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So my decision came around March or April to get a Mini Cooper S. The R53's were within my budge. Looked around and test drove a few, finally in June this year I've decided on this Dark Silver R53.
Drove it home from Virginia back to NYC for about 4 hours and had quite a good time with the car.
The car was bone stock when I bought it, first parts I bought were front bumper spoiler and JCW style grile.
Then I decided to add some Chili Red bits. Had mirror caps and front bumper fog light trims painted Chili Red. Also had headlight rings painted Dark Silver.
After that, went ahead to covert pretty much most of the interior and exterior bulbs to LED
Around the same time, added Alta catback exhaust and aFe intake! Sounds great!
And after that, replaced the stock pulley with Cravenspeed 17%. Also used new one step colder plugs from NGK.
Just picked up from the shop, had the roof painted and spoiler extension installed. This is the only pic I have for now.
My future plans for the exterior:
1) Body color the wheel arches and front lip
2) LED tail lights
3) More Black Jack bits in and out
4) Stubby antenna of course lol
What do you guys think? Should I body color the wheel arches? The car looks GREAT in person with the red roof!
I'm not really too crazy about that front lip, something about it just doesn't look right. Having said that I would tint the side markers, get a stubby antenna, and leave the arches alone. Facelift headlights would be an improvement and so would the facelift taillights because the orange doesn't look good against the red roof. Then I would lower it to get rid of some of the gap. Voila!
How much did they charge you to paint the roof? That color combo looks awesome!!!! Is that spoiler extension from LEAP? The hood scoop would look good in red also. Those door handles are on my radar. Car is coming along nicely!
yes the extension is from LEAP. I already have the tinted side markers waiting to be installed along with the LED bulbs. Thanks for the comments and suggestions guys!
My car is the same color currently. I flirted with a red roof. I have had red mirrors since 2004. And added red lip wheels 4 years ago. One option still on my list is euro tailights where the center Amber circle is clear. I like it a lot better than facelift it has flair. I had euro clear taillights for about 10 years but am back to to stock taillights as I like the red contrast over all clear. I like your car. It turned out nice.
I also like the spoiler lip. Or rather, the idea of it. I think $160 is ridiculous for that, even though it looks pretty good. But for that kind of money (or close to it) there are surely other options available.
You didn't mention the wheels. They look like 18s, yes? Too tall for me, but I'd like to find the 17" version - what are they? Color? Price? I'd like to get rid of my heavy S-Lites too.
I also like the spoiler lip. Or rather, the idea of it. I think $160 is ridiculous for that, even though it looks pretty good. But for that kind of money (or close to it) there are surely other options available.
You didn't mention the wheels. They look like 18s, yes? Too tall for me, but I'd like to find the 17" version - what are they? Color? Price? I'd like to get rid of my heavy S-Lites too.
wheels are 17's on stock size tires. tires are kind of thin for these. maybe that's why they look like 18's. they are enkei m52 in hyper black
How much did they charge you to paint the roof? That color combo looks awesome!!!! Is that spoiler extension from LEAP? The hood scoop would look good in red also. Those door handles are on my radar. Car is coming along nicely!
Your car looks awesome!! Could you please answer how much it cost to paint the roof? That looks bada$$.
Car looks awesome man. What wheels are those? I have a BRG 06 Cooper S..I have been thinking about also doing red mirrors and roof. But Im also leaning towards doing a carbon fibre wrap on the roof and spoiler, and also wrapping the mirror caps and belt line carbon fibre as well.
Car looks awesome man. What wheels are those? I have a BRG 06 Cooper S..I have been thinking about also doing red mirrors and roof. But Im also leaning towards doing a carbon fibre wrap on the roof and spoiler, and also wrapping the mirror caps and belt line carbon fibre as well.
Looks awesome! Love what you did with the Chili Red accents, nice idea. Those M52's look really nice as well, thinking about those for my R53 at some point...
Don't paint the trim body color. The black really helps ground the car and would look odd without it IMO, but then again that is just my opinion.
Got some black jack bits from outmotoring, the "S" on my oem scuffles had some red color chipped off so decided to replace them and these scuffles give a better look IMO. Going to look for a pair of facelift headlights next.
looks good, ive always wanted to see that lip on a car other than the picture on ebay, I think that looks good, slight color differentiation but not too bad. black plasti dip is like a 98% match to the black trim.
one thing to note about body matching trim is that this takes a lot of hits from road debris. this winter we had a lot of sand and salt on the roads up here in NH. my tires threw a lot of it at that trim and some of the paint is missing on some areas of focus. I would hate for you to get that done and have it be ruined by dumb crap like that. luckily ill just respray it with plasti dip, I did it to my front lip.
looks good, ive always wanted to see that lip on a car other than the picture on ebay, I think that looks good, slight color differentiation but not too bad. black plasti dip is like a 98% match to the black trim.
one thing to note about body matching trim is that this takes a lot of hits from road debris. this winter we had a lot of sand and salt on the roads up here in NH. my tires threw a lot of it at that trim and some of the paint is missing on some areas of focus. I would hate for you to get that done and have it be ruined by dumb crap like that. luckily ill just respray it with plasti dip, I did it to my front lip.
black plastidip? if its 98% match to the trims i'll do that next. thanks!
