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Bought my Mini (05 S w/ 127k) maybe a bit over a month ago, have only had to change the alternator and the car has been absolutely WONDERFUL. I've only really pushed her limit once, maybe twice if you count on the way home tailing an M3 at about 110 and she has taken very good care of me. And I love her. That is all.
This is my 2005 Mini Cooper S convertible. :D I got REALLY REALLY lucky this one day when I thought I'd broken something for sure due to my stupidity... I made a very bad money shift and the car survived. This was on the i80 west of Reno in Nevada. For those of you who don't know, there's two lanes in each direction, completely straight, great road quality and you can see for miles with little to nothing around you and very very little traffic. Oh yeah, and an 80 mph speed limit. I was cruising along at 95-100 mph and eventually I needed to pass a truck in front of me. I wanted to hop over into fourth gear to accelerate, but no I accidentally put it in second. As soon as I started to let the clutch out and tried to rev match the rpms jumped wayyy high. I immediately put the clutch back in and shifted into fourth. I'm still SHOCKED that nothing happened that day. It could have gone very very bad, and *knock on wood* the car hasn't had any major problems since. That's the one time I've ever money shifted and I'm praying it's the last. I apologized to my car for the rest of the trip after that. Either I got extremely lucky, or the powertrain was built tough as hell, I'm guessing it's the second one cause usually my luck isn't great. :D
Come take a ride with me on Hwy 101. I am thinking about selling my Mini on Bring a Trailer, and I made this video in preparation. I love the car, but I want to change it up.
Today, I sold my 2003 R53, after deciding I wasn't quite cut out for removing the head to fix whatever's causing the dead misfire on cylinder 2, and that it was a bit too spendy a job to have a mechanic do.
I was able to find a buyer who's planning on fixing it and putting the car back on the road, which is why it's in the 'everything was okay' thread, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't get a little misty-eyed watching the dolly roll away up the hill.
Performed a successful shakedown after swapping out the 11% JCW pulley for a Cravenspeed 17%, combined with NGK BCR8ES plugs & a Gates 6PK1368 belt. Happy days!
I'm posting here despite having to do some repairs because I feel like I caught a problem before it caused a failure. I started to notice some loss of boost at high RPM along with a burning smell, and it appears my belt has started slipping and the tensioner damper is shot. The damper is covered in oil and you can actually see the assembly bouncing at idle, so I went ahead and ordered a new tensioner assembly and idler pulley and belt. I'm running a 17% reduction pulley and upgrade crank pulley from the previous owner, and after reading up on this now my bet is this belt has failed before and took out the crank pulley! Kinda bummed the car is down for a few, but the previous owner even gave me the nice belt tool, can't wait to see if the boost surging I was seeing at high power at lower RPMs was belt slip all along....
I went out on a shakedown cruise with my Foxwell reader recording data. Fortunately, I won't need it as everything ran great! After doing a lot of work on the car since January, it's all back together and seems to be running great again!
I changed my oil today!
Bought my R53 new in '04. I've been servicing/changing my oil every 5k since after my initial dealer/warranty lease was up in 2008.
She is now @85k.
Lately, I've been unable to do much of anything for 2½ months while battling another round of Lupus.
Today coincided with my 5k oil change and coincidentally the first day in remission. I felt well enough
to climb under a car. I even had it washed!
I am very happy to say everything was OK today. Did a drain and fill on my CVT. The fluid that came out actually looked pretty good! That was a relief. It's a new to me 2003 R50 Cooper Base with 143,000 miles on it so I wasn't sure what to expect.
Drained the fluid at exactly the right temperature. Put in exactly 4.8 quarts through the top. Didn't spill a drop. A quick test drive, and I could tell the car was happy 😁
There was no shudder when accelerating from a stop or decelerating to a stop which I've been trying to solve for awhile. It may have just been coincidence, but I'm optimistic.
Hit 67,000 yesterday. Low miles for my 06 but my dad has 15,000 less than mines and it's an 05. No major issues. Oil and Trans oil change before the cold season starts, hopefully, it all goes well.
After a long and crappy day at work; Traveling on the highway, on the way home, I got the "wave" from a obviously happy owner of a 2021/2022 Lemon-lime green Mini Cooper S.
Mine is an '04 R53. It's been years since I've gotten the kindred "wave". It's so nice to encounter other Mini enthusiasts that share the same love for these cars.
In the end - It turned out to be a nice day after all!
I drove the R50 to work today and no issues. The new fuel pump a month ago stopped all the funny idle issues I was having. A lot more fun to drive now that it won't idle funny and try to die at a stop light. It also stopped the random running lean code while driving. Not as peppy as the R52 but still very fun to drive.
Either I got extremely lucky, or the powertrain was built tough as hell, I'm guessing it's the second one cause usually my luck isn't great. :D
