1st Gen R53 Cooper S My 2005 R53 Daily Driver build thread

Not much progress last night. I managed to paint some POR-15 on a few tiny rust spots I was able to locate on the black painted subframe and rear control arms.

The more I go over the car, the more it becomes obvious that it has covered a lot of miles on gravel. Not only is there a fine layer of caked-on dust on everything in the engine and below the car, there is almost a sandblasting on parts possibly exposed to stone chipping. The lower rear control arms are completely peppered with impacts, while the upper arms are like new, just in a light gray smudge coat from years of dust exposure. I also washed out a spoonful of sand and small gravel from one of the brake line clips behind the front strut, an area where flying rocks can accumulate.

Test fitted 15mm spacers and I think without a change of camber, those are going to rub, especially with the 215/45s on my rims. For now, I'll leave the spacers off, as they aren't really on the to-do list, just leftovers from the other car.

Getting close to doing a some paint correction: Meguiars M105 and M205 are standing by as well as some foam and microfiber pads. The paint surface feels rough, so the car hasn't seen much wax or any other sort of paint protection since new. It'll definitely take a pass or two with the cutting compound. Going to glob on a ceramic coating once it's polished. Gotta get that all done in a week or two before it gets wet cold and nasty around here.

 

got matte on the red car, gloss on this one. I'm not in love with either one, but better than stock. The matte paint is really sensitive - took le than a week to find marks on a car that is parked in the garage all the time.

For the dark gray, I plan to build one from scratch, or better, use a cheap knock off for the mounting frame, but then gut the center and put in a metal grill section. My own low dollar hybrid version of those $500 rain gutter cover grills you can get from M7 and others.

Spent the night buffing turn signal covers and then fog light lenses. The (cheap to replace) turn signal cover came out fine, but the fog are totally sandblasted with extremely deep pitting. My 500 grit ran out on the first one and I am far from getting deep enough to start smoothing that out and polish the surface. I'm tempted to just replace the whole housing. More indications that this car traveled on gravel roads. The paint around these lenses is in surprisingly ok shape, though. Must be harder than the plastic on the lenses.

 

ha, but you can sand them making good progress. May take a while to get them clear again :mad2:

 

well, they seemed to be much harder material, and colder than the plastic. However, the amount of pitting from rocks in glass is just incredible then. Have to take a macro photo of the one I haven't touched yet.

I'll probably just replace them with Depot aftermarket, which are glass as well and look identical. $75 for the pair isn't too painful. Nobody sells just the lenses.

I like those bulbs - the bulbs in my housing looked like their orange paint had crackled and shriveled up. Definitely due for replacement

 

Good idea. Have to pick up a can tonight and see what it does.

Been wasting my time to update my new scan tool to the latest version. Crappy Chinese software keep disconnecting the device from USB just before updating, then tells me device not found. Not really relevant, because it seems to do everything I need with the installed firmware. It cleared up the airbag light just fine, but now I have codes for seat belt and seat belt tensioner (seat still out of the car - that's the point of the exercise - I want to see if I can get the car to work as a single seater cargo van). I guess I need to measure resistance for those two plugs and fool them with a resistor or bridge wire into thinking that we do have a passenger seat in the car. 3.9 ohm worked fine for the airbag.

 

the air bag isn't the issue any longer. That's covered with 3.9 ohms in the yellow plug. The errors are now coming from the seat belt pre tensioner explosive charge unit and the seat belt latch, both usually retained when people bolt their aftermarket seats to the OEM sliders, so few ever had to worry about warnings coming from those systems.

I am not putting aftermarket eats (into this car), but occasionally I want the entire passenger seat out for maximum storage on long solo trips. I guess plan B would be to just ignore the airbag light for the duration of such journeys, but first I'll measure those connectors on the seat and see if there's a resistance I can simulate.

 

Time for a few updates before I have a web backlog.

Some images from previous projects first. The air conditioner foam I mentioned for the cabin rear vents, here installed:



And the closed cell insulation foam around the radiator, now installed in the car. plastic around it treated with Meguiars Ultimate Black, because I was bored for a few minutes

 

The main job yesterday was to fill and drain the coolant twice. 1.5 gallons went into the car on round one, so the drain was pretty good with the water pump and all hoses removed, but not complete. I could still tell that there was some green stuff mixing into the orange, so drained it again. This time, with the front radiator hose at the bottom pulled, only about 3/4 gallon came out. Added more and bled the air. Amazing how long it takes this car to get up to temps, though, now that it is 50F in the garage. My dark silver heated up much faster when I did that earlier this summer. Took forever to get to 195 or so when the thermostat actually opens (and I turned the heater off)

Once all that was done, the passenger seat went back into the car and all airbag and seatbelt codes were cleared. I bought a "Creator C310" scan too on ebay for $40 - it pretty much does everything my Scangauge II or Torque App in the Android cannot do.

Between coolant fills and burps while the engine was cooling down and heating the garage space, I finished up my rear seat delete. My current design is a slight modification of my original build in the dark gray. In that car, I used some pretty heavy MDF for the lid, strong, but sometimes a bit hard to hold open while in the hinge (I use the two metal loops at the front of the rear seat to lock the plate with garden door latches)

This time I went with much lighter 1/4" plywood, made a much more accurate template with cardboard and paper to cut it as well. Last time I had some pretty good gap on the sides where the plastic contours are more complex. Transferred the template to the wood, got the jigsaw out and went to town. Immediately noticed that the material was too flexible, so I added some reinforcements. Glued those overnight with clamps and then installed those two latches to hold it in its place once in the car. Double plywood where those 1/2" wood screws go to keep them from poking through, more rigid that way a well, and it spaces the latch bold a little from the wood, making it easier to close.



The front bar between the latches is important, as that supports all weight going on the lid. It has to be about 3/4" thick. I went with a little thinner piece I had laying around, as I was going to wrap my carpet over it later, adding some thickness.

Then came the carpet. Leftover glue from the Chili Red headliner project was used to wrap a $10 Walmart black rug over the top side, plus some fine "classic felt" from the Walmart fabric department for the bottom. I cut the edges of the rug wider than the wood so it can seal out noise and keep small things from falling through the sides when in the car. The felt is just for looks, but it may add some noise damping. I can barely hear the fuel pump priming in this car (but that may be due to the fuel pump needing to be replaced... next year maybe)



and then the final fit - always like it when the rear starts looking more OEM. Sure wished I could find carpet that matches the car, but once it's in there you forget about the mismatch.



I'm still not sure how to solve the inside lining. In my dark silver, I just filled it with rags, tools, flat fixer and air compressor. Here I want to use some of the felt I got, but it has to be removable. Maybe some Velcro tabs in the right places. Right now this stuff is just laying in there.



For now, I have to leave it at this, as the paint is going to take up a lot of time and it's getting cold here. Really want to avoid having to heat the garage

 

Around 7pm I thought I'd break out the clay bar and begin prepping the car for some paint correction. 4 hours later I was finally done with that step. Never had a car shed so much crap into the clay before. I can throw away two clay bars after this job, but the paint is pretty smooth and clean.



why all this anal claying? well, mailman brought me a box...

 

Gyeon Q2 MOHS and a spray bottle of Q2M WetCoat to refresh it occasionally. First it's polish and buffing time. First time for this car. Not a lot of bad damage but it'll take a day or so to do it right.

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6F6MWnxnIU"]Gyeon Q2 Mohs Coating Review - ESOTERIC Car Care - YouTube[/ame]

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obG572fSQB4"]Gyeon Wet Coat Review - ESOTERIC Car Care - YouTube[/ame]

trying this on the "daily driver" first - if it delivers what they promise, I'll be doing the other cars as well, some time next spring/summer

 

Depot brand replacement fogs installed. Reflector and glass look good, but the mechanism for elevation adjustment only looks like OEM. It is such crappy soft plastic and was assembled with such huge tolerances that it has absolutely no gear function and you need a vise grip on the screw to adjust the angle of the reflector. Not a huge deal, but why do they even bother? This has to be an obvious design flaw apparent the moment you assemble the first unit.

Turns out the inside top mounting tabs on both OEM lights were broken off the housings - they were just hanging there on two bolts. It was time for new.

Tonight the car can finally get back on its wheels, now that the front end can be assembled and I (hopefully) won't have to take the wheel liners out again for a while. Guess I should give those fogs a quick check on height alignment against the garage wall.

Now back to polishing the hood and sides which is actually easier with the car on jack stands.