Hey Agro,
I saw your post on the trailering thread. Welcome back. Sounds like you had an "eventful" trip. Give us the details and post some pics!

 

Hey Steve. Didn't really take any pics. Only of my nephew in Nebraska, and I doubt you care about him. I was too busy putting miles on the car to get the camera out.

You want the story? Ok, here goes.

The plan was to catch a red-eye flight from Vegas to Cleveland, get picked up by Sarcux, get in the Mini by about 7am and drive it home to Vegas over 3 days.

So...what actually happened?

Plane was an hour late leaving Vegas, making us almost an hour late arriving. Why the hell was an 11pm flight OUT of Las Vegas for Cleveland on a Friday night completely full? Weird as eggs.

Anyway, I get to the Mini after a ride in Sarcux's "flag car" MCS. It's a full car Union Jack like the one in Austin Powers. Very cool. I definitely don't want a Magnaflow on my MCS though. I get moving about 9am. Only 2 hours late.

I was planning on driving about 1 1/2 hours then stopping at a BMV (Ohio has a Bureau of Motor Vehicles, not a Department) to get my temporary tags. I find the BMV, but their computers are down. 45 mins later they finally come up, and after about another 30 mins I get to the front of the line. "No, we can't give you temp tags because when the seller signed the title, he didn't get the signature notarised". Bastards.
So I ate and got back on the road, another 1 1/2 hours behind schedule.

I80 through Ohio and Indiana is a toll road. I spent about $15 in tolls which was fine, the painful bit was having to lean across the car to pay the toll-people. Stupid seat belt!

I got lots of smiles and waves on the road and every time I stopped for petrol. A real attention grabber!

I was going great until I got to the middle of Iowa when the car started losing power and heating up. I pulled over and checked the oil. About 3mm on the bottom of the dipstick. Crap. Sarcux told me he'd just had an oil change done. Crap, crap, crap. So I nurse it to the next town and find a Casey's that sold oil. Bought 4 quarts. Put 1 quart in and the level was above the Max line. Bizarre. Got back on the road, another 1/2 hour or so behind.

A little while later, I noticed that every time I hit a bump, I was seeing sparks in my mirror. That's never a good sign. So I pull over at the next exit, the rear exhaust mount has given way and the exhaust is scraping the road every time I hit a slight bump. 3 gas stations at the exit, and not one of them had any wire. Not even a wire hanger holding up any of the "I filled up in Iowa" t-shirts. So I grabbed the extension cord out of my laptop bag and used it to tie the exhaust up to the car. Ate again. Another lost 45 mins.

Got back on the road, it's about 9:30pm by this time, and I have been on the go for about 40 hours with about 3 hours dozing on the plane my only rest. A while later, I'm about 30 minutes (40 miles) from my sister-in-law's house in Omaha. Flashing lights appear in my mirror. Bugger!!!! Cop pulls me over and walks to the wrong side of the car. I guess he wasn't expecting a RHD car. Told me I was doing 81 in a 65 zone. When I explained why I didn't have registration papers, and showed him the title and explained about the Ohio BMV and everything, he took pity on my and gave me a warning on the speeding, and a $70 non-moving violation for a non-registered car for the unregistered car. Well, I had given him my Australian license, so as long as I never get pulled over again in Iowa, I should be fine.

Another 30 mins burned before I got back on the road. I finally got to Omaha, had a shower and collapsed in a large heap for the night. End of Day 1.

Day 2.
Played with the baby for a while, not just my nephew, also my godson. Got on the road about 9am. Somewhere between Omaha and Kearney, I hit a bump and I discovered that the rear subframe had been heavily rusted by the salt that Ohio puts on their roads in winter, because it broke on 1 side. The rear driver's side wheel was now rubbing on the wheel arch any time I made a left turn. The outside edge of the tire was visibly melting. Oh well, nothing I can do about it, I'll just try to avoid lefts.
At this point, I didn't know it was the subframe. I assumed it was the nylon cup which wears out in classic Mini dual cone suspension that had gone. I had that happen on 1 of my old Minis in Australia.

The rest of day 2 was pretty uneventful, driving through Nebraska and Colorado. I saw the only MINI for the whole trip (PW/checkerboard) just after leaving Denver. Stayed the night in Vail. Never again. $69 for a room that you would walk out of for $39 in Vegas. And no air conditioning!

Day 3.
Stopped at the bottom of the mountain because the rubbing on the tire was getting worse. Went to a Big O to see if they could bodge up something to keep the wheel arch off the tire. That was when I discovered that it was actually the subframe that was the issue. Oh well, nothing for it but to keep driving and avoid bumps. With the wheel rubbing, I was still getting about 35mpg at 80mph. Not bad at all for a car that is almost as aerodynamic as a housebrick.

So I kept going, but every time I hit a bump I could tell it was getting worse, and I was getting worried that the tire was going to blow out on me at 80mph. Not fun at all. I was almost out of Utah when I hit a huge bump in a construction zone and the tire started audibly rubbing constantly. Scared me enough that I decided to give up and drop to my backup plan. U-Haul. So I limped to the next exit at Cedar City and found the U-Haul office. It closed at 7pm and it was 7:30. Damn!!!!
Found a hotel and collapsed.

Day 4 (not in the original plan)
Went back to U-Haul and rented a 14' truck. The guy told me that putting a car inside a truck voided the rental contract, then offered to let me use his ramps (for $10) to get the car in the truck. After some manipulation, and the use of a loading dock, I got the car in the truck and headed off for the last 170 miles of the 2100+ mile trip. An uneventful trip back to Vegas where I unloaded the car (rented much better ramps from Home Depot for $8), then returned the truck and ramps and collapsed in a large heap for the night.

The flight to Cleveland was $79, I spent about $100 on fuel in the Mini, $70 for the hotel in Vail, and about $100 on food, oil and other crap.
The hotel in Cedar City was $43, the truck rental was $225, $60 for fuel, $18 for ramps. The last 170 miles cost me about 1 1/2 times the entire rest of the trip.
But I made it back, and now I have to get the car back on the road.

 

I was around York, NE the morning that you went through. I figured I would see you on your way. I was expecting you a bit earlier so by 8:30AM I gave up and hit the road for Minden. Sorry I missed you but maybe if I make AMVIV we can catch up then.

 

Wow Agro, that was quite some drive. Amazing you made it as far as you did with a broken subframe. Post some pictures of the car when you get a chance.

 

Bloody oath mate, took me awhile to figure out you were doing a Classic job. I should have known from RHD. Subframe sealed it.

That sounds like the typical Mini adventure. I have had many of those, and by God, they define the word.

 

Hey Zyamfier, yeah, I was keeping an eye out for you, but moving pretty fast. Hopefully you'll make it to AMVIV and you can see DaBrick there.

CamelPilot, sorry about that. I was kinda doing a quick reply to Steve (who knew I was getting a classic) that grew into the big story.

I've driven a lot of miles (well, kilometers) in classic Minis, and this was the toughest trip I've done I think. In Aus, if something goes wrong with a Mini, you can get parts and the mechanics actually know what the car is, so you can get help. When I stopped at Big O, I went into the bay where the car was on the hoist and there were about 9 employees standing around it looking at the car, all fascinated by it.

On other Mini road-trips, the worst problems I ever hit were my accelerator cable snapping when I was 1/2 way past a semi-trailer (managed to get into a petrol station and bodge up a cable that got me to where I was going that night), and a universal joint breaking. The uni, I worked out just before it actually broke, and replaced it before it caused any other damage. The other big issue on a classic was a wheel coming off, but that was just around the corner from my house, not a roadtrip.