My Mini had lost its rally lights before the PO bought it, but still had the switch inside and the wiring which he had tucked up under the bonnet blanket. He said he had replaced the aero grill with a new one and didn't want to cut slots in it or spend the $350 for the rally lights. I had a set of little black driving lights I had previously picked up somewhere that could be bolted through the grill without any cutting, so I installed them and used the original wiring. They are not traditional, but I am OK with the look.





And what it your yellow baby? You have an interesting collection there.

 

I am guessing my white lights were not factory installed because the rear fog lights did not work. The rear fog light toggle switch lights up yellow on the tip with the running lights on, but the rear tail light upper parts did not come on in any of the front fog, running light, or headlight combinations. I removed the fog LED and checked it with a 12V source and it lit up fine. I cleaned the contacts in the fog position with emery cloth and cleaned the main connector with contact cleaner, and the rear fog lights still did not light up with the switch on. I checked the voltage at the fog lamp center contact and it was only 5.2 volts. Folks on the mini forum said the rear fog circuit(s) come directly from the General Module Control Unit behind the right side passenger panel with no fuse or relay in the circuit. I took the left side lamp holder inside and measured 0 ohms between the main connector rear fog pin and the fog center contact, and applying 12V to the pin with the lamp in place lit the lamp brightly. So… why are the fog lamps getting just 5 volts? I checked resistance between the fog center contact and lamp holder ground with the main connector connected and it was infinite. I measured 0.5 ohm between the lamp holder ground and a body stud. I never did figure out why the rear fog lights were only getting 5 volts with the switch on, so I did the brake/fog light modification using two radio shack diodes bent to push into the #1 and #4 wiring spaces in the tail light connector. The diode allows current to pass from the brake light circuit to the fog lamp bulb but not the other way (in case I ever figure out why the fog lights are getting only 5 volts and not voltage enough to light the LED lamps). The diode leads pushed a lot farther into the connector than I had expected and there was no need to shorten the diode leads at all. I wrapped the diodes and the end of the connectors with electrical tape after they were pushed in and the operation checked. It helped to have a 12 foot pole to push the brake peddle from the back of the car to test the operation at all stages. Now I have two sets of brake lights in the lower and upper positions and I try not to drive in heavy fog.

 

Non traditional yes! Awesome - yes! That’s a really neat looking set up. Never seen something like that used up front before.
The yellow car is a 996 C4S and it’s going to be my winter weekend warrior. It’s seen both coasts and everything between a few times and has the scars to prove it. I plan to get her back to a better standard and see how many miles she can take.

 

"The yellow car is a 996 C4S..." Sweet ride! A Tweety Bird on steroids!

One of our British Car Club members named mine when he asked if I was going to be driving that Tweety Bird on a club drive. The name stuck.

Oh, and this photo from the PO's Craig's List ad with the eyes caught the fancy of my bitter half when she agreed to "let" me buy it.
Well, that and a promise to upgrade her 99 Dodge Grand Caravan to a 2010 Odyssey Touring.

 

Ok back on track with the Pepper White content!

The last couple of days I picked up some neat things. Gen 1 JCW caps for the R90 wheels, a new front JCW badge as mine is road-rashed and in the wrong position from the previous owner. The bolts on the back are seized and try as I might, I can’t try any harder without risking breaking them so I figured it’s a great opportunity for new. I also have a set of cabrio braces on the way.

All of these are really neat finds but they can’t beat my excitement for the job that got done on my old 2 tone rear seat.





I’m so happy with these from top to bottom. I’ve never ever seen a set of the black cloth rear Sparco seats so this is the first time in this project where I’ve taken an OEM item and replicated it because realistically, I’m never going to find a set for sale - and even if I do, there’s a strong likelihood they’d need repair in any case. There was a lot of custom foam work required and so pound for pound, they cost more than they’re worth considering they’ll
likely never be sat in...but I’m sure there’ll be a day where my little girl tosses her school bag on them 😂

The originals didn’t have ISO Fix adapters (I guess one of the reasons many didn’t option the rear Sparcos with the front Sparcos) so I thought it would be a fun design choice to maintain them in the new design.

 

Great looking seats! Is there any JCW option that you don't have yet? Folks will know it is a JCW from every angle, inside and out.

 

Those rear seats - I’m speechless. Wow.

 

I don’t see a JCW carbon fibre dash, hood scoop, tailgate handle and JCW side scuttles. I would say you have some work ahead of you ;-)

 

You should just sell me the car and I’ll save you all of that work 😉.

 

I’d love a carbon dash. There’s actually quite a few of them for sale right now but I’m not willing to pay the ransoms. IMO those who have them seem to be really over-valuing them - but I’m wrong about 60% of the time 😊

 

buddy you gotta bring the heat with offers. Go take what’s yours otherwise you’ll be a long time talking about it. haha.

 

I look forward to hearing the backside review of the seats once installed. Backseat reminds me of the backseat found in a 190e 16V. They definitely look the business.

 

The wheels actually don't look bad!
I'm still trying to decide what aero will be going on my build... she looks good!

 

Happy New Year everyone. I've taken about a month off Mini stuff during the holidays, during which time almost 2 and a half feet of snow had built up in front of the garage. It took me almost an hour to dig my way out of there today, not to mention the built up snow on the edge of the drive way from the helpful city trucks who've been ploughing the streets.

This week I'm going to get the seats fitted. Unfortunately, I only ordered one air bag resistor because I was feeling intellectually challenged when I placed the order, obviously forgetting I need one for each front seat. I ordered it quite some time ago and am expecting it to arrive at some point this week. In anticipation I've fitted the rear seat (but forgotten to take a picture, and I've removed the fronts. It's cool to have a side by side shot of the old vs the new (Standard OEM cloth vs Sparco OEM cloth).



I'm so incredibly happy with them, but there's a little bit of me that wishes I'd had them redone in some sort of red fabric. It wouldn't have matched OEM, but I think it could have really worked with the Pepper White paint. Ah well... what's done is done. Perhaps something to think about for a Post Covid world.

I've also received this used electrical harness for OEM driving/rally lights. I already had a brand new harness and I bought this (here on NAM) purely so I could get my hands on the switch (which is no longer available) I'm going to try to find time to install the driving lights this week too.




I'm also going to get a professional to paint my spoiler extension, as well as repaint the hood scoop that I painted earlier last year. I did a great job all things considered but you just can't produce the same quality of work with a rattle can. It's such a focal point of the car that I figure it's worth doing right. Earlier in the thread I said my goal was to get the car to a 9/10 standard and that would be good enough, but now that I've invested so much time, money and effort in to the car I'm resetting the bar to 10. I've learned that this car is good enough to be part of the family for the long haul, so I think it's worth going the extra mile on the details. At some point I'll also repaint the front bumper (where I had previously done some patch work) but I'll save that to be a future project so that I can follow it up with a protective film treatment once finished.

There's a few other things on the list that I'd like to try and get done this week too but I feel like the above is a good start and will set me up nicely to get this car ready for some spring motoring in April/May.

 

you got new photos of your car with the R90s installed?

 

I've never understood the stock placement of the rally light switch putting it down by your knee where You can't see it and have to find it by feel while driving. And then you can't see if it is lit.

Whoever installed mine did not leave enough slack in the wires so every time I drop the under scuttle it comes unplugged. I hope yours has enough wire to let you drop the under scuttle.

 

<

 

Not yet. One of my todo's is to sand down the lips and polish them, raw. Once that's done I'm still contemplating what summer rubber I'll mount on them. I think It'll be May/June timeframe before I get to all of this.
What's your favorite Mini OEM wheel?

 

Funny you should say that. I've deleted the fogs as mentioned earlier in the thread. I never replaced them with anything so for now they are 'unfinished' brake coolers. Before I came across this switch I had planned to wire the rally lights to the fog light switch which is mounted in the centre dash. I think I'm still going to do that, and I'll just use the OEM rally light switch as a dummy. If I'm very adventurous I might wire it up so both switches work.

 

Alternately, you can mount the rally light switch in the center console, just opposite of the TPMS sensor. That’s how I have installed. There is an OEM cable available which extends from the dash down to the center console.

Using the fog light toggle is an interesting idea too, and will allow you to run the spotlights without the high beams. Easy to set that up with a relay.

 

I picked up the factory extension harness mentioned above here for $2.50, but it's now on back order.
https://www.ecstuning.com/b-genuine-...s/61120412968/

Were you planning on using the front fog toggle or the rear? Using the wire/signal from the front toggle will make the rally lights work with the parking lights or low beams, but turn off with the high beams. Not sure if the rear fog also turns off with the high beams though.

 

@jacktown I’m biased mine are the R90

 

I think I’ll order one of those just to have it! (I don’t plan to wire it to that location however but who knows - I might be working in another car in the future and fancy wiring them in an alternate configuration) Never knew about that part and appreciate you pointing it out.

You raise an interesting subject. I’d like to control my rally lights from the fog switch and I’d like to be able to control them independently of any other lights.

My order of priority would be:
1. They must function with low beams
2. It’d be nice if they functioned with high beams too
3. I’d get a kick out if it if they could function without the headlights because I prefer when switches aren’t reliant in other functions to operate.

When I removed my Fog lights I preserved all of their wiring in the engine bay. I think I’ll splice the used wiring harness I bought and connect directly to the old fog lights to get the desired functionality.

One more thing... my car has DRL’s. I hate this forced function. Has anyone had success getting a dealer to code DRL’s out?

 

damn that’s a gorgeous R53. I’d love a red one.

ok so seen as we have my pepper white here, and no you’re chilli red, and I know Jackmac has a gorgeous hyper blue one, could we pull off a heist?? 😊

While on the subject, I noticed something Italian Job related today. As I recall in the movie, only Charlize’ Red Cooper was supercharged. The white and blue Minis were JCW R50s, right?!!

so then how do we explain the pack shot on the cover of the blueray? (Hint - look at the peppers hood)

 

Dreams shattered nooooooo :P