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BMW Convertible Headliner
It has been a while since I’ve posted about progress being made to the BMW. I finally managed to repaint the right rear bumper cover that I repaired some weeks ago. (I still think the guy who did my MD state inspection scraped the right side of the car against a wall…) I managed to repair the broken plastic, smooth out the damage, prime, repaint and clearcoat. Now it’s probably the best painted piece of the car. I’ll try to get a photo of it soon.
In the process of making the repairs, I discovered two great products. The first is a special type of paint for chip repairs called Dr. Color Chip. It really works as advertised at repairing paint chips without blobs unlike most touch-up kits. It also works over large areas to restore some shine to tired and abused painted surfaces like the leading edge of your hood. The other product is the touch-up kit from Paintworld. I ordered the kit to repaint the bumper cover. I was able to apply two coats of primer, two coats of paint, and three coats of clearcoat in the span of a single afternoon. I’m almost tempted to repaint the hood with this stuff. Almost.
Today I put a new headliner (with some skillful sewing help from my lovely wife) in the hardop. It’s getting cold enough around here to want to switch to the hardtop, and I though it would be nice to not have bare fiberglass over our heads. The hardtop was a freebie that was thrown in with the purchase of the car, mostly because the guy who sold the car couldn’t think of how to get rid of it. It was covered in mildew and had a nasty smell. I ripped out the old headliner (what was left of it) and bleached out the mildew.
I found a website called Stockinteriors selling headliner material and decided to give it a try. Normally, modern headliners fit over some sort of board that then attaches to the car. This one would have to be applied directly to the roof so there wasn’t much room for error. We made a paper pattern, then a cloth mock-up and finally the real thing. It took some adjustment to fit, but it looks pretty good. I also bought some new carpet from Stockinteriors and will try to fit it in the coming days.
2006 Historics
We just got back from our annual trip to California. This year it was all about good food, beaches, historic automobile racing, and deck building. This year Cooper race cars were the featured 
marque along with a tribute to Jack Brabham. Once again we enjoyed the hospitality of the Golden Gate and Central California Chapters of the BMWCCA at their Festorics tent. The weekend was also the kick-off for MINI Takes the States and the first delivery of the special edition JCW GP cars. You can listen to that over at White Roof Radio. Unfortunately all we had with us was our trusty Hertz rental car — all of the MINIs present got to drive a parade lap during lunch. There were so many they completely lapped the course. I really enjoyed the historic F1 cars. Toyota also had their current F1 car there with Ricardo Zonta their test driver. He set a new lap record (for noise as well as speed.) Some day I’ll make it out to Laguna Seca for a track day. For now I’ll just enjoy watching the old timers.
Here’s the deck:
Tighten the Nut Behind the Wheel
There’s an old saying in Motorsports that if you want to go faster, you should start by tightening the nut behind the wheel. It’s easy to blow a big chunk of cash on go-fast goodies for your car, but if you can’t find the line through a curve or you just aren’t smooth, you’ll never be fast.
I’ve recently taken up Autocross. Although I’m waaaaaay at the back of the pack (and unfortunately classified in the mod-till-you-drop Street Mod class) I’m having a blast. It started with a desire to improve my general driving skills. The more time I spend on the freeways around Washington DC, the more I’m convinced most of my fellow drivers are morons. One in four seems to have a cellphone surgically attached to their head. Of the remaining three, two are tail-gaiting each other at 85 MPH in SUVs with under-inflated tires.
Figuring a good offense is the best defense, I started to think about my own driving skills and my ability to avoid bad situations. In the asphalt jungle of “fight or flight” the MINI driver’s only defense is flight. It started with a highway safety course at the Jefferson Circuit at Summit Point put on by the local BMW club. That was followed by a high performance driver’s course on the same circuit.
This past weekend, I attended another driver’s school on the Shenandoah circuit. Now I’m hooked. These are not racing schools. There’s no wheel-to-wheel competition. It’s all about control and knowing your (and your car’s) limits. I hope the skills I’m improving on the track will improve my autocross skills as well.
Parts Number Lookup
Looking for a way to find BMW and MINI parts numbers? Check out RealOEM.com online. Search by body R Code and build date (R50 for Cooper, R53 for Cooper S, etc.) Build date is on the sticker on the Driver’s side door jam.
