I will be retiring next spring and moving to Longview WA. I will make sure to look you up when we do!
I am in contact with PSMINI (Puget Sound MINIs) the MINI club in Washington State, and have participated in a few events with them in the past. Hopefully, will do more when they allow Canadians to cross the border into the US again. You are free to join up the Facebook groups for Size MINI Club of Vancouver and LXMBC (Vancouver MINI Cooper Club).
Wow, a whole weekend of people not doing anything to post on this thread? Wow. Guess my item of note I had to have the 2011 flat-towed to the MINI dealer Schomp in South of Denver for the dreaded half-power engine light, it would not stay running. I had service schedule for this coming Friday for general service, oil, brake fluid change, safety check, etc. etc. Guess I will wait and see how much I have to dip out of my bank for this one. It might be time to let the 86K mile Countryman find it's next owner. Anyone have a suggestion other than a new or newer MINI Countryman for the wife. I am taking thoughts on the subject. I am leaning toward Audi Q3/4/5 if I can find a good color lower mileage used. Don
Man I don't know what would be a good choice. Used cars are off the chart in some places. I had a guy at work that lives in Montana tell me a use Tacoma was more than a new one. I didn't do any Mini stuff this week end. I got a muffler for the Exige, I blew the old one out on a track day. I installed it on Friday, my wife and I took it out for a ride. She says she loves the car but hates riding in it. If it doesn't rain tomorrow I may take the Helmet to work. I told my wife I plan on putting the Helmet on BAT but she said keep it. I don't know, now is a good time to sale. If I do depending on what I get I may sale the Exige also and sit on the money till prices come down. If I do that I may just keep the 380sl for now and drive it, it has kind of grown on me. I took this picture the other day to play around with editing a HDR in BW.
Yes used car pricing is crazy nuts. Both of those cars Coup & Exige are specialty cars. Selling them on BAT is the place. If you sit on them they will sell later & possibly for more than they do now. I don't believe the cars that sell on BAT are in the crazy bubble regular cars are. Don I don't know what to tell you, but I'll try. Fix up your wife's MINI & keep driving it until things normalize in the market. Or buy her a new car if you can find one.
I read that the current new car shortages are to continue until 2023. Sounds amazing but they do predict a number of things correctly.
I really don't care if the new car market is slow. My car is 16 years old ,but still feels like new to me.
Now that temperatures are moderating a bit here in North Carolina, I need to get out and do some maintenance on Rufus, my R53. I've got the regular plugs / belt / oil / filter / cabin filter bits out in the garage... just need to get under the car and do the work! Right now, my wife's fancy new (well... 2 years old, but 1.5 of those were COVID years, so they don't really count) Audi A6 has a frozen actuator on the fuel door, so it's parked in the garage and not moving until I can get it into the shop (still under warranty). It has 1/8 of a tank of gas and I have no way of getting any more into it! There's an emergency pull cable in the trunk, but even that isn't working (so much for redundant backups).
In the old days this would be no problem. You could put a gas can on the passenger floor and run a line to the fuel pump. Come to think of it this may work you will just have to tap into the return line also. Think how impressed you wife would be!
Well here we go again. I found a British car show to go to on Sunday so I signed up. Now the weather report says it's might rain on Sunday. We are in a drought and on the day of the show it's going to rain. That's my luck. I don't take my car out when it rains. It's to hard to clean.
Getting everything tidy and sorted for this weekends tri-state run with DCMM, my local club. It'll be great to get out for a while.
Bit of a bummer but if’n that’s what it takes to get rain in California and the west coast then they should schedule a few more British car shows.
I took checkers to car wash today. A little dusty setting in it's cover. It looks great now, the only problem is I need to pull the wheels so I can clean the back side (white wheels).
Gotta imagine that you really have to keep after white wheels or if you don’t they are going to be a real bear to clean.
Got the 2011 CM back on Friday morning the Denver dealer had it valet'd to the house since it would be 120mile round trip in two cars. Could have had it sent up on a flat bed but Schomp has a valet service for those who want to pay, they ate the cost and reduced the bill down from $1700 for a low pressure fuel pump replacement amost $500 in labor to replace as they have to take out the back seats to get to that little piece. The oil and filter change and brake fluid change I had budgeted for, so not the crap from Saturday as mentioned. We are looking a potential new car in the Spring, the 2011 MINI parts are under warranty but I noted they wanted to do the front crank seal again, it was replaced but I have check the past bill to see if it was over 2 years ago. So it may go soon, in the spring or in the summer. Might be time. Brakes and rotors all checked out well, even though the sensors say 4000 miles for the fronts, do not trust the sensors as they wear weird. Anyway, overall a good experience with the dealer, not to fond of the labor cost but I did like the reduction in prices and comp. valet. Just have to remember to have them not wash or touch the inside of the car. I had them wash in windshiled inside and the monkey that did the work put grease on my white leather seats Idiot. Little things, car is running well, appears the LPFP was going bad overtime and we just figured with 86K miles it was just losing a few oats. I did see a nice 1year lease Audi Q3 return hit the local dealer today, it was listed at 40K ++, funny it had an MSRP of $39,500 about 1 year ago when it was leased for 12 months by a corp. user in our area. They put the Window sticker of the original sale in the photos, I wonder if I would be the only potential buyer who noticed that. Yes, used car prices are more that new nowadays. I wonder if I should try to sell my 2020 JCW Clubby and ask $46K and eat the taxes as well. Registation is due this month and another $700 going out to Colorado, hummm. Well long posting time for dinner, going to look at an Volvo XC 60 Recharge Hybrid on Sunday, might be the wifeys car next. Take care, love your MINIs. Don S.