Rufus :: 2005 MINI MCS JCW

Discussion in 'Member Garages' started by agranger, Aug 21, 2017.

  1. agranger

    agranger MINI of the Month June 2009
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    Rufus :: 2005 MINI MCS JCW (2017-08-21 11:29:48)
     
  2. MCS02

    MCS02 Moderator
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    Looks Good!
     
  3. Dave.0

    Dave.0 Helix & RMW Powered
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    Chili Red R53, best Modern MINI
     
  4. 00Mini

    00Mini Well-Known Member

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    Nice looking ride and I really like red on red !!
     
  5. HillbillyChili

    Jun 14, 2017
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    Welcome back to the MINI world!
     
  6. agranger

    agranger MINI of the Month June 2009
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    Well… I’m feeling a bit of closure on my restoration project for Rufus, so I thought I'd write a summary post. I bought him with an eye towards building a sporty, fun, dependable R53 and I think I’m there. I had targeted making it to MOTD 2018 and I got back from that event last week after a wonderful bit of driving.

    In August, 2017, I found a 2005 MCS JCW on CarGurus w/ 83k miles and a fairly clean CarFax report. After a remote inspection service checked the car out (they found the normal issues I expected for an R53 of this age), I bought the car and flew out to Austin, TX to pick Rufus up. I let my wife choose the name and, when she saw the Chili Red body, roof and painted arches, her Latin courses from high school kicked in.

    Here he is on delivery day:

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    The purchase went well and I started driving home to Charlotte, NC right after picking him up. I hit an auto parts shop for new wiper blades and a handful of emergency gear (compressor, slime, etc). I made it to the MS/LA border when the idler pulley seized and took out the serpentine belt. It took me until 2pm or so the next day to find the parts and make the repairs, but I made it back home, some 18 hours later than expected, but all in one piece.

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    I took week off to recover from the trip, but I had to get to work on Rufus fairly quickly

    THE LEGAL STUFF

    Rufus spent the first 5-6 years of his life in Canada and was then imported down to Austin. When I got him, he was still speaking French (the odometer read in KM, the temp in Celcius and the owners manual was in French). I had the ECU reprogrammed at the dealership, which wiped the memory and caused me some issues with emissions inspections here in NC (you need several hours of driving in the ECU to be sure that no emissions codes are thrown), but I took a 100 mile drive one Saturday morning and made it through that. Once some leaking PS lines were fixed, the title, license and registration happened smoothly. A new battery solved some ECU weirdness.

    INTERIOR

    I was still pondering the final style of the car, but I knew that the interior would need some help. The space cloth seats were nasty, as was the carpet, so I took all of the seats out and wet vacuumed them all several times. Several screws and the CD changer bracket got sanded and a fresh coat of black paint.

    While going over everything, I discovered that the headliner was worse than I thought, so a new sueded liner was put in. New dark grey gauge faces and a Whalen hand brake handle (to match the gear knob that has the JCW engine # engraved on it from owner #1) were fitted. Several other little bits and pieces were replaced or repaired to get everything looking clean and complete.

    As I moved on with styling the car, I decided to de-chrome almost everything. I bought some 3M DiNoc vinyl wrap in a medium-grey dry carbon fiber finish and went about learning how to apply vinyl. I did the 3-piece dash in this vinyl and I immediately loved losing all of the glare and reflections from the painted dash pieces.

    As a treat for myself, I got a new GPS unit, a Garmin DriveSmart61NA LMT-S (their big new edge-to-edge model)

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    EXTERIOR

    I went for the easy fix of the antenna base first. It was cracked when I bought it, so a new base and a stubby antenna were ordered. While back there, I installed a brake light pulsar circuit to draw a bit of extra attention to the little car when stopping.

    All of the lights looked a bit dated on the car. All of the plastic was faded, hazed and yellowed… not a good look. I replaced the turn signal lenses, polished the fog light lenses (plus silvered bulbs to get rid of the egg-yolk effect) and replaced the side marker lenses w/ smoked plastic and LED lights. The headlights were sanded down and polished clear and I cracked them open and painted the interior housings, Joey mod style, leaving just a bit of chrome inside for sparkle. I tried to save the tail lights, but they were too far gone. I opened up the new tail light housings and painted any chrome in there black.

    Just for fun, I got some JCW logo puddle lights… why not? About this time I did a chip repair on the windshield, just to make sure the heated windshield doesn’t crack (a Canadian option… it has to be pricy). I also found a club badge for my old crew, Metroplex MINI in Dallas, so I ordered one up for my new club, Tar Heel MINIs, here in the Carolinas.

    I took the same vinyl from the interior and wrapped lots of bits on the outside: headlight rings, gas cap, door handle covers, side mirror caps and the cap over the rear license plate. I also got some matte black tape to black out the chrome beltline just under the windows.

    A new set of Hella Twin Tone horns went in as well… one of the horns wasn’t working when I bought Rufus and they were pretty weak to start with.

    I’m a Zaino guy, so once the exterior paintwork was done (below), I polished out everything and applied 3 coats of Zaino.

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    WHEELS AND TIRES

    I went through several different false starts, but I finally settled on OZ Ultraleggeras in 17” with a matte graphite finish and Bridgestone Potenza RE-71R tires (very sticky summer tires) in 205/45R17. My thoughts here were that the Ultraleggeras were light and had a look of 18” wheels given their spokes that run all the way out to the rubber. Rufus is a fun only car for me (not my daily driver), so I figured I could get away with high wearing rubber. They were ordered up from Tire Rack and they showed up less than 48 hours later!

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    BODY WORK

    There were several rust spots spread across the car, so I knew he was going to the body shop. About ½ of the body panels were repainted and those that weren’t got some PDR love. Both the bonnet and rear hatch were being painted, so I had them remove all of the badging and weld up the holes that were put there at the factory for badging (nose wipe and booty wipe).

    I had picked up some used aero side sills in Dallas on my way home with the car, so these got a fresh coat of paint and were mounted up.

    Anything in red color pencil was repainted!

    [​IMG]


    ENGINE

    My goal is to have a very dependable R53 (seems like an oxymoron at times), so I’m doing a lot of service in advance of it really being needed. I don’t like my fun time being impacted by maintenance or repairs, so it’s a trade I’m willing to make. It’s probably easier to show a bulleted list of jobs that were done:

    • Crank pulley replaced w/ a SuperDamper unit
    • Belt, belt tensioner and idler pulley were replaced (I had to put on a plastic idler pulley on the way home and I’d prefer a good quality metal unit
    • Vibra-Technics engine damper (mount)
    • Superchager oil service
    • Water pump
    • Thermostat and thermostat housing
    • Redline MTL transmission oil replacement
    • Oil and oil filter change
    • New spark plug wires
    • New spark plugs (1 degree colder)
    • Fuel filter and fuel pump (both complete assemblies, fighting some gauge and fuel starvation issues)
    • Timing chain guide rails and tensioner
    • Coolant exchange w/ new brass bleeder screw
    • New valve cover gasket and bolts
    • New fuel injector seals and clamps
    • Lots of seals, gaskets and clamps
    [​IMG]



    SUSPENSION & BRAKES

    The suspension work took me much longer than I expected. The first 5+ years of the car’s life was spent in Canada and so many parts were seized together that I did a lot of extra work. I broke a ball joint extractor, 2 pickle forks and the few pieces that did separate were damaged during the separation process. I got pretty good w/ penetrating oil and a torch, but to no avail. I also had the heads of both pinch bolts that hold the front struts to the wheel carrier snap off, necessitating 2-3 hours of drilling to extract the bolts.

    • Greene coil overs (BC units w/ custom valves and Swift springs) w/ front camber plates – had to grind out the upper strut mount holes to be able to adjust camber.
    • HR Rear Swaybar
    • Inner and outer front ball joints
    • New front lower control arms w/ Powerflex bushings
    • adjustable end-links on all 4 corners
    • new tie rods (inner and outer)
    • strut tower brace
    • lower rear control arms
    • A BBK in red from Wilwood… the new 6-pot calipers up front and the hand brake capable calipers for the back. I didn’t like the length of the new front lines they sent me, so I had some new ones made up that were 5 inches longer. The rears came together nicely w/ the special kit from Todd at TCE Performance.
    • Set the ride height, corner balance & alignment

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    WRAPPING IT UP AND MOTD 2018

    I was trying to finish this project for MOTD 2018 and I got it done w/ just a week or so to spare. I ran out to Sal at Kintech to have everything I did looked over well and the report came back positive!

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    WHATS NEXT?

    Is modding ever really finished? Probably not, but I’ve got a few projects on the notepad already. I’m in no hurry as I’m really looking forward to driving the car for a bit, but here’s the list of things that are up next… probably once the weather turns cold again in the winter.

    • A new clutch… probably OEM style w/ a Quaif LSD while I’m in there
    • re-apply the foam on the inside of the vents, just under the rear hatch… it’s falling apart
    • Install a new cooling fan resistor to fix the low speed fan
    • Fix the aux input jack (the install is bit dodgy looking)
    • Have the steering wheel refurbished (it’s a bit hard and needs more padding)… a new gear shift gater and e-brake boot as well
    • Engine bay cleanup and dressing
    • Perhaps a new power steering pump… this one seems to be a bit slow for the first 20-30 seconds of the car running.
    • ???
     
  7. Dave.0

    Dave.0 Helix & RMW Powered
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    and I saw your car at the Dragon and it looks great.
     

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