Northern's R56 Mini Cooper S

[Northern]

A bit out of order, but some other pics from this summer:

A basic pic a day or two after the first wash.



This piece was missing since I bought the car. It came with that first parts order, finally installed with clips from the junkyard.




Rear badge was rough, and can't seem to find just the mini logo as a sticker unless it's in a weird colour and from ebay/amazon.



A beaver had clearly removed the badge to plastidip at some point and reinstalled with JB weld, so I used an Olfa blade to shave off the JB weld and a touchup pen/clear from the dealer to fill the chips. Some wet sanding/polishing turned out alright but still a few spots clearly touched up...

[2mAn]

Solid update. I really enjoyed my R50 ... for 3 months before I sold it. Stupid 2020

[Aleman]

Nice Mini! I love my R56.

[Northern]

Something about yours just looks cleaner than mine lol.
I imagine the Xenon headlights work a hell of a lot better than mine.


Another update:
My R56 has had issues with the driver's door latching shut since I bought it.
Sometimes it will close, but usually it bounces back to that intermediate latched position and needs to be pressed/hip checked closed.
I've cleaned/lubed/adjusted the striker probably 20 times now and the latch just seems to be messed up internally.

Wedsnesday I decided to drop almost $400 on a new OE latch at the dealer because the other options are URO or used.

I was not prepared for how much was going on inside the door. Basically unclip an outer door card and a bunch of covers, remove the speaker and the glass, then undo a bunch of Torx fasteners to remove the "Inner Door Module" that has all of the window regulator/motor/speakers/etc. in order to access the latch.
I followed Pelican Parts' DIY and it had me disassemble a pile of extra stuff strictly for the hell of it.

After installing the new latch, I had 3 issues:
The window no longer dips/raises when the door opens/closes.
The interior lights do not change state when the door is opened/closed.
The door does not lock/unlock via central locking (in car or key fob), but can be locked manually with the physical key.

I distinctly remember plugging in the connector, because I almost forgot to do it and then thought "wouldn't that have sucked"

Anyway, a day of searching for some sort of reset procedure and dreading trying to return a DoA latch to a BMW dealership (lol) I re-gutted the door and found that the connector wasn't clipped in.
Now it finally all works, so the sooner I forget this episode, the better.

[Northern]

Well my wife has been dailying this for the summer largely without incident... BUT

I've had a few issues...

Left/right shifter cable end rubber popped out of its metal carrier... This is why there's an SB to add a metal clip, which I bought and never installed. Regrets.
Anyway, I pushed it back together with some Channel Locks and threw the clip on and it has been fine while I procrastinate deciding the solution (adhesive, aftermarket bushing, new cable?)

I caught the wife driving around with 700 lbs of marine batteries in the trunk for who knows how long.
I notice the rear of the car is slammed and I ask her what the fuck? How does it not rub?
Well, long story short, it certainly rubs over every bump.
Now there's a clunk in the back that sounds like a bad RSM, so I'll be doing those at some point soon.

My most annoying issue is some sort of boost oscillation at mid/high throttle in upper gear, basically 1~2Hz sound/thrust changes.
I think most people say it's WG rod being too long, other chassis seem to have issues with boost control solenoids also. A lot of these people seem to have tunes where I don't.

Similar to this video:

https://youtu.be/K_rkkRLo-Sg

Unfortunately TorquePro won't log faster than ~1.3 Hz so it's hard to pick up in a log.



Otherwise nothing to report - Spending my time on other things and my money on uncool things like debt.

[2mAn]

Well my wife has been dailying this for the summer largely without incident... BUT

I've had a few issues...

I caught the wife ...

WHY are they like this...

My wifes car was an absolute mess, and when I asked her why she was driving around with so much junk in the car, her reply was "what difference does it make"...

[Northern]

Oh there's still a ton of boxes and shit in the back, they just don't weigh much and I've nagged enough times that I finally gave up.

[Northern]

Quarterly update time...

Starting with some on-topic stuff late July.

Homeless Despot run, dirty car but sadly this is the closest thing I have to a nice picture of it.



This grommet I just replaced vanished the second I removed the airbox again...



The SB shifter clips retrofitted after one of the cables popped apart and I lost all gears other than 3 & 4...



This is my modded dipstick. Bought a Cravenspeed one but was worried about how flimsy it is. Probably fine but filing the stock one flat on one side and adding grooves makes it much more useful.


I started messing with my boost oscillation issue. Checked WG rod adjustment. Rod checked at 6.1" ( ~155mm) and spec is 151.5mm so I tried to adjust it...

Getting access was a pain. Multiple nuts heavily rusted, one required a 7mm because it was rusted so badly, and this one took me an hour to give up and drill through it.
(The shiny stripped bolt ~8" deep in there)


Shoutout to 12" drillbits.


Punch to break it loose


Fin.


Measurement


At this point I thought things would start getting easy, but no.
The nut on the right of the pic refused to budge, so I removed the whole WG actuator off the turbo with the turbo in-situ.

Torched the nut, tried to give it a small impact back and forth. After the 3rd or 4th change in direction of the impact, the shaft just sheared off and I almost said fuck it and pushed the car off a cliff.

Luckily there were no cliffs in sight, so I ended up cooling down and basically trying to take 4mm off the shaft and welding the nut back on. I mocked it up and welded it.



I also realized the scuttle panel turn signals aren't connected and don't seem to have the right connector... no idea why, but the lights/pigtail look shitty so I can only assume they're some ebay garbage.


That brings us up to early September

[2mAn]

Looks like fun stuff

[Northern]

It's fun so far - I really don't mind wrenching on this.

Sure the engine bay is designed for child labour and I basically destroyed the back of my hands every time I've worked around the wastegate (spoiler alert it's been like 3 times now and the boost issue is still at large) but it's nice that it's basically all just bolt-on shit.

[Jordan]

I bought a 2009 Electric Blue MCS from a client earlier this year that came into the drop with timing chain failure due to running it out of oil, with 8 bent exhaust valves. $500 with 68k miles on it, no brainer as the older kids are now of driving age and it would make a great first car. Car had $5k+ of Alta full bolt on parts on it to boot.

I rebuilt the engine with my 14 year old step daughter and dropped it in the car. After about 350 miles of not even remotely gentle break in ( it got multiple gear full sent within 5 miles as with all engines I build) I had my tuner friend build a tune for it. Holds 22PSI through 1st and 2nd, higher load/speed it tapers down to 14-16psi. Should make about 240-250bhp. Car is fun to drive if not for the torque steer that will take the wheel from you, and handles like a go kart, but man is it a loud, buzzy, rattlely, vibrately little shit box.

I'm used to my 800bhp AWD couch these days, and prefer things this way as I have seemingly more silver hairs every day.... 40 next year.... where did the time go....

[Northern]

I bought a 2009 Electric Blue MCS from a client earlier this year that came into the drop with timing chain failure due to running it out of oil, with 8 bent exhaust valves. $500 with 68k miles on it, no brainer as the older kids are now of driving age and it would make a great first car. Car had $5k+ of Alta full bolt on parts on it to boot.

I rebuilt the engine with my 14 year old step daughter and dropped it in the car. After about 350 miles of not even remotely gentle break in ( it got multiple gear full sent within 5 miles as with all engines I build) I had my tuner friend build a tune for it. Holds 22PSI through 1st and 2nd, higher load/speed it tapers down to 14-16psi. Should make about 240-250bhp. Car is fun to drive if not for the torque steer that will take the wheel from you, and handles like a go kart, but man is it a loud, buzzy, rattlely, vibrately little shit box.

I'm used to my 800bhp AWD couch these days, and prefer things this way as I have seemingly more silver hairs every day.... 40 next year.... where did the time go....

Yeah they're definitely built cheap. Lots of rattles/buzzes and my butchered exhaust has an awful amount of drone. Really thinking about getting a tune and some bolt-ons next year, would be very happy with 225-250.
I saw an Alta Exhaust come up for sale but figured it would be loud since it's 3". They don't make them anymore either.
I still think the resonated Scorpion exhausts are where it's at for this car. Everything else is too loud or has the same size piping as stock.

[Panici]

Fin.

Now that is not an easy shot for a 12" drill bit. I'm impressed!

[Northern]

We interrupt our scheduled Mini broadcast to show you some shitbox subaru content:


My Outback received a lot of love this year to fix some minor long term issues, and some more immediate ones, like a wheel bearing noise and a vibration that seemed vague in direction. Kind of figured "well it's a subaru so of course it's either wheel bearings or a driveshaft"

Wheel bearings made some improvement. Weren't nearly as bad as the internet makes them out to be, probably took me 8-9 hours to do all 4. Considering the car has 250K (km) and sees Atlantic Canadian winters, I'm calling that not bad.
The rears were done by the PO at some point, but you'd never know by looking at them. Basically the method that worked was to knock the hub downward a mini sledge to create a gap between hub and spindle, shim that gap with a pallet knife, smack it upward to make the gap on the bottom, shim that gap, rinse/repeat.
Front bolts stick through the spindle like 1/2" and were solid rust, so I ended up basically cutting the hubs off and drilling/beating the rest of the bolts out and buying new hardware from Subaru.

Driveshaft came from RockAuto:



There were two lengths listed, but I made an educated guess based on a measuring tape and guessing how far it stuck into the trans.
Swapping was easy - 1 heat shield, 2 CSB bolts, 4 bolts at the back, slide it toward the rear of the car.

The car always had some faint bearing noise, I always assumed it was an axle or front diff bearing or something, but the CSB was thrashed. Both U-Joints were notchy as well.
The car has never been quieter now.

I pad slapped the front end at one point after I bought it. Rear end was kind of a pain - has needed 3 calipers over 4 years but the front was fine until now.


Left caliper was seized. Got a new "coated" front caliper locally, some random Bosch pads, rotors from Canadian Tire of all places were the cheapest coated ones I could find.
Unfortunately the reason they were so cheap was that they weren't for a 3.6R. Luckily it was easy to exchange.



Car has always had a weird misfire on cold starts, but only in the winter. Decided to snag some coils last time I was at the junkyard in case any were visibly bad, and change plugs.
Some coils were cracked where they were potted on the sides. Didn't have enough spares to replace them all, but did the worst ones.





It would normally have done it's weird cold start misfire by now, so fingers crossed it's good enough. I think I put the worst coils on the front Cyls so they'd be easier to change if I need to do more.

Other than that, and a new cheap double din head unit (Wireless Android Auto and Carplay is well worth it) that's all this thing has needed in a long time.

[2mAn]

so what you're saying your most reliable shitbox is a subaru? wow