

Back in the 1960's and 1970's, air diverters, either across the back of the car or mounted to the aft pillars, were popular options on many station wagons and sometimes even part of the car's design. Chrysler Town & Country and the Dodge/Plymouth variants of the 70's had a pretty slick design incorporated into the back of the roof (or 'hood' for British terms).


My parents bought a new 1967 Chevy Bel Air station wagon when I was a kid and it had the optional rear window deflector. As a little kid, I always called it a spoiler - after all, it had a strong resemblance to the spoilers that were showing up on the muscle cars of the day.


An air diverter to keep the back of the car clean (or at least the rear window) seems to make more sense to me than a spoiler to add down force to the rear wheels of a front wheel drive car and I would gladly trade the spoiler for such a device!

 

Every one seems to think it's a 'MINI' thing. It's not. It's a hatch back thing. The perpendicular, flat surface in the back forms a vacuum. Have you ever seen a bicyclist trying to set a land speed record? They always ride behind a vehicle carrying a large perpendicular wall similar to a 4'x8' sheet of plywood. That's because it forms a vacuum that allows the bicyclist to go faster than he could did he not have the extra assistance. Any 'flat back' hatch back will do the same. A rear spoiler directing air in a downward direction might possibly help.

 

I use a leaf blower sometimes instead of washing all the time, and
a California Duster helps also.

 

Aerodynamics. Here's a teaching aid chart about aerodynamics I kept in my log book in case there was something about it I may have forgotten.

 

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