1st Gen R53 Cooper S Most liked posts in thread: My 2005 R53 Daily Driver build thread

drove electric blue to the store today, 18 degrees F. I've never driven a Mini in that temperature, so here's what was odd: The power steering felt like there were "gaps" with lower resistance. Only in the parking lot at more than 90 degrees lock, and repeatable. Never felt that before. The car was parked inside before that and after. Also, that Megan Racing exhaust was ticking like crazy after I got back. 5 minutes and it was still ticking. Never heard a tick from it before. Maybe it was a heat shield that was ice cold from the drive and in the garage it rapidly soaked up the heat from the cat and resonator, expanding/ticking? And to top it off, it sounded like I will need to do the timing chain tensioner on this car as well.

 

do R53 Minis with heated seats also have heated mirrors?

thinking of grabbing a set of these nifty mirrors
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Mini-Cooper-R50-R52-R53-Polarized-Blue-Anti-Glare-Heated-Split-Mirror-Glass/191772047105

 

My son got the Milltek non-resonated installed and when he started it up I was rather surprised - expected a major racket, but that thing is significantly quieter than the Megan Racing on the Electric Blue car.

I am starting to think that the resonated Milltek I ordered may be too quiet for the "fun car" I bought it for. I may just swap the systems between the cars. For now, I still enjoy every pop and buble the blue car does. I mean, it pops on upshifts, never heard that on the other car which runs a one ball mod.

 

I see a set of typical Youtube exhaust comparison videos coming up


What I have are actually 5 exhaust and 3 Minis, although one of them, the bone stock no-rust Florida OEM is off the car and I won't put it back on. Plus, it is the baseline everyone knows anyway. Then there are the following exhausts I can "demo" in a semi-controlled setup:

OEM one-ball modded currently on Dark Silver
Megan Racing with non-Megan resonator on Electric Blue
Milltek non-resonated on Chili Red
and soon
Milltek Resonated on either Dark Silver or Electric Blue, depending on what I decide to do with the noise.

The best part: I do have a real decibel meter that is quite accurate.

The Milltek is new and they say that over the first few weeks of use, it will get louder. The Megan is old and I found steel wool material blown into the tail pipe bends, so the batting, if any is left in the mufflers, has been blown out quite a bit. I assume the exhaust is at least 50k miles old.

The Megan is not only louder than the Milltek, it also barks, pops and burbles like crazy. I cannot believe that is just due to the exhaust. There has to be something about this blue car that makes it spit out those sounds. For example, the Dark Silver with one-ball mod pops far more frequently than Chili Red with OEM muffler setup did, and there's really not much of a difference between those setups other than the amount of attenuation of the pops. One just pops more than the other and the blue car with Megan is completely off the pop and burble scale. Maybe the blue car runs too lean, or it's too rich (https://youtu.be/bgS3PA5r0vY). Thing is - I want all our cars to do this

I don't believe the resonator actually can totally suppress those sounds, although perhaps there's just a lot less oxygen available where these explosions happen. They certainly don't originate in the rear of the exhaust system where those two cars were different, but maybe the availability of air to burn is more limited in OEM setups. Watch video above and scratch your head...

We didn't drive the Milltek more than two blocks due to a white crust of salt on the roads here, so too early to tell if that made a difference. It clearly had a much lower noise level compared to the Megan.

This video comparison thing won't happen until April when the dark silver car returns from hibernation.

 

I haven't bought the mirrors yet. That tint is/polarization is actually why I am hesitant. Now I am probably going to have an even harder time to get them.

Took me 10 minutes to find this thread. This forum layout will take me a while to get used to.

Nothing new to report other than the car running fine in freaking sub zero weather. Heated cloth seats FTW! My washer fluid froze up front and back - even though I had -20F stuff in there.

So there's a slight rubbing sound from the RR wheel I've been hearing since I got the thing on the road. Nothing visible, but I am guessing it could be the wear sensor. Anyone ever "hear" the wear sensor rubbing? The noise goes away with application of the brakes, increases in frequency and gets louder with increased speed. Not very loud, but without radio on and no back seat it's clearly audible. Possibly a side effect of drilled/slotted rotors? But why just one wheel?

I would rip the wheel off and look, but it appears to be no major thread tor safety and it's just too damn cold in the garage this weekend, plus I have a new badass fat bike to play with. That thing is bigger than the car, or at least it feels that way It has to serve as my foul weather commuter ride, so the Mini can stay in the garage when the snow starts piling up.

 

good call on the backing plates, but are there any in back? I know the stock front setup has them. Also - when braking the sound goes away and the brakes sound just fine like any other Mini, even the Wilwoods on my dark silver sound the same.

What makes me think the sound originates from the pad/rotor area is that just lightly tapping the brakes makes it disappear. I may pull it tomorrow just because it's a balmy 20F outside in the forecast and besides shoveling snow I won't have much else to do.

Bike - I am still dialing in the seating position and am learning about tire pressures. I come from skinny tire 16 pound road bikes. Now it's a 34 pound truck. Going to convert it to tubless tires next week to shave a few pounds off, but it's just a different animal. I bought it direct, as I don't need a bike shop for anything.

http://www.bikesdirect.com/products/motobecane/fat-bikes/fat-bikes-nighttrain-bluto-fatbike.htm

just a tad too big to fit inside the hatch without disassembly