I installed my Way Motor Works 15% pulley kit today. New pulley, belt, and one step colder plugs. She runs like a scalded ape now!! Love it.

 

PowerStop (Centric) slotted rotors and PowerStop Street Sport pads installed. Cleaned up everything nicely while I was there.



Behind the wheel, they're not quite as noticeable



Here's the old brake fluid with a 1200 lumen light under it...



Totally black without light

It's been completely flushed out and replaced with Motul RBF 600



Under hood shot showing the new DDMWorks intake, coolant bottle, and NGK wires. New NGK one step colder plugs as well. Angain, plus lots of cleaning.



Here's the drivers side (Left - US) all cleaned up... Looking minty!



Here's the rear before any work has been done. As you can see, I've put a lot of elbow grease into the car thus far. It's totally fine the way it is, but I really like giving everything a good cleaning and inspection. This will be addressed tonight.



AHHHHHH The life of a Mini....

 

New shift **** Friday!

 

Brake fluid flush






Sooo gross after only 66k miles!

 

Clean fluid should be good two years. Nice to see some clean wheel wells as well.

You and Seth's threads on your cars, shows you both have put in some great work and sweat equity. Keep it going! 👍🏼

 

Cleaned up the right rear suspension and under carriage... brakes look great, staying stock for now.



Here's a bit of a before and after... left is before and right is after. The caliper is NOT painted - it's just CLEAN!



A awesome NAM member reached out to me and gave me a killer deal on the matching StopTech SS lines for my car to go with everything else. Thanks again!!



SS lines installed! ...and lines bled.

 

Very nice. Reminds me a lot of my R53 project, as well - stumbled upon it with low miles, and I've slowly been mildly modding it as well as rehabbing it.

 

I got the brakes bled out and bedded in. They seem to work well and I'm happy with the new setup!

 

I've been messing with my stereo as well. I have the custom installed JBL MS-8 setup and it's working pretty well. I picked up some JBL component speakers to try out, but I'm honestly not sure I'm going to install them. The factory HK's still sound pretty good - I'm not sure it's worth the money to do it.

I have to say though, I picked up the Metra 82-9302 adapter kit and the JBL GX600c series speakers and if you have something blown - it would be a NICE stock replacement. With the adapters the new 6.5" speakers are literally bolt in, super easy. Not sure how easy the tweeters will be though... I'm considering putting them in anyway since my speakers are ~12 years old.





Speaker on the left is the stock HK. I measured it at about 5.25". The JBL GX600C is on the right and it measured at about 6". They're both considered 6.5" speakers. I just wonder if the bigger speaker will sound better. I also havent' tried out the tweeters to see if there is a difference in SQ there.

 

I like this wheel website: http://minicooper.wikia.com/wiki/OEM_Wheels_and_Tires

What is considered the best performance bang for the buck on Mini OEM wheels? I have R-84 X-Lites now and I have to say, I REALLY like them. I just want a wider tire and some wheel spacers. Maybe 10mm??

 

I think the wheels you have are the best OEM wheels, I've had a set of them for 14 years and they're super light. For performance, I haven't tried this, but I'd put a low profile tire on it, like a 45 or 40 sidewall. The ride comfort will suffer slightly, but you'll get noticeably less sidewall flex.

I also have a set of the R-85 s-lites and I love the handling of them, but at 25lbs per wheel they're noticeably heavier.

My current setup is summer performance tires on my 17 inch R-85 wheels and snow tires in the oem 195/55 on my 16 inch R-84 wheels. When I no longer need snow tires, I might try and put some bridgestone RE-71's on my 16 inch wheels for fun days .

I think you should be fine to run a 10mm spacer with the OEM wheels, and probably can run a little wider, but I'm not sure how wide. I've run a 205 width on X-lites with no problems.

 

I just picked up some 15mm spacers for the R-84's. I really hope they're not too much. I will also eventually swap out the 195/55's for 205/50's, but I don't think I want to go any smaller on the sidewall - the car rides pretty nice actually and I don't want a track car for the street.

I really like the BBS R90's as well.

 

the more sidewall the better they ride on the street, I HATE my 17" wheels they are so rough, 15" & 16" ride so much better

 

Yeah, that's why I'll do the 205/50's. That'll be about the same size overall as the 195/55 - just wider.

 

The 15" Hollies are the lightest factory wheel at 12 pounds. They are 5.5" wide though. You could go 205/50-15 maybe even a 225/50-15 with no issues of rubbing anything.

 

I decided to replace my factory HK front speakers with something that can handle a little more power and sound a bit better than 12 year old speakers. I chose the JBL GX600C's. They're 2 ohm which will give me the most power out of my MS-8. Here they are compared to my stock speakers. They're about 1/2" larger and have more rubber surround. Should be good for some mid-bass. I used the Metra adapters to install them which worked great. While I was in the doors I added a little bit of SecondSkin Damplifier Pro to help prevent vibrations.



Deadened and foamed



Speakers mounted!



Ready to put the door panel back on



The tweeters were tricky to mount, but I made some backing plates for the stock mounts and siliconed the tweeters in.



I have an email in to JBL to figure out what I should use as a cover point for these new speakers since I'm running them active with no Passover crossover. The JBL MS-8 takes care of the crossover points.

 

I installed a set of 15mm WMW spacers with longer bolts this weekend. Before:



After:



Front, top down - before:



After:



Here are the spacers I have along with the longer bolts. I'm very happy with how it turned out!

 

I e-mailed JBL about what the crossover point should be for my GX600C's and here's the response I got:

" The range for the tweeter is around 2.5kHz - 21kHz. You can set it to 3kHz and adjust from there to see what suits your taste better."

I initially set it to 4.6kHz as seen above, so I guess I'll pull it down and see how it sounds. It's really cool that I can control all of these settings now with the MS-8!

 

Do you notice any difference in the handling with the spacers?

 

No - They're just a hair over .5" thick - I really can't image any real difference. Especially on a street car.

 

Loving the progress so far. I need to move all my pics to google drive as well. Next I want to get a set of the same wheels you have. Currently I have 17" wheels that are fairly light but the ride is not a forgiving.

 

duplicate

 

Great looking work.

 

I drove the Mini to work today and I have to say - this is a great car! (I've probably just jinx'd myself into somthing breaking now)...

I just need to fix my headliner. Since I don't have a sunroof - the headliner is huge and it sags way down now that it's all come unglued.

My headliner material is clean - can I just remove and reglue or should I replace it? Do you guys know what color it is and where to get the factory color material?

 

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