I did something similar on my S80 (which has been sold 2 weeks ago). Bought a Aliexpress rubber lip which worked out well in the end

 

They definitely look good sitting still! How stiff was that rubber? This stuff I got is more of a foam than rubber. I'm still putting it on but idk if it'll last. Especially on these secondary NC roads.

 

Well the lip is on. I'll post a pic of the seal and double sided tape i used. I got them from Home Depot. I bought 2 rolls (60" long) of tape because I didn't know how much I'd need. One roll was more than enough. The link of the instructional I posted above seemed to imply you may not need screws and the tape may be enough. There is no way in hell the tape would hold it by itself. I don't even know if its worth buying the tape honestly. It does make it easy to hold the lip in place while you put the screws in though.


Door seal and double sided tape



Heres the finished product



Another angle

 

Mine was also more "foamish' than stiff rubber. I used these clips as the double sided tape I used didnt last very long. I dont think these clips would work for the Mini as the bumper design is different

 

I put a dozen or more zip screws in mine. They had decent sized built in washers and seem to hold well. I've had it up to 70 on the highway and it looked the same after as it did before. I need to borrow a go pro so I can see what it does at speed. I'm very curious. Seems too soft to not flex a lot. I think it'd make a great seal/air dam to go between the bumper and a splitter.

 

Well the lip didn't last long :-/ ripped the entire center off pulling into the hotel parking lot over the weekend. It pulled through the screws. I may put it back on with washers but for now I just pulled it off.

Started the timing job last night. It'd be a whole lot easier if i had a friend with itty bitty hands lol. Everything is so crammed together in that area! Not real difficult, just annoying. I decided to do a little extra maintenance while I was in there so almost 5 hours in and I'm waiting for the parts store to open with probably another 2+ hours to go. At this rate it'll end up taking longer than the full timing service I did on a 3 valve 5.4 last year!

I'll include a picture of that mess for comparison so you can see how much fun I'm having.



OK so I replaced the core support too. It was still less frustrating 😂😂

 

I went with All Fit Automotive Mid Lip and it has held up great for many years! I also used to drive the **** out of my RaceR50. Lol. The material is durable solid rubber, kit comes with double sided tape, screws and plastic washers. Very nice design.
https://allfitautomotive.com/product/all-fit-lip-kit/

 

The mini truck has a new timing chain, guides, tensioner (and associated gaskets), harmonic balancer, belt, and fresh oil and filter. Fired right up on the first try and purred like a kitten. It hasn't sounded that good in a while. I went with a Melling timing set. I've always had good luck with melling parts, all 3 of my Fords have melling oil pumps. The guide rail that was in it was broken on the bottom. I found 2 pieces that had snapped off. The chain was also slightly stretched.

 

Driving home from NY in a crazy heavy rain storm Tuesday night and the car hydroplained 3 different times, 1 of which was super sketchy. I guess thats it for my $36 walmart tires. 52k miles ain't bad imo. But you can't get them any more. Or at least I can't find them. I ordered a set of Falkens today. Still cheap tires but a step up from what I have been running. This car came with 195/55-16's. The first wheel tire combo was a set of 15x8 with 205/60-15 tires. The wheels were heavy and had too much offset and they rubbed pretty bad. The little na motor seemed to struggle getting them turning too. Went down to a 15x6.5 (11 lb wheel) with 195/50-15 tire. The rpm is pretty high on the highway and I travel a LOT. Decided to go back to a stock tire diameter. The 50 series tires are pretty harsh on bumps with the Tein springs so I'm hoping to get a little cushion back out of these tires. The 195/50's also look too small. I'll post up some pics when I get them mounted.

 

I've had enough of my noisy exhaust. I'm ditching my eBay muffler, even though the carbon fiber tip adds a dyno proven 12 BHP :-p, I ordered a Megan. I've read they can be louder than some of the other exhaust but it cant be as bad as the crap that's on it now and the price is right.

 

Dude, I would recommend to add some sound proofing to the car first, but as you already ordered another one, keep it in mind for now. It reduced my drone drastically (say 80% less)

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...ml#post4581688

 

Good advice but it isn't just the volume its also the tone. And the muffler that is currently on there has a baffle in the end that not only leaks and makes an air whistling sound, but also reduces the outlet diameter to 1.5" (38mm)!!!
I had half a mind to add a large resonator behind the cat but that also adds weight...and doesn't address the outlet diameter problem. Unless of course the resonator quieted it down enough to not need the baffle. I'll probably never know lol.

 

I got a chance to put the new muffler on today. Its a center in, center out Megan stainless universal. I wanted the offset version with a tip but it was out of stock everywhere I looked except 1 ebay seller that wanted $800 for it 🤯. I ordered a long stainless 45 but in hindsight I should have gotten a short radius 90 also. I pie cut it since I didn't have a 90. I've never tried that before. It came out ok but I used a flux core welder so it looks pretty messy. No leaks though.
It sounds SOOOO much better. That little fart can thing I've been running sounded so bad. And it got worse the more I drove it. It was honestly kind of embarrassing. Live and learn. And hopefully other people will read this and learn from my mistake lol.

On to the pictures!


Shiny



Working out the bends.



All done.



Its a little crooked but thats from the muffler bracket pushing the whole assembly to the right. I can fix that easy enough but i ran out of time so thats a job for another day.

 

Nice! Good that you were able to solve the main problem (the sound). I wish I could weld though haha Maybe something for later...

 

I wish I would not be so cheap sometimes and just bought an actual cat back lol. See links below. ECS has the Megan R50 resonated cat back for $418 with free shipping, Vivid has it for $367.84 + $58.80 shipping.


https://www.ecstuning.com/b-megan-ra...cbsmc02ns~mgr/

https://www.vividracing.com/-p-71206.html

Mine only cost me about $250 though. I don't count the time I spent doing it because I enjoy it. The fit and finish of the purchased product is better compared to the home brew stuff too (at least in my case).
Oh well. I had fun so that's worth something.

 

Also, you gained some experience

 

I have some interesting information to post on the Megan exhaust...the real exhaust, not the home brew **** on my car. I put that Megan exhaust in the cart on Vivid Racing so I could enter my address to get a shipping quote, then I deleted it and left the website. My computer had the option to auto enter ALL my info with one click so I took advantage of that little time saver rather than manually entering the minimum to get a quote. ANYWAY, after leaving the site, I get the following email:



Hey Jeremy,

This is Adam, Online Manager at Vivid Racing. I noticed your checkout was not completed. If you meant to cancel this order please let me know and I will back it out. A quick reason why you did not complete the order would be very helpful to me as well. If we can further assist you on pricing, shipping, or anything else, let us know.

Sincerely,

Adam
Online Manager
1.480.966.3040 x3
Vivid Racing
[//www.vividracing.com]www.vividracing.com


P.S. I put your cart contents below to remind you! If the shipping is to expensive, just use this code for FREE Shipping -



I didn't copy and paste the code he sent but if anyone is in the market for that exhaust, it looks like they will cut you a deal if you reach out to them.
Just thought I'd share.

 

The problem with driving 40k+ miles a year is the rate at which parts wear out. My right side CV shaft gave up the ghost yesterday. Not a catastrophic failure, just a ton of vibration. I've noticed a slight vibration ascending hills the last week or so but wasn't sure what was causing it. No mistaking it now. The new one is scheduled for delivery tomorrow. I've read a lot about axle problems with lowered Minis but I thought that was more of a coilover issue with LOTS of drop. I'm only down 1 inch. Anyone have thoughts or experiences on that they'd like to share?? Its possible my tiny tires are contributing too, gotta spin the wheels faster to maintain any given speed.

I also ordered a bigger resonator. I have a 10" on it now, going up to an 24". While I love the sound of the Megan outside the car and inside on the throttle, it drones a lot at steady highway speed. If this don't fix it I'll probably just give up and drop the coin on a real catback. I will say about this exhaust though that ditching that 1.5" baffle for the full 2.5" makes a huge difference in performance. 1st and second gear are actually short now. I didn't realize how much that baffle was hurting performance!

And lastly, NC roads are stupid dirty. Pretty sure its from all the log trucks dragging mud all over the roads I drive everyday. And its hard to keep the Uni filter on my shielded DIY HAI clean. So. Since I have a custom battery box and a Braille battery with a bit of extra room under the hood, I ordered a knockoff BMC CDA and I'm going to pull fresh cool air from the cowl. I'll loose a little to restriction but I'm hoping that the ambient air and (hopefully) cleaner filter will make up for it.

 

I was under the impression that most of the axle vibration issues after moderate lowering was due to the axles already being worn at the previous ride height. After lowering, the joint “tram-lines” in an out of the worn spot causing the vibrations. New axles should eliminate this if the drop isn’t too big.

That being said, I don’t know how many miles it takes to wear a groove into the joints. I lowered my ‘05 about 1.25 to 1.5 inches at 37K (52K now) and don’t have any vibrations.

 

Well this car was over 100,000 before I lowered it. Its close to 140,000 now. Thats also the same side that took a really nasty pot hole bad enough to bend a brand new Konig helium. Weather that was also a contributor I'll probably never know.
If it starts tearing up cv shafts its going back to stock height. I drive WAY too much to be replacing them on the regular

 

Found this little gem online this morning. It got me to thinking though, ITBS are sweet. GSXR's are fuel injected with individual throttle bodies, as in you can separate them and space them as needed. They come in 600cc, 750cc, and 1000cc. I'm guessing you'd match the size to your target HP? So maybe 600/750 on an R50? It wouldn't be that hard with the exception of the drive by wire throttle. I wonder how hard it would be to dismantle a stock TB and hook the linkage to it. That way you could retain all the factory pedal/sensors. Thinking out loud here but sounds like great fun...

Edit: That is a Mini Cooper 2002-2006 ITB. It cost over $1500

 

The new cv axle came in so I started swapping it out. I say started because the output shaft seal is leaking so I had to order a new one. The swap is pretty easy.
Remove the wheel,
remove the axle nut,
pop the lower balljoint off,
pull the axle out of the wheel hub,
I have a skid plate so removing it is an extra step most people probably won't have to do,
then I pulled the lower engine mount and bracket,
remove the carrier bearing bolts,
and pull out the axle.
Easy peasy. When I pulled the axle half the gear case oil spilled on the floor. Wasn't expecting that much to come out so it made a mess. It was due for a change anyway so that's OK. I removed the ps cooler fan too so I had better access to replace the seal.

Here's the cause of the vibration:



You can see the groove worn in the lower channel. The other 2 have no visible damage.



You can see the bad bearing here, its the rusty one lol.

 

While I had the car on jackstands I was looking at the exhaust. I ordered a 24" resonator because it was still too loud. It also started droning pretty bad which I didn't remember it doing so bad initially. One of the bolts had loosened up and a gasket blew. I built a muffler hanger from scratch and installed the resonator. The hanger allowed me to tuck the muffler up in a lot higher and also centered it. Looks much better now. No clue how it sounds yet, got plans with the family so won't be finishing the axle til morning.

 

Ok so I added this giant resonator and the droning is actually worse! I just can't with these dam 4 cylinders. I've never really messed around with exhaust on anything but v8's, their a lot easier to make sound good. There must be some magic trick to tuning the exhaust on a 4 cylinder. I'm sure i don't know what it is though. My options are take Andy's advise and try some sound proofing in the hatch or call the $250+ I have in this system a loss and order a real cat back.

On the bright side the axle/seal replacement was a success. So at least that panned out how I was hoping it would.

 

Hmm thats weird. Would not have expected that. If I look at the R53 JCW exhaust, it also has a center resonator but its not an "expansion" type so to speak but actually has damper material in it (absorbtion type). My Gravity Performance exhaust also has this expansion type resonator. I think it probably accentuates the sound instead of making it less loud.

The JCW system was pretty mild and had 0 drone, in the end I shouldve just kept that haha