Dark Silver in the garage

I'd be surprised a pellet stove or anything else with open flame is legal in a garage. For example, electrical outlets must be 30" above the garage floor to comply with code to reduce the risk of combustion from sparks.

I use the open garage door trick to cool the garage in summer, but heating it that way only cools the basement of the house where the garage door connects. I'd have to crank the upstairs heat to 80F to see any impact in the garage.

 

Time for an update before it's winter again and the car goes back into hibernation. It's been driven about 2 miles this year...

Between a zillion other projects around the house, I actually found some time to work on this car. With the Subaru out of the garage and the daily Mini as well fully operational, and just one other Mini stored inside, I actually have space to work.

For this car I had a few basic jobs to do this year. First I did the timing chain tensioner swap (not hard to do, so no coverage here - get a flexible head ratchet at Harbor Freight and use a short extension),plus I want to swap from resonated to non-resonated mid pipe on the Milltek exhaust. but , I figure I better get around to doing the big job first, which is the aluminum trialing arm conversion. I've punted that many times because I wanted the arms cleaned up like new and doing the hillbilly sandblasting job in the driveway just never happened.

So I used plan B last weekend. That involved chemicals. I looked around and a product called Krud Kutter was highly recommended. No harmful vapors, too, so I got a 32oz bottle on Amazon, put on safety glasses and gloves, put a control arm into a large Walmart storage bin and got busy with a detailing brush, some brass and steel brushes from Harbor Freight and a 50/50 mix of Krud Kutter with water. Note that whatever you spill will really clean your concrete garage floor. My bin cracked and I had a pretty massive leak so now there are a few square feet of white garage floor to get filthy again.



About 45 minutes of applying the product, plus some scrubbing where corrosion on the aluminum arms was evident and I got a very clean part, etched ready for paint. See before after here



Next up was proper masking for paint. That took almost longer than the cleaning process, but it was well worth the time to keep the machined surfaces paint free. Learned a few tricks doing this and once I figured out how to do this it went pretty quickly (use a small hammer on the edges after taping over, the masking tape will come apart where you hit the machined edges).



I had a couple of cans of quality primer and silver wheel paint left over from a previous project, plus silver was more appropriate than the red caliper paint I had sitting next to it as an alternative. I want the part to look like R56, but not corrode, so silver it was.

First primer



then the silver coat



and masking tape removed



The paint is still drying based on the smell in the garage. So the parts are waiting for the next weekend or whenever I find enough time to tear into the rear suspension. I won't do this unless I have enough time to complete the conversion. I think I have every part and bolt I need to do the swap. Originally I wanted to get 2 more rear control arms, but for now I'll just take what I have and put it together. I may even shoot some video of the install/conversion, since that's a subject you can't find on YouTube as far as I can tell.

 

I don't see why not. It's a bit expensive for that. 32 ounces about $15. You mix it 1:1 or 1:2 with water depending on how strong you want it to be.

 

Quick trailing arm update - the early snow and super frigid temps we had over the last 3 weeks have slowed things down in my garage, but I finally buttoned it all up last night. The car sits on its wheels, needs an alignment (next spring) and it went without major obstacles. I had to order some parts I didn't thing I needed and that cost another 7 days. I recorded everything on GoPro, but there's a lot of editing needed to keep this concise. Will do that on a cold boring winter weekend, I think. Until then just some photos and general comments:


It all began with a big breaker bar, getting that trailing arm bolt loose and the old part removed



this came off



this went on - 5.1 pounds less unsprung weight, although the bolts are heavier as they are all longer. Basically 5 pounds off unsprung weight on each corner



Along the way to get the first one back on the car



One critical issue - without some modding, that fuel filler hose on my car would rub on the trailing arm casting edge. Had to shorten the hose and file down the ridge on the arm.



Driver side done, or so I thought. I put the big washer on the trailing arm nut on backwards. So I had to rip it all out one more time. Good practice.



From below. Who needs a GP when you can do this for a few hundred bucks with junk yard parts and some time?



Before the wheels went on, I replaced the resonator mid pipe of my Milltek with the straight pipe. My son's car with the straight pipe in it sound sooo much better. Now I wonder if I can put that resonator into the crappy Megan Racing system on the electric blue daily driver, as that system is way too loud...

 

The dark silver car now sits on dollies, pushed deep in the rear of the garage. This season I added a total of two (2) miles to the odometer. Guess I should drive it a little more next year. The blue Mini drove about 410 miles in 2019, the red one (my son) about 900. That's it for Mini motoring in 2019. Spent more time working on them than driving. As it should be

No idea what's in store for 2020, but the first thing this car needs is a proper alignment after the control arm swap.

 

I rode my bicycle about 5000 miles this year. No need to cold start a car twice a day. Prefer the quiet and healthy mode of transportation for the dull daily run to the office.

Everything else is either really short range to the store (again, don't want Mini to run 1 mile stints), or really long runs for at least 100 miles, plus I'd have to shuffle cars in the driveway to get one of the Minis out of the garage. Instead I usually grab the Subaru Outback that sits outside. And then there's our ridiculous winters - all Minis in hibernation for 5-6 months minimum while the Outback dominates the roads.

Once Minis wake up in spring, I start working on them and can't drive the car because it sits there in pieces until I get enough time to wrap it up, which is what happened to the dark gray car this year. I got a lot more Mini miles in during 2018, because the Outback had some extended garage time while being worked on.