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

I got lots of images of the LED high beam install, but dang it, one of the new H7 bulbs is a dud. So they may have a good price, but you may need to deal with returns, plus there's that chance they won't last very long. Not a huge deal for high beams, but I am now sitting there with one bulb installed and the other side waiting for another Amazon delivery.

Here's the one that needs to be replaced - note the size difference to halogen... it's a very tight fit behind the reflector and you must keep some extra room in all directions to allow for the leveling action to have space for up and down tilt.



My first install attempt shows what the rear of the high beam position looks like with the heat sink straps spread out. Note that I had to swap the bulb position by 180 degrees, since the fat bulge near the edge of the hole prevents the cap from closing even after I dremeled some plastic off the inside of the cap. It then dawned on me that the ring that mounts the bulb allows for that 180 degree swap. Duh.



For an install like this you have to be ready to do this, even if it turned out to be unnecessary. Always take extra time to think these mods through. I was a little too fast with the dremel decision, likely because in this case it doesn't compromise the housing to return to stock.



Installed it looks quite stealth from the outside.



Summary of where I am at with this: The bulbs fit very tight, but with enough careful tucking away of the braided cooling straps and the driver unit located near the side access panel below the high beam reflector, there should be enough room for the self leveling action. That is the most important consideration when placing the LEDs inside the housing. It beats drilling holes and patching them to move the driver outside. In fact, the connectors are so large, the holes would need to be quite large. With the right sealant it may still be on the table should I run into fit meant issues regarding the self leveling. The rear of the bulb is close to the cap, but there should be enough room before the cable makes contact with the cap during leveling. In addition to all these concerns, there's the bulb check coding of the ECU you need to go through to avoid random flashing of your high beams (at startup every time, then every couple of minutes while driving). Getting that feature disabled in the ECU is absolutely essential, or you'll find yourself behind a state trooper on the freeway flashing your extra bright high beams into his rear view mirror...

Why go through all this and deal with fitment and likely reliability issues? I'd never do this just for the cold 6500k light look alone, but these latest generation LEDs are so incredibly brighter than halogen bulbs, it is a total upgrade for your high beams. I am guessing double the output. Not all LEDs are capable to deliver more light than halogens, so unless you know the bulb will outperform the OEM setup, all this work is a complete waste of time only for the brief cold light high beam look. You'd be much better off with a full HID bi-xenon projector swap into the HID housing than what I am doing here, but we're talking daily driver and $50 invested for more light during the few percent of the hours you drive in the dark when you can use high beams. I really only miss extra bright high beams when I travel on remote desert roads in the west, but those few hours every year or two are well worth the extra output, and it saves me slapping external driving lights on the car. I am not really a fan of the look of auxiliary lights on these cars, plus, there' are 6 bulbs in the front of this HID car already. My son in his Chili Red car doesn't share that view, so he will add 4 more lights to the front of the car this summer. Will document how that works out (custom built mounts)

 

A barrage of Amazon packages arrived - Gates belt, timing chain tensioner, LEDs (all work this time around), plus some tools, more tools, and a few more tools. Should be all set to do a few jobs.

 

And this arrived on Saturday

 

Got a stainless steel version of it in my dark silver car. Soundtrack alone is worth buying this part. The plan is to build one or two from scratch using this one as a template, then sell it again. It's just a metal box with a few bolts in it. Project Binky - inspired, I will break out the angle grinder and see what I can do. I may improvise a few things because I don't have a good way of bending sheet metal the way they do, but the core design of that thing is still really simple.

 

So today I turned off the lights in the garage and started aiming the headlights against the rear wall where I still had marks from my (lowered) non-HID Mini. Way too high, so I am worried that the LEDs are causing that. Well, I started turning the adjustment screws and things were slowly getting in line with the other car's light beam level. Clearly, there was nothing obstructing the auto-leveling action in the housing either.

I did run out of adjustment on the passenger side, but then realized the light was off center and aiming too far to the right. (could tell in the housing). Once that direction was roughly adjusted, I found more adjustment down as well, and when done, I think I had it all aimed back to where it used to be, roughly. A night test drive will tell the full story. Nothing binding inside, so these bulbs are still a go for HID housings. You just have to fold the braided cooling straps tightly around the rear and forward into the housings, and make sure the bulgy part of the bulb faces down, as they are off center with respect to the rear cap. Facing down, they do not touch the cap, even aimed well down.

My only explanation for all this is that there was a lot of shoving around to get the driver and everything else inside. On the passenger side I actually popped the plastic reflector right out of whatever attaches it to the aiming motor. Snapped back in, but it likely isn't exactly in the same seating position. I can't wait to do a drive in the dark and see the high beams burn a hole into the night.

While messing with lights, I noticed one of the license plate bulbs was burned out. I took the opportunity to clean behind that whole assembly by removing the 4 torx screws holding the handle and lights to the hatch. Once off, you can get the light covers off the handle with a gentle push into the direction of the side where the shiny metal spring sits. In my case that's on the driver's side for both lights, probably standard. If you don't do that, you will break a plastic tab off the cover (happened on my other car, bought LED replacements and suddenly felt like I had a spotlight on my butt - used a black sharpie pen to dim that stuff). Definitely a spot on the car where I prefer the dim incandescent bulbs. Swapped both with fresh, as even the one that was still functional had black stuff on the inside of the glass and likely not a lot of life left in it.

Up next for the daily driver will likely be the cold air intake DIY job. I'm taking measurements today to order some metal, likely aluminum, as it is easier to work with except for the welding part. I don't have a welder that can handle aluminum, although this is a part that may do ok with the solder rod type approach, or I find a way to bolt a collar around the tube that needs to go through the box, which is really the only part that needs to be welded, unless you can find a different method. If the pipe is steel and the box aluminum, I can't weld it anyway.

 

Closeup of the HID/LED color temperature difference - guess some Osram CBI D2S bulbs would go better with the LEDs, but then the difference is far less than before with halogen high beams.




You can clearly see the fine cracks in my housings. These appears to be just in the outer layer of the plastic, but I'm not sure. If they go all the way through. So I am still tolerating the issue instead of breaking out the sanding/polishing kit to remove the top layer. If somebody sold replacement lenses, I'd have these lights in the oven in no time, but so far I haven't found anything but complete and overpriced light housing replacements.

 

Got that Subaru bearing out of the knuckle. Finally got that bitch@#$!!! I suppose it's all a learning experience and we all need our multi-week corrosion fight to appreciate cars that have not been driven in salt.



To get this bearing out of the knuckle I used a modified version of my Mini lower control arm bushing press tool, upgraded with some extra 16mm nuts and extra large washers from Menards that are wider than the opening in a brake rotor, plus 4 tall metric sockets used to space off the brake backing plate against the rotor. This finally cracked it loose when I took the impact gun to the press tool. The rest was a matter of hammering screw driver blades and chisels into a tiny gap to work it out. 3 weekends of cursing come to an end. Now I just need to get it all back together. Rust really really sucks!

Now I also understand why the very corroded Mini R56 rear trailing arms are often sold with the wheel bushing/hub installed: they can't get it out without major effort! It is the same setup with the Subaru, except there it's steel on steel, and even that seizes up massively over a few years of salt spray! It cost me a new lower front control arm and a new brake backing plate to get it out, as well as a few more tools. I almost bought the big 20 ton press from Harbor Freight as my small 6 ton press won't accept parts that large.

While all this was going on, my best buddy kept an eye out for those Minis that had to park out in the rain

 

and since the thread always can use photos, a quick cell phone snap about 3 weeks ago when our short summer came to a quick end. There's snow in my yard right now.

 

I checked the cable and it is tight. Perhaps I should swap it out just for the heck of it. I think I have one on the shelf. If they are not left/right specific, I may be able to use that one (it was bought for the right side of the red car but we didn't need it).

The way the lock behaves, I think it is the actuator. If the cable was slack, I doubt it would get tighter with each subsequent attempt. It is more likely that something is sticky in the mechanism that actually moves the cable.

Photos from Saturday - just the first 6 are online on Flickr, more to come. Real eerie light with the fog there. Local hero James French still came out to flog his dad's '97 Benetton around the facility at a pace that would put him into the Indycar field.

It's blue like my Mini that was parked under the trees you can't see for all the fog here


James French on a fog tear

 

did a little research and I think I need to replace the little actuator motors in the actuator unit. Great DIY over on the NAM site. It'll take some disassembly, then you take the actuator unit apart and replace the little 12V motors in there that tend to to weak. Parts are about $5 on ebay (with a 3 week shipping delay from Taiwan...). It's a lot of work, and you need to get the correct motors with the proper shaft length, or you need to do some cutting and B welding to get a new motor made up.

This is just one image from that article. My symptoms point at a bad motor, so I'll buy a couple of them to fix the current actuator and then have spares for future failures.



bI ordered 3 motors to mess with from here

https://www.ebay.com/itm/352564002662

Type J would be the size to order (and trim with a dremel to length), $3.49 each free shipping. these are Mabuchi FC280 motors, more or less identical to what is in use here, but they may run different RPMs. Unlikely as these parts are very standardized. I'll be the guinea pig and report here when I get around to doing this. It'll be an afternoon of tinkering, but if it fixes the lethargic lock behavior, I may create my own DIY of the procedure.

 

There's a great ModMini video on youtube that details the process. It also helps to have all the replacement parts handy when you take it out, because over the two weeks I waited between removal and install (order parts I didn't expect I needed, weekend away, etc...). I forgot a few details that cost me extra time during the install. As always, first time takes the longest. I learned a lot doing this one and wouldn't have a problem doing the next one myself again.

Key things to remember: mark where the bolts go that hold the bottom of the regulator to the base of the door. I used a Sharpie pen to circle the bolt/washer location down there. Got the angle correct on the first try. Also mark the plastic base inside the door it it isn't clearly visible where those adjusters need to sit.

Have all new parts ready. No reason to be skimpy here and buy just a new motor. The rest of my window lifter assembly was so worn out, even if I hadn't messed up the coil with the cables, I would have ordered a new part. Water and grit gets in there through the window opening and the lower pulleys especially get really scratchy and hard to move, which in turn will kill motors faster.

Make a note of where each bolt comes from. The four golden torx screws that connect the motor to the regulator only fit there, while the three silver screws that hold the motor to the door will fit there and where the golden torx screws go. Once in the car, you'll wonder why you have those useless golden screws left over and nothing that holds the motor to the door

Clean the window part that never gets exposed outside the door so that there's no grit falling right on your new regulator pulleys when you start hammering on a screw driver to tighten those clamp wheels. In fact, clean everything in there. It's the sand that slowly destroys the regulator assembly.

And while you have that window out, if you ever had any issues with the power lock mechanism, this is a great time to replace that thing as well. Keep the old parts because you will need to reuse a plastic sleeve and a metal bracket from the old part, even when you buy an OEM Mini replacement. Take good notes and photos how the whole thing is installed before you take it all apart. The routing of some cables behind the key cylinder shaft and the way the cables hook to the unit are not really intuitive. Even getting it out and back in isn't that simple, even if you remove the whole window regulator. Make sure the door latch pull cable is behind the regulator, too, or you'll be doing another removal and install (good practice, though, I have to attest) .

going to get under the silver car next to put the non resonated Miltek pipe in. We Want More Noise!

 

Hit the door REAL hard while you are trying to open it with the switch, right below the tweeter - a few times and most of these will go back to working, for a while...

parts I used

window motor
ACDELCO 11M294 {#19307398}Front Left; To 5/05 (make sure you know your build date - different after that date)
$60.79
https://www.rockauto.com/en/moreinfo.php?pk=5626911

regulator driver side - ÜRO PARTS 51337039451PRM {#51337039451} Premium Roller Bearing Regulator $84.79 + Shipping
https://www.rockauto.com/en/moreinfo.php?pk=6335943

 

I keep unlocking and locking my car, rolling down windows for hot weather in the driveway, then closing again at night - and it all works, every time. So good

Now focusing on some rattles under the car that appear connected with the exhaust. Rear heat shield under the bumper making noise just when I tap the bumper cover, and I think the hangers may also be gone, as the exhaust keeps eating away on the black plastic in the lower bumper cover area - meaning the tips move around too much. I have new parts ready to go in should I find ripped exhaust hangers.