I picked up this 2012 Cooper S at a local dealer; the car only had 65k miles on it, but it really lacked routine maintenance. When I first saw it on Craigslist, the dealer was asking $8500.00; a few weeks later the price dropped to $5900.00, so I decided to go look it over. After connecting the Foxwell scan tool, and looking under the hood, I offered them $1000.00. Their counter offer was $3000.00 out the door. So I drove it home, and queued the music.... This is my first Gen 2 Cooper S, and I really like it! I've got 2k miles on it since the restoration; she's running great! Was surprised that the best highway mileage I could squeeze out of it was 32 MPG; we're getting 29-30 in mixed driving. Fuel trims are perfect! See the video description for the restoration parts list.

 

Nice! Glad to see a Mini saved from the auction / boneyard circuit! Your journey is similar to mine in a lot of ways, but you end up with more horsepower. ;-) I picked up a Craigslist 2013 base model / 6 speed with a fried clutch and lots of neglect for $900, and am renovating it and will do a similar (though longer...) video of the process / journey. Great little car that just needed a lot of love to get back to its intended status!

 

Yea ... this one makes up for the '09 Justa project that ended up with a complete engine rebuild, all new valves and valve seats, and a lot of other new parts only to have the automatic transmission fail.

 

Ouch. Some days you're the bug - other days, you're the windshield...

My project Mini is coming along nicely, though the car would have been a horrible choice for a flip, given the dozens of things I had to do to restore it to reasonably good condition. But in the end it's well worth it, as a nice R56 has been saved from being a parts car, and I'll have a very solid around-town fun car for chump change! The video is going to run over an hour, even though I seriously truncated all the actual work... yikes!

 

Update on Jack: The car has lots of Union Jack flags all over the interior/exterior, so we named him Jack.

I purchased the AEM air induction system from WMW and the M7 intake (air filter to turbo inlet) hose from ECS Tuning. I installed the M7 intake hose 1 week after the AEM system. After installing the AEM system the car was up 2.2 MPG (same driving conditions), and after installing the M7 intake hose I was up another 1.7 mpg. Last mpg check I observed 34.4 mpg in mixed driving. LTFT went high negative after installing the M7 part, but deleting the A/F adaptations did the trick. STFT/LTFT numbers look good again. This is the first car I've owned where my actual gas mileage is more than the lie-O-meter.



After removing the plastic factory turbo inlet hose, I notice that the PCV heater fitting that's plastic welded into the pipe really juts into the airstream ... that's not good for airflow/air density!