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Convertible Paint Finished

Last clear coat done

I talked to the experts at Paint World and upon their recommendation, added a third coat of clear to the hood. That made all the difference to get the repainted hood to match the shine of the fenders. I had some paint and clear coat left over so I also repainted the rear panel around the taillights and license plate. Considering I only got a single coat of primer, single coat of color, and single coat of clear on the rear, it looks pretty good.


Rear done too

We’ve had the car for just over a year now. Here’s what the hood looked like when I started:

Hood before

And here’s the rear panel:

Dull rear

Repainted Hood

repainted hood

It took a week longer than I planned, and many more cans of paint, but I finally finished the hood. I still need to polish it, but it looks pretty good.

It’s Just a Chip

The chip

The hood on the BMW has one of the worst paint jobs I’ve ever seen. It’s like the history of paint. I think there’s at least 4 layers, the top coat being a very cheap, very thick respray one of the previous owners had done after something fell on the hood. The paint was burned in several places, and had about a dozen significant chunks missing. The entire leading edge was one chip after another. While washing the car on Saturday, the water pressure from the hose was enough to dislodge a big chunk of paint. When I first bought the car, I painted the larger chips in as best I could with touch up paint as seen in the photo above. After I finished the Aero Grille on the MINI, I thought I’d try to fill one of the holes.

first one is free

It was fairly easy to clean out and fill. Once I got to sanding, I started to wet sand out some scratches.

wetsanding

Which of course lead to more grinding.

more

Which lead to more filling.

enough

At some point you just have to stop or you’ll go nuts. I’ll never get the thing to look like new. And with a new hood running only about $300, it’s just not worth it to try. It can’t look worse than when I started so why not try to prime it up and paint it and see what happens.

Primered hood

I got the first coat of primer on last night. It still needs to be sanded and there are a couple of rough spots to work out, but it’s about 90 percent there.

MINI Aero Grille DIY

Aero Grille Completed

I always thought the stock grille on the Cooper S was a bit of a contradiction. It wasn’t all chrome and it wasn’t all painted. It just looked incomplete. I like the look of the grille included with the Aero Kit, but didn’t want to go through the expense of replacing both bumper covers and side skirts just to get a new grille. Fortunately, you can just buy the grille and make the modification yourself, but it isn’t for the feint of heart as you’ll see in the photos below. You can still order the stock aero grille from your dealer (parts number 51110140255 and 51130140259) and the instructions can be found here. Expect to spend about $120 for both parts. The top half bolts on in about 15 minutes and is a direct replacement, but plan on a good 4-6 hours to complete the bottom half, depending on how efficient you are with a dremel tool. The lower half is made for the Aero Bumper which is slightly different from the regular R53 stock bumper. Here’s a brief overview of what it takes to make it fit.

jack stands

First, get your care safely up on jack stands. You don’t have to remove the wheels, but it makes getting to the bolts in the wheel wells easier.

Bumper Cover Off

It looks like you’ve dissected your car, but getting the bumper cover isn’t all that hard. Start by removing the three 10mm bolts under the bumper in front of the air dam. Remove two screws to drop the skid-plate. Remove the 5 plastic rivets holding the lower bumper to the air dam. Remove the plastic rivets at the end of the bumper where it meets the end of the air dam. There are two on each side, you only need to remove the one toward the rear of the car. Reach up into the wheel well and remove the two 8mm positioning bolts. The only thing holding the bumper on now is the two Torx-30 bolts in the front. Position something under the bumper to support its weight and remove those two bolts. Pull the bumper up and off the locating pins in the front. You’ll need to disconnect the temperature sensor and the wiring harness to the turn signals. Remove the lights from the parking lights and side markers. It’s also a good opportunity to replace all of those bulbs if you car is a couple of years old like mine.

Cover removed

You can remove the chrome piece by pushing it through from the back. The single slat is glued on. Prise it up a bit with a screw-driver and just pull it off. If you think you want to go back to stock later, be careful, otherwise, give it a good yank and don’t worry about bending it. But save the pieces regardless, you’ll need them as a template in the next step. You do have a decision to make, however. If you want the option to go back to stock, then once everything is off, you will likely want to paint the parts that will behind the new grille flat black. If you’re trying to improve air flow, like me, you’ll just want to cut it all out as I’ve marked in the photo.

new opening

As you fire up the dremel tool, try not to think about how much a new bumper cover is if you slip. Here you see the bumper cover upside-down. You can see the size of the new opening. I chose to leave the piece in the middle to add some stability to the bumper cover. I painted it black. You’ll also notice I replaced the bottom grille as well. This looks like one of those expensive ones I’ve seen for $150 advertised at a number of sites, but it cost me $.80. It’s made out of gutter-guard from Home Depot.

how much to cut

How much to cut? That’s the question. Use the chrome piece as a template and you’ll see the tabs are in the wrong place, and the new grille is about twice as thick as the stock one. You can either make a gaping hole in the bumper cover and figure out how to attach the grille later, or modify the grille to fit more or less in the available opening. The lines show how much I cut. This took a couple of hours and about a dozen cutting bits, but that’s just me. In the end, it fit snugly and I added some glue just to be safe.

everything together

Here’s the finished product all glued in and the lower grille painted black. It really fits well in the opening and you can’t tell what a hatchet job went on to get it in place. Before putting everything back together, I wanted to try one more thing.

new thing

This is another item from the HD Racing Supply (Home Depot.) The MINI radiator is twice as thick below the bumper as above it where the condenser sits in front of the radiator. Air feeds in from the lower grille as well as through the bumper, but it tends to wash up. By adding a blocker as indicated by the arrows, the air is forced through the radiator. At least that’s the plan, anyway. Rather than spending $150 for the part, I thought I could make my own. So here’s the GeorgeCo Air Diverter. $2.

Dyno Day

Oil Pan Plug

I went in to Behe Performance for a track-day inspection. I got that, but I also got a couple of surprises — one pleasant and one expensive. I knew my car was leaking oil. You could see it dripping at the drain plug. But it turns out the pan seal was going bad and the drain plug was almost stripped. In the photo you can see how two of six threads are already gone. So rather than losing all of my oil on the track at Summit Point this weekend, I went ahead and had the pan replaced. That’s the expensive part. Now the pleasant part.

Behe has a new Dynapack dyno. John suggested we should hook my car up to the dyno to see what potential there might be for doing some dyno tuning. From the factory, my car came with 163 horsepower (at the crank) and 155 ft-lb of torque. If you assume a 10% drive-line loss in horsepower, that should translate to about 148 hp at the wheels. I have done the typical bolt-on mods of pulley, intake, exhaust, hotter coil, cooler plugs, and uprated plug wires. On the engine management side, I also have a canned tune from MTH. We were expecting something around 180 to 185 hp.

Much to my surprise (and I think John’s as well) it was pulling 188.8 hp at 6900 RPM. Max torque was 165.9 ft-lb at 4250 RPM. Considering those numbers were at the wheels, that’s about 207 hp and 188 ft-lb of torque at the crank. Chart below. Not bad when you consider the cost of those mods adds up to only about $1,500.

dyno plot

As for DMH, John also had their Cooper S test car which he let me drive. This beast has a re-worked head and cam as well as extensive tuning from John. It’s pulling over 240 hp at the wheels and a max of 190 ft-lb of torque. It revs all the way up to 8,000 RPM. When I was driving it, John kept telling me to stick my foot in it and stop driving like a granny because I was shifting short at 7,200 RPM. It was almost too much power for a street car, but I can only imagine what it must be like on the track. It was quite impressive.

I’ll go back to get some more dyno-tuning in the future. I’m not sure John can get much more horsepower out (short of raising the rev limiter some more), but he thinks he can get me 170 ft-lb of torque at the top end (6900 RPM is only 143 ft-lb now.)