New Project Car, BMW 325iC
My wife would always joke about wanting a convertible when she turned 40. The challenge was to find one that would carry all three of us and enough gear to actually go on a trip with it. As a kid, I used to ride around on the parcel shelf of my parent’s Alfa, which probably wasn’t the brightest thing to do, but back then a “child seat” was the carpeted hump in front of the rear seats in the 20 foot station wagon.
So I got to thinking, why wait, since 40 is still several years away. I found this car listed for sale by a fellow member of the local BMW club. It’s basically a sound daily driver, high mileage (165k), tired paint and interior.
A solid $2k car that with a little TLC could be an excellent $4k car, but not likely to ever be worth much more than $5k. With that in mind, I launched my little scheme and achieved total surprise.
Here’s my cunning plan: Safety; comfort; performance; and appearance. The first step is to pass the safety inspection and get the car titled in Maryland. Level-set the maintenance items (new tires; oil change; change the fluids; timing belt, etc.) and make sure the car is safe to drive. Next is to clean it up and find some decent seat covers.
The leather is not torn, but much of the stitching is coming un-done. It actually cleaned-up better than I thought it would.
The top is new and the windshield was just replaced. The headlights are new and all of the major bulbs have been replaced. (It came with a hard-top as well, but it needs a new headliner.) Once I get a cover for the steering wheel, the comfort items should be about done for now. (Not sure how to get a cupholder into the car, but I’m sure someone has a slick option for that since this was made pre-big-gulp.)
Once we get some miles on the car, I’ll figure out what can be done performance-wise. I don’t think much beyond some plugs, new coil, and a better air filter. More will come later. Finally it would be nice to get a new coat of paint. Assuming everything else hasn’t busted the budget, maybe try to get a basic respray that will last 3-5 years.
Rust Never Sleeps
Rust… Rust Never Sleeps. Deep breath. Flashbacks to Alfas of the past… Don’t panic. If you’ve been following the threads on the message boards lately, MINI owners are in a tizzy because of a little rust under the door seal. It’s amazing how far automobile manufacturing has come that a little rust now causes a big stir. I remember how Alfas used to rust before they left the factory.
Yes, there are a couple of places that are likely to rust. Yes it’s covered under the extended rust warranty. Now move on. Here’s what you do: First, just pull on the seal and see if you have it. There are two spots that seem to have missed getting painted in the overly-complex paint-dipping mechanism (to quote Dr. Evil), and a spot toward the front that seems to be a production gap. Next, use a small brass brush to knock the surface rust off. And finally, paint a dab of Por-15 to seal it. Let dry and put your seal back on. Be sure to check the other side.
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.
Free Horsepower. MINI Cowl Mod DIY
Remember that an internal combustion engine is really just an air pump. In the Spring 2006 issue of MC2 Magazine Matt Richter explains the Ideal Gas Law in simple terms. Now you’re thinking Zzzzzzzzz, but it’s really very interesting.
The stock Cooper S is able to get a 50 hp boost over the Cooper by virtue of the supercharger. By increasing the pressure of the air entering the combustion chamber, the engine is able to produce more power with the same volume of engine displacement. The increase in pressure is accompanied by an increase in temperature — hence the intercooler. The intercooler drops most of the temperature gain while retaining the benefit of the boost. Make the intake path more free flowing and increase the pressure gain some more.
The first step is to replace the stock filter element with a cold air intake (CAI). Make the pulley smaller, the supercharger spins faster (produces a bit more heat) and the pressure increases some more. The next step is to increase the amount of air available to the filter. That’s where today’s mod comes in. This works if your CAI leaves the stock cowl in place. And it’s free.
The idea is quite simple: Modify the cowl behind the air filter to draw air from the cowl vent below the windshield. The panel behind the intake is not structural, but it still makes sense to remove it first before making the modification so you don’t mess up your brake lines which are directly behind the panel. In my case, I first bought a panel to modify from MINI (part number ) so I’ll still have my original piece should I ever need to swap back. (OK, so not really free, but still cheap.)
I drilled six holes with a hand drill above the center line in the panel. Randy Webb has posted very clear instructions here. The procedure takes about 30 minutes. You remove the cover to the intercooler; your CAI; disconnect the ECU; pull out the lower air box; and pull out the panel. Replace the panel with your “holey” one and reverse the order above. At low RPMs you will not notice a change in the intake noise, but above 5,000 RPMs there is a slight increase in the supercharger scream. I actually enjoy that sound. Here’s what it looks like when it’s all back together.
Update: Jan 2015. Randy has long shut down his MINI site so I pulled the instructions from the internet archive. No photos, but simple enough to follow along.
What Lurks Within
I recently made a couple of mods that have really changed the character of the MINI. The latest mod you can barely see lurking behind the rotor in the picture below. I took out the stock sway bar and replaced it with an Alta adjustable 22mm. Even on the softest of the three settings I can feel the change in handling. The MINI always had minimal body roll in corners, but now it’s really flat. It also had a tendency plow, but now it’s neutral.
The installation process is fairly straight forward. Here’s a couple of helpful hints though: Attach the bar to the subframe before you re-attach the subframe to the chassis to save your knuckles and remove both struts makes it much easier to fish out. Total time for two people who have never done this before on a MINI was about 3 hours.
The other change is even harder to see, but easy to feel. I went into Behe Performance to get a brake flush and found out they were having a Pulley Special: A 15% Reduction Pulley installed for $235. I couldn’t pass that up and what a difference it makes. If you are still sitting on the fence about a pulley upgrade you should jump in. I cannot imagine any other single mod you could make that transforms your car as much as this.
So you may be asking yourself why doesn’t the car come this way from the factory in the first place? So far, I’ve ditched the “S-Lites” with runflat tires for R-90s with Goodyear F1 GS-D3’s. I got $600 for the S-Lites which is what the R-90’s cost so the net cost was the price of the new tires, which after rebates was about $500. I bought a Cold Air Intake which I installed myself. ($125). MTH Car tune ECU remap (I got it when it was only $60). Madness Pulley installed ($235). EBC Greenstuff brake pads ($170). And finally the Alta Rear Sway Bar ($169.) Grand Total: $1369.
I’ve reduced un-sprung weight by 48 lbs; improved the ride quality, handling, braking, and acceleration; my gas mileage has improved by 3-4 MPG; power comes sooner and the engine revs more freely and I’ve increased horsepower from 163 to about 185. For another $700 I can get a free flowing exhaust and push horsepower up to 190. Compare that to the JCW kit that was made for my car: It didn’t include the air intake, suspension, or brake upgrade and increased horsepower by 37. The improved JCW head probably still wins on improved torque, but look at the cost: It’s almost $5K without the 10 hours of labor required to install it compared to everything above for about $2,000.
Imagine the problem from MINI’s Perspective. You could have added better brake pads that weren’t made of chalk for a minimal cost, say $50. $75 would get you a cold air intake, and I’m sure you could have requested a smaller diameter pulley at no cost. Software changes would cost nothing, and larger pipes in the exhaust would be minimal, but let’s say $200 for the sake of argument. A beefier sway bar might also cost $20 and it wouldn’t kill them to add adjustable camber plates in the front for another $200. What would you have? A nearly 200 hp Cooper S that costs only an additional $600. The problem would be that this car would have about 200 hp and there wouldn’t be enough of a gain in the JCW package to justify the additional $5,000 price tag. So ultimately it isn’t a matter of cost or performance, but positioning. If you want to sell 3 cars, one at 115 hp and the other at 210, you need to position the third in the middle, which is right where the stock Cooper S turns out to be. Not because it isn’t capable of more, but because you can’t justify the middle car being $5,000 less than the JCW and $5,000 more than the Cooper if you choose otherwise.
