Slow but sure goes the race. The care taken in your efforts shows. Nicely done.

Glad your hand came out relatively ok.

As for hand protection, for a lot of things I do I like full leather; cow hide as it tends to be thick. And somewhat loose, so if something does snag it, it will come off easily. Things like wire wheels don’t tend to catch on it easily and it will take a lot of abuse before there is any skin damage. It will provide protection against grinders. I do some DIY working with wood and have a monster table saw I sometimes use. I wear leather gloves when working with that. I figure I might just feel the blade hitting the glove before the fingers or the hands. I am careful, but I like the extra protection just in case. Also, the leather provides padding that is nice if something jams up.

Off my soap box…

 

The radiator I had lying around was no good; it turns out the R53 and R50 radiators have differently angles flanges. So I ordered a new one. While waiting I started on replacing the exhaust. Getting it off was relatively easy, only the bolts for the hangers of the backbox were rustwelded together so I was extra careful. Snapped the last one off...so I will need to drill the stut out and put in a bolt. Same thing happened to me on my first R50 and more recently on my R53.

I also found a curious case of brakepadwear wires (see photo)

So someone ziptied the brakepadwearsensor to the back without it being plugged into the brakepad. The curious thing is that there is also an un plugged wire going to the actual brakepad. So essentially two breakpadwires but none of them could actually work

Old va new

Snap...

Look at the state of that. All hangers were like this.

 

If it still turns over, and it’s not locked up, might be worth fixing.

 

My guess:
Here in NY the inspection requirements are to have a working brake wear sensor. Having one plugged in and zip tied out of the way tells the system that the pads are “OK”. Having one “plugged” into the pad but unplugged electrically shows the inspector that there is a “working” sensor. Not sure how that saved the previous owner any time or whatnot, but that would be my guess as to why you see what you do.

 

I'm definitely going to try and save it!

That's exactly what I was thinking. I just don't understand why one would ziptie it away instead of properly connecting it.
Unless...maybe in the past it had brakepads without the wearsensor hole?

 

Or maybe they thought the wear sensor wore out too soon leaving “usable” pad behind. But that wouldn’t help with the inspection where the inspector should be looking at the pad. Just guessing here. I do agree, it is a bit strange.

In my case, I have them tied out of the way because I track a couple of my MINIs and I am wearing pads out in a few days. When not on the track I change the pads back to street pads, so I seeing them all of the time. That is actually how I found out about the NY state inspection law. One flunked. Not a big deal; zip ties are cheap.

 

I haven't tidied up the brake wearsensor but I did finish up the exhaust. I have to say this was the easiets exhaust I have ever done. You can tell Walker thought about it as you have plenty of meat left for adjustment to line it up properly. They also made it easy because of a single bolt design to move the backbox around in the hanger.

Let's hope it sounds as good as it looks!

First let's drill the snapped stut out, with a pilot hole

Pilot hole, not 100% centered unfortunately

Now onto a 8mm bit

Looks good

New bolt in

Years ago I bought this box with exhaust hangers for r50 and r53 for just $30. It was from a local guy who worked at a BMW dealership. Good stuff and I can still use it every now and then

Hangers in and bolted up

The exhaust, one piece from cat to the back

The part number is Walker 23066

Needs a tip right?

With tip, you can still see the original pipe

But only if you directly look into it

 

Looks like it’s coming together 👍

 

The pipe in the exhaust tip will darken up with time and you won’t be able to see it. It all looks good. Waiting for you to do a sound check.

 

Well there is trouble in paradise, time to get your ​​​​​out @Eddie07S .

So I put everything back together, filled all the fluids, turned it over a couple of times with fuel and spark to get the oil flowing in the head. After that with fuel and spark and it fired straight up.

A bit of white smoke but let's warm it up to see if the cleared. New exhausts are usually a bit smokey at first. So it went away after 15min or so but then I noticed some light smoke... especially when rev it up it pufs out a bit more. I was hoping this was just going to be the oil Input in the cylinders to catch any debris that would get in there when I was cleaning the block and cylinders.

Next day, tried again. No smoke on start up, yay! But as soon as its warms up a little bit of smoke appears. Not good. Need to do a warm/cold/leakdown compression test to figure out if its valve stem seals or piston rings. Both will require the head coming off again. Before doing so I think I might try an oil additive as the smoke is really faint.

The other fun part is, the car shifts when the engine is off, when it is on though it won't disengage although the pedal feels fine. So I thought, lets bleed the slave anyway. The bleed nipple looked like crap, reason why I didn't touch it in the first place, but I went ahead anyway. And it sheared right off. Interestingly enough it is not dropping fluid as from what I can tell it looks like the fluid turned into brown grease. So I at least need a new slave to test if that is the problem. I cannot possibly imagine I put the clutch on backwards, as it was clearly written on the disc. But who knows...

Anyway, I feel bumped out at the moment as I fear I basically have to redo everything I did. This car is fighting me all the way and I feel like I'm losing at the moment.


Oh snap...

Not a 100% sure if its white or blueish. Can't upload the video so not sure if you can tell.

 

 

Sorry to hear about the troubles. I'm in a similar situation with my son's R50, 2006. I'm guessing yours is a 2006 also, based on the slave cylinder. Is that right?

In my case, all the hydraulics look good. No leaks. Can't get it to go in gear with the engine running. With the engine off, no problem. The break fluid was the color of coffee. So I bled all the break lines and the clutch lines. I think it improved a bit but not much. The car is not drivable.

Have you checked the fluid in the trans?

Regarding the engine. Any codes? What are the fuel trims?

 

About your clutch, did you go to the single mass flywheel conversion or stick with the OE double mass?

I ran into this issue with another car, bmw, where the clutch disk hub apparently needs to be installed towards the flywheel. still working through that...

 

Yes it's a 2006, trans fluid it brand new, no codes but I haven't look at fuel trim trims. I bled the brakes as well but not the slave as the bleed nipple sheared off. Ordered a new one but it will take a week or so to arrive.

As far as I know all R50 actually have a solid flywheel. On my R53 I did convert it to the valeo one though and the clutch should still be fitted ss normal.

I'm still leaning towards a bleeding issue on this one, although the paddle feels normal.

Some good news though; I tested my head gasket and it's not leaking. I also did a cold, cold + wet and hot compression test. Values are +5psi up compared to before while cylinder 4 is still a bit lower then the others.

During the head gasket test I needed to rev it higher then idle and while doing so the smoke disappeared. I'm beginning to think there was some residu left in the new exhaust which would only come out with more flow?

When I fired up after the cold + wet test it was, as expected, smoking a lot for 30sec. This smoke was waaaay more then my original issue so I don't think there is actually anything wrong with the engine.
Time will tell with a proper drive.


This will turn yellow if there are exhaust gasses in your coolant

30min later, no change. Head gasket test passed

 

that’s great news, I was going to say you should let it run a bit longer. I bet the smoke clears

 

Still waiting on a new slave cylinder so I took on some other jobs.

1. The radio reception was terrible, could only find one radio station, sometimes. I thought it was the aftermarket weird looking antenna on my windscreen but that wasn't even connected to the radio. Turned out the stubby didn't work because once I replaced it with a normal one it worked fine.

2. Removing the ugly roof wrap


Stubbe antenna

Something that looks like an aftermarket antenna

It was quite neatly tucked away behind the glovebox

When I pulled the radio I found this. Notice how the wire colors are swapped.

This ugly roof wrap has to go

Easier said then done. I used a heatgun at first but I needed both hands to pull it off (haha)

After 1.5h it was off. Both thumbs were bleeding as I separated the flesh from my fingernails

​​​​​As everything on this car, the radio fixed but now the front left speaker doesn't really work. I only get faint music from the tweeter, not the woofer. So maybe that weird wire, that I cut and reconnected to the correct color coding, has something to do with it. I will have to pull the doorcard for this.

But first I need to fix the clutch issue.
Stay tuned...

 

I have had to replace a few of my speakers, sometimes they just wear out ... Easy job to pull the Door Card and get to them.

 

The paint looks good on the roof. I had to replace the stock speakers in the R53. They were low quality, paper cones if I remember right

 

Not sure about the crisscrossed wires, but I seem to recall that the MINI sound system had a filter to cut out the bass going to the rear speakers. A “fix” for it and to get the system to play better bass was to swap the wires; front to rear, rear to front. Not sure if that is what you have or not, but something maybe to consider.

 

These are all great tips! I will investigate further in the future. The slave cylinder has just arrived so replacing that will be up next.

 

As everything on this car, even replacing the slave cylinder was hell. Took me 2(!!!) hours. The steel line that bolts into the slave was a bit corroded, not surprising me. What made it hell was that the fitting that bolts into the slave was corroded stuck on the line and didn't want to turn without twisting the line.

​​​​​​At first I got the old slave off by rotating the slave instead of the fitting. Then I could work my magic to free up the fitting without breaking or bending the line. It eventually broke lose after spraying and moving it back and forth one millimeter at a time.

So I could finally fit the new slave but after all that work I didn't want to fill and bleed it only to find out it would leak. No photos today as I was that annoyed by what should have been an easy kob.

Next post will hopefully be about bleeding and being able to shift again!

 

And I bleed the system 4 or 5 times, pedal is hard after 5mm of play but still no go. I can force it into all gears but 1-5 are very stiff and reverse crunches.

Either that new cheap Italian clutch is faulty or I messed something up during the gearbox rebuild. I'm hoping the first as it does shift with engine off.

So I'm in for another gearbox removal, ugh.
I'm going to check if I didn't put the reverse idler gear shaft in backwards and change the clutch.


This is the old slave cylinder. Look closely near the shaft and you can see a bulge

From a different angle
​​​​​

 

It sounds like the clutch is not fully releasing when the pedal is pressed. This could be clutch or the slave cylinder. When I did the clutch on my R56, I was told to replace the clutch arm (between the slave cylinder and throw out bearing) as they are weak and can break. Hopefully yours is good.

If the clutch isn’t fully releasing, then there is some amount of drive power going into the transmission even after the clutch is pressed. Assuming the car is stopped and on the ground when you are trying things, it is then the synchros that are taking the abuse to stop the friction plate from spinning to allow the transmission to go into gear. That is why it is so hard to push the shift lever into gear. Reverse is grinding likely because its synchro is “less strong” as it generally is called upon to do its job under less demanding condition than the forward gears and it is less able to stop the friction plate from rotating. When the engine isn’t running, a transmission will generally go into gear without the clutch, so that isn’t really a tell of things being bad or good.

As your slave cylinder is new and considered to be well bled, clutch would be my bet. This would not be the first time that I read on NAM about someone having issues like this with a new clutch.

 

@Eddie07S for the info and support. After reading your message, I am wondering one thing. I did all the clutch and shifting tests while the car was up on jack stands. Would that make any difference?

I t should only make shifting easier instead of harder right?

Luckily I kept the old LUK clutch kit so after pulling the gearbox I will be comparing them fully. I did took a glance to see if the clutch plate dimensions were right and the holes lined up but I didn't compare the fingers or release bearing for example.

 

I think you are right, that shifting the transmission with the car on stands should make it easier.