I've always loved the Mini, but honestly never gave them consideration due to assumed affordability. I had my first ride in one a few years back when we visited my mother in law (she was leasing a 2012 Clubman S at the time).

Fast forward quite a while and we've since relocated to FL from WA and I need to get out from under a truck that is wearing out and I'm longing for something a bit more fun to drive to work.

After some searching, haggling, and crunching numbers...I found this.

(Day I drove it home from the dealership)





It's got leather, heated seats, panoramic roof, Sport package, Mini connect, Harmon Kardon audio, all the nifty lighting effects...and I'm sure I'm missing something...

It's also got some upgrades installed, bilstien coilovers (I believe they are the *edit* B16 pss9/10 kit) K&N Typhoon intake, Brola catback (at least that's all I can see so far), some kind of camber plates, Alta rear lower arms, Turbo heat shield, and a Moroso oil/air separator.

My plans are to start taking the chrome bits and converting to a matte black, as well as the roof and the mirrors. I think the Spice Orange will look awesome with matte black trim everywhere and black wheels. Honestly I don't need the ride as low as it is so I'll get to adjusting the coilovers at some point, and for power...well it's good for a while...lol

I'm two days into owning this thing and I love the hell out of it

Onto the PICS!!









Pics of some the upgrades as best I can get in case someone knows something more about them than I have found searching the Googles.

 

Nice, hope you got a good price. My wife has a 2012 MCS, has been pretty solid, some minor warranty work done over the years. Just keep up with maintenance, they need it..

 

I think I got a good deal, $11,800 when book value with the stock options is $15,500. Let alone all the aftermarket stuffs.

It was just reduced when I inquired about it, I imagine in this area with all of the "older" drivers it was to stiff, to difficult to drive (manual turbo), and was just out of warranty so it scared folks off...

I've owned Audi, VW, and many other brands...I've done all my work and don't plan to stop now.

 

Sounds like a good deal to me, how many miles? We have 50k on ours, bought a year old at 16k ($24k out the door). Besides the warranty work, 5k oil changes, replaced battery, replaced rear brakes, front brakes will be done soon.

 

54K miles and seems to run quite well

 

So it would seem I have a bit of a vibration when accelerating, nothing crazy but it's there, and happens in any gear when you get into the go pedal.

I noticed it a bit when I test drove the car and only slightly. Honestly I didn't get some WOT pulls until recently where it's most noticeable. I have a 30 day 1000 mile "warranty" so I'll be calling the dealer to see if they'll take care of it. From the looking if done online I believe it is the axles (most likely the left side) with motor mounts coming in a close second.

If not, we'll go from there.

 

Just remember, for most owners the adds-ons are a deduct, not a plus. I'd say you got a good buy, but many customers would have deducted a couple thousand from the retail price because of the mods. Many people screw a car up with stuff like that and the only fix is to take off he mods and return to stock. You seem to be able to DIY so it's manageable for you.

 

Just found out today that the car was part of the CPO program, and the warranty expires 09/16/2017 (or 100K)!!

I transferred everything to my name this morning :-)

So now I've got time to get to know the car and have things be a bit more "stress free" while I learn it's quirks.

 

As much as I agree with you on this the one caveat is the quality of parts used.

If I took a look at this car to find Racelands, PVC intake, and straight pipe exhaust I would have walked away. But the fact that the person before me used quality parts and had them installed at the dealership made all the difference for me in terms of "value"

I've had my fare share of cars that have taken more work to undo the "upgrades" from previous owners, so far...this isn't one of them. I want to adjust some of their choices (ride height, camber, colors) but all in all I'm quite happy with what's been done.

 

Needed to go over to my mother in laws house to help load their truck for some hurricane prep supplies they're taking to their Daytona house tonight.

I figured I'd snap a few pictures of her R60 compared to my R56. Obviously it's bigger, and a bit chubby in the lines. However, what I really like is that the "spirit" of the Mini Cooper is still there. It's quirky, it still handles better than anything else in it's class, and it is fun to drive (by her standards at least)











Also parked next to my coworker's GTI...now I've always thought the GTI was a small car...but compared to my Mini it's a cavernous wagon!

 

So the dealership has an appointment for me next week to check out the vibration, so good on them.

We'll see if they truly honor their warranty and fix whatever the issue is.

 

So after a second look at my cars suspension I believe I was wrong with my original assessment.

I've got two types of adjustable dials going on, the rears are a ring at the bottom around the tube, and the fronts are a dial at the bottom of the tube.

This leads me to belive I have the B16 pss (9/10). I'll need to clean them up and count the available settings to be sure but that is an awesome upgrade :-)

 

If anyone taking a look at this thread has some spanners for my Bilstein Coilovers I can use for a bit I'd really appreciate it.

I posted in the second gen hatch section about it as well.

 

These are definitely pss10. 9's were never made for this car. From looking at your pictures you are probably close to the max adjustment height. Ill have to find some pictures of my set up, but im at max height and it looks similar to your car.

 

I don't get it, how am I close to max height when the nuts are sitting at the middle of the threads?

Why put the option for the height if you can't use it, preload for the springs in that application?

 

btw - I appreciate your input

 

i believe the option is there for if you want to use different springs. A lot of people change out the spring rates and there is enough damper adjustment to cover some spring rate changes.

Instructions here: http://cart.bilsteinus.com/pdfs/E4-WM4-Y618A00.pdf

Edit: your camber plates may have an effect on preload aslo, if they changed the top mount stack height.

 

I appreciate the link, however, this one is in I believe German. There is some English about the dampener settings so that's cool.

I'll look for some English instructions and go over them.

 

Scroll to page 17 for spring preload range. You wont find another set of instructions.

 

I noticed that, however, there is nothing to explain the adjustment in a language I can understand.

Thank you for your help.

 

So after our back and forth chat over the last couple days across two threads I decided to take a closer look at the coilovers and clean up the damper s a bit so I could see what they were set at currently.

Come to find out they are sitting in the top third of the threads (so not much thread left for height) and were set to the 9 and 8 (f/r) stiffness settings on the dampers no wonder they were stiff as hell.

I tried them at a 4 and 3 (f/r) which was loads better, but in the end I just set them both to their softest setting (1) all around and it's so so so so so much better to drive on the rough roads around here

Basically big bumps are still rough, but the normal stuff is a walk in the park.

ONTO THE PICS!!!

Just doing MINI things here in the driveway





Better shots of the coilovers





"Make sure that's torqued right dad...two ugga duggas"



Yay for adjustable dampers!!





He's my personal trainer too :-)

 

Drive into work was so much better this morning...lol

I'm noticing "at speed" it's a bit more stable as well, the car used to get a little squirrely when hitting bumps at a higher rate of speed.

 

So as anyone that has read this thread knows I purchased my car used, however what you don't know is that I purchased it from Subaru dealership which is part of an auto group in Tampa FL called "Reeves" who have BWM, Audi, Subaru, Nissan, and I think a couple others under their umbrella.

They offer a used warranty on all their cars that spans 30 days or 1000 miles for "engine/drive system issues" as it was explained to me.

As it turns out, that vibration I was feeling is worn axle shafts on both sides of the car. I found this out by taking the car in, having my appointment changed while I was there, showing up for the new appointment (this past Monday the 24th), and letting the car sit at their dealership for a week...

During that week I had to deal with my car going from Subaru, to BMW, then Subaru figured out the car had some CPO warranty left so they sent it right off to Mini of Wesley Chapel, and then back to Subaru. I had to deal with the internal bickering of the used car department and the service department over what was going to be covered and who was responsible.

Basically Mini of Wesley Chapel wouldn't touch the axles due to the coilovers (which I get, as for them that falls under their CPO limitations with the modifications). Somehow that gave Reeves reason to think they didn't have to touch it either...even though they sold the car to me with said parts installed and said issue (which I should have caught before the paperwork was signed). On top of that when my car spent a brief stint at Reeves BWM their service department there said that the issue was something that Subaru should have fixed before the car was sold as part of their standard inspection. So they fought me on it, and I fought back, first they weren't going to touch it (that took a couple days). Then they would only do half the work if I paid for the other half (300 bucks on my part and that also took a couple days). Now finally, a week later (as of Friday the 28th) they are owning up to the repair and will fix it completely at no cost to me.

Thankfully I was in the hospital most of this week with my wife as she was giving birth to our second child so I had the time to let this play out, and now I'm on maternity leave anyhow so having the car back asap isn't really an issue. At this point I should have it back next week :-)

Moral of the story here is this, test drive the car like you stole it...

 

Well the car was washed, vacuumed, and delivered to my door yesterday evening.

No more heavy vibration so that's fixed. Car drives a bit better all around and through corners the power is "smoother"

All in all a win win :-)

 

Aaaaaand now we're back in the shop.

On our drive home Saturday night as I was pulling onto the freeway all of a sudden the car began to stumble, buck a little, then bog down. Immediatly the check engine light came on and I got a warning message across the nav screen that said *Engine Malfunction Reduced Power*

We have an appointment tomorrow morning to drop off the car for a diagnosis.