Those are some fantastic pictures. That last pic is perfection. Rufus in his natural environment. Very cool. Thanks for posting.
All of the Killboy shots (the last 3) have strange exposures to them... the color and light is all wonky. I wasn't able to make myself happy w/ my current photo software. The framing on that last one w/ the twisty road at the bottom is very nice. Thanks for all of the kind words, opinions and support. Just for the sake of it, I'm going to try and do a wrap-up post with a summary of everything that happened over the past 9 months or so and plans for the future. It's gonna take me a while.
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: 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. 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. A new set of gauge faces in dark grey were sourced to replace the red/blue Union Jack faces that the previous owner had put on... they were nice, but not the vibe I was going for. The window tint was pretty well shot, so I had the old stuff removed and a fresh layer of ceramic tint applied in a nice dark grey. As a treat for myself, I got a new GPS unit, a Garmin DriveSmart61NA LMT-S (their big new edge-to-edge model) 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. 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! 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! 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 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 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! 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. ???
Some beauty shots from MOTD. I've been busy doing some work on my daily driver (A Volvo XC60... brake pads/rotors, oil, plugs & some interior refreshing bits) and paying my wife back for all of the hours I spent out in the garage getting Rufus finished. I finally got out and gave Rufus a good cleaning after MOTD on Sunday morning and it was nice to be out in the garage puttering about without feeling any time pressures or fighting seized bolts.
I have to clean up my car and take some spring 2018 shots before it's summer. Looking great. Cool location, too.
Well... it's time for the annual NC state inspection, so I can't ignore the codes that Rufus threw a month or so ago... The first one was a fuel system evap leak (P0455 Evaporative Emission System Leak Detected - Large leak). The previous owner disclosed that a mechanic shop had mentioned a crack fuel filler neck, so that was a likely culprit. I drove the car until the fuel was down to 1/8 of a tank, ordered parts and bolted it up. It took all of an hour and required less than 10 fasteners to be removed. Jack up the rear left corner, remove the wheel, remove the wheel well liner, remove 2 bolts that attach the filler neck and one worm-drive clamp that attaches the filler to the gas tank. Open up the new parts and install in reverse order as removal. While I was in there, I replaced the gas cap as well... that's a usual likely culprit for a leak like this. There's where the filler neck attaches to the gas tank (the worm drive clamp in the back, a bit fuzzy in this pic) and a good overall pic of the filler neck, in the left rear wheel arch (liner removed). Here's where the neck pokes through under the gas cap door, from the inside of the wheel well. I also had a code P0138 O2 Sensor Circuit High Voltage Bank 1 Sensor 2, which a bit of research means that either the post-cat O2 sensor is bad (most likely) or the cat is having issues (less likely). I decided to try the simple fix first, so I orded a pair of NGK O2 sensors (I've read bad things about off-brand o2 sensors and wierd stuff about the Bosch sensor only working well in the post-cat position. They were $90 each on Amazon, so I got 2. Last night I put the front left corner up on a jack stand (as high as it could go) and removed that wheel. The post-cat sensor is easy enough to get to with the offset O2 sensor socket (a $25 set from Amazon came with an assortment of shapes/sizes, which is good as I needed a different one for the other sensor) in the photo below. There was a 10mm nut holding some heat shielding in place that covered the wiring, but it was really a simple replacement job. I was amazed that the old sensor wasn't rusted on there... it came out smoothly and I was expecting a fight (I had my penetrating oil and torch under the car with me already). Unplug the cable, screw in the new O2 sensor finger tight, turn 3/4 revolution to tighten and plug it up. Replace the heat shield and you are done! The pre-cat sensor was in a tricky location, just behind the engine, under the coolant tank. If you remove the rear plugs from the coil pack (and remove the strut tower bar in my case) you can just barely reach it once you bend some heat shielding out of the way. I was able to get the deep socket from my set on this one and it broke free nicely as well. I had to get creative w/ some zip-ties to make sure the wire didn't hit the header, but it all went back together again nicely. I got the car put back together again and cleared the code. It started right up and ran smoothly in the garage, but I'll need to drive it a bit and go through several start/stop cycles to see if the code comes back or if I fixed it. ----------- EDIT: I made a 25 mile trip at lunch with 5-6 on/off cycles and no codes thrown! I need to get another 50 miles on the clock before having the inspection done, but this is good news!
Something I may want to do to my electric blue - not throwing codes, but could failing O2 sensors cause higher fuel consumption by misreading the O2 levels in he exhaust? I am chasing the reason why this car never gets close to the mpg of the other two Minis in the stable.
Could be. I also got a couple of 'fuel lean' codes in there, which I attributed to the O2 sensor going bad. Rufus did seem to have a bit more low-end pull yesterday (according to the butt-dyno)... perhaps things are running more smoothly. Better emissions and fuel economy are better for the world as well. I believe that it was really the post-cat sensor that died, but with this car I tend to over-do maintenance... If it breaks, it's going to break when I'm out having fun on a vacation day (and nowhere near my house), not when I'm getting groceries (as it's not my daily driver). If one went, odds are that the other was getting old as well, so if I'm there w/ the tools in my hands, why not get it done? Oh yeah... I got an unsolicited request to buy my spare webspoke wheels from a fellow R53 owner (a local guy who bent a rim and needed some extras), so I turned that cash into a TireRack.com order... I've got a spare wheel w/ a 215 width tire on the way (I put on 205 width because I heard of some clearance issues). This will be my 'pitch it in the boot' wheel so I can have a spare tire handy and will let me test fit the 215 width before I commit to buying a full set. I'll also have a spare wheel in the exact same color, just in case something bad happens...
Aw crap... the fuel evap system (large leak) code is back. I'll have to do some digging this weekend. EDIT: I checked any fuse that I could find remotely associated w/ the engine... all looks OK. The battery is less than 1 year old and we have fairly mild conditions here in NC. I'll do a bit of digging on Saturday, but it may need a smoke test to find the leak, so I've got an appointment with a decent local shop on Monday morning.
Well... I couldn't find the evap issue. I checked every hose I could find under the bonnet and checked the gaskets around the fuel filter and pump housings. Everything seems OK to me. I dropped Rufus off at a local mechanic's shop. Odds are they are going to have to smoke test the evap system under the bonnet and find the leak that way. I thought about going to see Sal at Kinetech, but that's quite a schlep out there and this is work that most anyone should be able to do. I've got a solid shop that's a 10 min walk from the house, which makes for a much easier choice. I'll go to Sal for the clutch work later this year... I think I'll go for convenience this time. Will let you know what turns up.
Just got the call from my local guys. The charcoal canister is cracked and leaking... probably the cause of the evap leak, but they see evidence that there is a leak on the top driver's side fuel tank. They are wondering if the car bottomed out on something, pushed the fuel tank up and cracked various bits on the top of the tank, along with the charcoal canister. Oh well... that's life w/ a 13+ year old MINI. New parts are on the way and they are going to drop the tank to investigate. The guy did say that he usually cringes when he sees a modded up car come in, but was amazed that I had real, quality parts on there... the mechanics were having fun. ------- EDIT: Second call back from the mechanic's shop. I had authorized the charcoal canister replacement and labor to investigate the fuel leak from the top of the tank. They found that the top of the tank was cracked and had a good-sized hole in it. They think they spotted a place where a piece of lumber (spot was shaped like a corner section of a 2x4) may have hit the fuel tank, lifting it and breaking the top of the tank... possibly the charcoal canister at the same time. $370 for a new OEM fuel tank, expedited (get it tomorrow instead of 3 days for $50 more). I've got a fun drive this Sunday and I want some safety margin to get the car back for that and time to test drive it, so I paid up.
Wow - that is the first I've heard of anyone/any vehicle cracking a fuel tank on the top by hitting something. Are the fuel tanks some sort of plastic / compound material or are the metal? Glad that you found it though - and that it can be fixed pretty easy. That said, mucho $$..
I have jumped my MINI a few times and have landed hard but have never cracked a fuel tank. * Note I did not jump the car on purpose.