1st Gen JCW Refreshing Rufus - 2005 MCS JCW

2 new tires on the way for Rufus. During the alignment at the good race shop last year, they discovered that my coil-overs were loose in the mounts (due to the seized / drilled-out pinch-bolts) and I was running too much negative camber (probably due to the mis-managed shop that did my first post-refresh alignment). I had a screw in a tread and a bit of excess wear on the inside edge. I hadn't spent anything on the car lately and TireRack was running a sale on my favorite Bridgestone RE71Rs, so I ordered up 2 new ones. Tire Racks new mobile service, ASAP Tire, is coming out tomorrow to mount and balance.

That should put the MINI back in 'finished' condition... well... he could use a bit of an interior cleaning, but mechanically he will be good to go.

I need to get out and find a local club run soon. The South Carolina club seems to have a run every other week and they have some solid drive leaders.

 

Rufus is back on the road!

The ASAP Tire guy came out on Friday and the install went as expected. In less than an hour he had the two new tires mounted, balanced and installed. I basically opened up the garage door and he did the rest. $50 well spent (plus $150 each for the tires). My only nitpick is that he left the adhesive goo from the old balancing weights on the inside of the rims, so I'll have to get out the goo-gone and maybe remove the wheels to get it all. He did use some cool black-painted adhesive weights for the new balancing, so they look better on the dark grey wheels than the old grey metal (unpainted) ones.

I ran out to pick up a pizza on Friday night and it was nice being out and about in the MINI again. I should get out today for a spin as well... we've had 3-4 nice, dry days here in Charlotte (a rarity in early spring like this).

 

Oh yeah... I forgot to mention it. The guy from ASAP Tire that did my mounting had 4 floor-jacks in the back of his van. No jack-stands for him! He would normally just whip out the 4 jacks and lift all 4 corners that way!

Probably not a way that I'd want to support a car that I was going to crawl under, but he doesn't go under the cars... he just pulls the tires out the side. It's all about speed and ease for him and it makes perfect sense (plus, his jacks were much nicer than the Amazon special that I use that are only a step or two above Harbor Freight quality).

 

Poor Rufus hasn't made it much farther than our local pizza place in the past 6 months or so, but it has been a few years (longer than I like to wait), so he got some love for the end of 2021 and the start of 2022. A new carbon air filter, fresh plugs (the old ones look remarkably good), an engine flush (LiquiMoly) for 15 minutes, a new filter (OEM) and some fresh oil (LiquiMoly). I've got a new serpentine belt to go on as well (3-4 years old + not many miles on the old one), but the weather looks bad for the weekend and I've got one Christmas wreath that I have to take down by climbing out on the roof, so I'm heading up to get that done before the rain hits.

It was very pleasant to get out and wrench on the car a bit in a nice, relaxed manner... I took 30-40 minutes and just puttered about with detailing spray and cleaned the windows. It was so nice to be working in the engine bay after the full deep-cleaning. It's remarkable how clean and tidy you can keep a car when you barely drive it (which is both a joy and a sadness at the same time)!

My new years resolution: More miles for Rufus in 2022 (plans for MOTD are made, COVID willing).

 

I haven't updated this thread in a long while with actual work on Rufus. My wife was away last weekend, visiting family, so I decided to get out and enjoy some time in the garage... tackling some projects that were planned a long while ago but never seemed to get done.

1. Refreshing the foam in the rear hatch vents. Way back when I started this thread, I had noticed that the foam just under the rear hatch was in sad shape. I didn't realize exactly how bad it had gotten! The foam practically disintegrated when I touched it... it just turned to dust! Even picking up the old bits of foam was difficult. A bit of cleaning and some new foam (window AC unit filter material) fixed this issue:



2. Rear coil over dampening extenders: A few years back I installed Colin Greene's modified BC coil-overs. I bought the extender cables so that I could adjust the rear units dampening settings on the fly, but I never got around to installing them. It takes a bit of knowledge of where to drill and I just never put the time into figuring out where the right place is (plus you have to drop the suspension to do the install). With several hours of free time, I decided to get busy.

You have to remove the rear seats and the two rear side panels. Once you get through all of that, you can drop the rear suspension (I did one at a time), drill the hole, pass up the extender cable and fix it to the coil-over top. Then it's just a matter of returning everything back to as it should be. I drilled holes in the 'trunk' space to pass the adjustment knobs out of. You could just leave 'em in the space behind the plastic side trim and use the trunk access panels to reach them, but I thought they would look cool like this:



Really, the most difficult part of this is knowing where to drill so you come out directly on top of the coil overs. I watched a few YouTube videos and noticed the weld spots. You can see 4 of the 5 weld spots around the the base of the cable, above. I drew a little diagram to show you where to drill, if you ever need to know:








Honestly, I rarely see myself adjusting the dampers. If I'm going on a long highway cruise, I sometimes soften up the fronts, just to make that drive a bit more pleasant. A few years back I dialed the fronts to full soft, made the 3 hour highway drive to MOTD then dialed them back to a normal setting once I got there. Most of the time I leave 'em set 5 or 6 clicks from full-hard (on an 18-click scale, if I remember correctly).

I was very surprised at how much feel I got through the extenders. I can feel the same detents on the damper settings just like if I were using the knob on the top of the strut.

 

I bought the extenders from Colin when I bought the coil-overs. I can remember getting tired the day I put the rear suspension on (a long day, fighting several rusted/frozen bolts) and I knew that it was going to take more time/energy than I had at the moment to do the drilling for the extenders. That and I think I had MOTD coming up or some other time pressure, so I decided to delay the job. Unfortunately, it took me several years to get back around to doing the job. Honestly, I pre-set the rear dampers to about 1/3 down from full-stiff and it was good enough... I just saw someone on Facebook talking about doing this job at the very moment I was thinking "Man... I wish I had something fun to do this weekend." and it clicked. No time like the present!

A quick google search turned 'em up here: https://www.turnermotorsport.com/p-555864-bc-racing-rear-damping-adjustment-extenders-br-type/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwmPSSBhCNARIsAH3cYgaiJYIdZC6eVJFxoWrNrQF0WnvSOZQzBxFuU7SzMD7RzNcZvKe0GzkaAkkhEALw_wcB

I'd assume that the knob on the top is the same size, so these extenders should fit your BC coil-overs, but I don't know how far they need to reach for your car or where to drill... you will have to find another source of info if you want to drill top-down like I did, or completely remove the coil-overs so you can get a drill in there and drill up from the bottom of the car. To drill top down, I was able to remove the 2 bolts that hold the top of the shock tower to the car and then detach the drop link from the rear sway. This let me pull the coil-over down and pivot it to the rear, so I could get some clearance for the drill bit (just to be safe). It also gave me enough room to fish the extender cable up through the newly drilled hole (protected with a rubber grommet) and attach it to the damper knob on top of the coil-over before re-mounting. If you have to drill up to find the right location, you will probably need to remove the coil-over completely, just to get room to fit a drill in there and see what you are doing (to get the hole centered). You will also have to be careful, if drillling upwards, as there are several wiring harnesses in the area (at least there are on the R53), not to mention the side head airbag explosives (silver tube w/ yellow stickers in the top photo)... I wouldn't want to hit one of those things with a drill bit by mistake.