1st Gen R53 Cooper S Most liked posts in thread: Wheel arch trim coming off

Not too much to say: get the clips from MINI, remove trim, replace broken clips, and reattach the trim. It'll be quick and easy.

 

Make note of the different clips that you pull off the fender. There's a couple different types depending on which fender and where on the fender the clips broke.

 

Also make sure you remove the screw that holds the trim closest to the front of the car before you pull the trim!

 

Outmotoring sells a bag-O-clips for MINIs

https://www.outmotoring.com/mini-cooper/mini_cooper_replacement_bolts.html

Dave

 

Thanks for the tip!! Going to pick up a bag.

 

My solution is to bend some metal and get a can of flat black paint. :ihih:

But my car is basically a street legal track car.

Oh, and this is just the beginning. I've lost the entire passenger side A pillar cover and half of the driver's side one. Those are gonna get "replaced" with black paint as well.

 

I'd be interested to see your solution to replacing a broken windshield.

 

A friend had a '69 Alpha Romeo GTV race car. He replaced all the glass in it with clear acrylic. He curved the acrylic by heating a sheet in a pizza oven and used the original glass as a mold to lay the hot acrylic over the top. He then trimmed them to shape. It looked real good!

You could do something like that with a MINI race car.

Dave

 

I did this one track day where there was as BMW CCA Race School and club racing that weekend too. They had some muckity muck from National on hand to do the tech inspections. If you have a cracked windscreen they were telling you no. Here in TX a MINI and a cracked windscreen go hand in hand like Chicken Fried Steak with Cream Gravy. I was not to be denied and was only running day 2 anyway. To hide the cracks we tinted the bottom and top thirds of the windshield.

Karma got me anyway, in the third session of the day I broke a wheel.

BTW, that arch that was hammered when the wheel broke has never been right since. I tried duct tape for a while but that would come lose, even though it did match the roof color. Todd of Todd's Mods fame fixed it up with a vinyl wrap of the area at MOTD last year. Still holds too...

 

Actually the car has its third windshield now. I think thats what precipitated the missing A pillar covers.

 

Yeah, I remember all the hectic back and forth and your quick thinking. And coming out of turn 3 and seeing you sitting off in the dirt and wondering why you didn't get that thing back on track!

Also my failed attempt to get Scott's 15s over your rear BBK - ouch my bad!