Sorry if this was covered before

I was at my dealer tech night recently and I noticed the 2006 models have a duct/snorkle covering the power steering motor. Instead of a plastic grill, there's now a duct covering the fan opening. The duct leads to an opening right behind the front air dam. The setup looks really durable. I overheard a tech saying to another person that the set is only the MCS automatic. Not sure if I heard him correctly so correct me if I'm wrong.

I took a pic with my camera phone. If someone could teach me how to upload the pic to my computer then that would be great. The phone BTW is a Moto Razr V3.

 

The easiest thing I can think of, for the uploading, is emailing it to yourself. Navigate to the picture, and hit menu. Then click "send in message." Click next and eventually, you should be able to enter an email address.

Thats where you should enter your email address.

Check your email, and then upload it to NAM or something similar. Then copy the location of the picture, and post a reply to this thread.

When your in the new reply window, click the icon. Then paste the address of the picture.


Hope thats not too complicated!

 

On my cellphone, it's very easy to send a picture to a computer. Just select the picture, Menu - Send to. And I enter my email adress.

I'm curious to see that duct too!!

 

emailing it myself is the only way? I have Cingular and I didn't sign up for any data plans. I just got the phone and I noticed it has a mini USB plug. I'm thinking I could just use the mini USB cable from my camera to connect it to my computer. But I figure there must be some sort of program I would need so my computer would recognize the phone.

 

Yes, It's an MCSa feature, at least per Randy Webb. Saw one at the last pulley party. It is a slick looking piece, and does away with the whole plastic-bag-ruining-your-day issue.
Sorry, no pics.

 

The "snorkel" has been a feature since at least 3/23/2005, when my MCSa was built, as mine has it. The snorkel definitely avoids the plastic bag in the fan syndrome as well as ducts cool air from the front of the car for the p/s pump.

 

my 06 MCS (non auto) only has a vent cover on the fan... :(

 

Never knew the automatics have this snorkel. For my MCS with manual transmission, I replaced the flimsy plastic grill with a metal one obtained from an after market parts business. There was a thread about this last week.

 

I wonder why the snorkel is an auto only part? It is not as if the power steering pump is different between the two.

 

My wife's '05 MCSa (early June '05 build) has the duct and my '06 MCS (late Jan. '06 build) has only the fan grill - seems like a very strange decision. The only plus to not having it, is that the duct will need to be removed to drain the oil.

 

On a bad day, removing the duct is a 30 second effort. If you have an electric or air powered driver, the screws come off in 8 seconds.

 

It would probably just mount the phone like an external hard drive, and you could just grab the pics off the phone. Try it, you won't hurt it.

 

Back from the dead

I finally uploaded the pic to my computer.



The grill for the duct is right behind the front air dam. I'm wondering if it would be more effective if the grill was in front of the air dam where I'm sure the pressure would be higher. But what do I know. I'm sure MINI/BMW has spent hundreds of man hours in the wind tunnel fine tunning the aero

 

It can be purchased as an add on now.


http://www.miniworks.com/product/min...-0206-1077.cfm

 

The plastic engine shield got pretty mangled on my MCS over the winter. I found this when I was searching for a replacement:
http://new.minimania.com/web/Item/NME7640/InvDetail.cfm

Has anyone installed this on a manual transmission model?

 

I looked at this several months ago, but after adding shipping, I decided it was too expensive and that I may try making one myself this fall when the weather cools a bit here.

YD

 

If you get something fabbed let us know.