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Yesterday was a grand day for a ride in Albert. Low 60s and clear blue sky, it doesn’t get much better than this. And what better destination than Lime Rock Park to meet up with a fellow MINIite and to see all sorts of cars and vintage race cars.
Because each picture is a thousand words, here is my essay...
VeggiVet - this was a surprise visit to see him
Albert upon arrival
Good company of a D Type Jag (sorry about the finger)
An engine that is a piece of artwork
Of course we had to search out the Classic Minis: Surfboard MINI...
Rally MINI
Very fast race MINI
Orange Mini in the lead
The smallest race car there had to have been the Ginetta (at least the least tall... Ginetta
Albert gave me a bit of a panic yesterday. I grabbed the spare fob to unlock it to empty it of the stuff I took with me to LRP. That is when I noticed that it took 2 presses of the button to get the car to fully unlock...
I had it set for one press.
After clearing out the boot, I went and did a check of the system settings for lights, locking, etc and found that none of the settings I had were in there. I took my time and went though and reset everything the best I could remember.
This is was a real ponder as all of the settings were there 2 days ago when I went to LRP and back. Nothing was done to the car since then. Of course my mind went to the frustration of having to track down some mysterious gremlin, or equally worse, chewed wires.
Well, at least I was able to successfully get through resetting everything. So at least that went well.
As I went back into the house, a very dim lightbulb went off in my head.... The only thing different from Saturday (when I went to LRP) and Monday was that I used the spare fob on Monday.
That was it...
Darn - wouldn’t you know BMW/MINI saves the settings in the fob. I guess that is so 2 people can have different settings. In a way a good idea, but at the same time a little frustrating...
Just one more of those “things you didn’t know about your MINI”....
I know that a top level race car needs to be setup to be on the edge of balance to be competitive and the driver needs a really high level of driving skill to exact the most from the car. I also know that, sometime, small distractions in driving can lead to less than ideal performance.
I found a couple of videos that show a race car, on the track, at the limits of performance, and the result of a slight mistake. To me, this seems to be a good example as to why I advocate maintaining a bit of conservatism in a car’s setup for us lesser mortals. I like the idea of having a car that is a bit forgiving of minor mistakes, especially for driving on the road.
I had unwanted oversteer happen in a MINI I was driving on the track. I was in a high speed corner and the back end just started to come around (I was told that I lifted slightly as I went into a bend). Only here in the NE the tracks tend to not be off-track friendly, if you get my drift. My car was not well setup and there was a bit of inexperience and poor driving on my part. All in all, it didn’t end well.
The other day I came across these skid marks on the road less than a block from my house and I think they tell a story that fits in with these video examples and why it is a good idea to not over driving a car on the street. From what I can tell this one came out ok. But could have been horribly different. For one, this road is an entrance to a park with basketball courts just a few feet to the right of this curve. Kids sometimes walk in the road to get to those courts. This would have ended differently had there been a group of kids coming down the hill at the same time the car looped into the wrong side of the road, where the kids usually walk.
The wrong thing to be doing in town
I believe the car was coming too fast (as some are want to do, playing boy racer) coming down the hill in the upper right. That turn, where the arrow is, is reversed camber. There are a set of skid marks where the arrow is. It seem that these are from a car that lost it in the corner. My guess, the driver, going too fast, lifted abruptly off the throttle and back end came around in the direction of the arrow. Classic throttle off oversteer. As the driver tried to correct, the back end snapped back in the other direction and the car did a 180, landing the car in the lower left of the picture looking back down in the direction it just came from. This all happened in the middle of day, as the skid marks were not there when I went through there early in the day. Not good.
I’ll leave my “over driving” to the track and plan on never doing that... And keep a little conservatism in my car’s setup just in case....
Over the last couple of days we have had a stretch of really nice weather. Blue skies and 70 - 80 deg temperatures. So, what better way to enjoy these sorts of days than to take a ride in Albert on some of my favorite roads in the SE section of the Adirondack Mtns here in upState NY. The roads are perfect MINI roads with few straights and lots of curves, which make them a joy to motor on, as long as there is no traffic. And, yesterday was the perfect combination of weather and no traffic to take this ride.
The problem for this post is, I never thought to stop and take pictures... 4 1/2 hrs of almost nonstop driving and a lot of exercising of the rack and pin. The “Sit down, buckle up and hang on” light was on for most of the trip. The Cont DW tires sing an interesting song when pushed a bit. Not the howl of a tire on the edge of adhesion. I never push that hard on the street. It is more of whir as the edges of the tire’s circumferential grooves pulled against the slight roughness of the asphalt. Confidence inspiring, with the right combination of ride vs performance for the street.
One of these days I will have to mount a video camera in the car and capture some these great routes.
There was a bit of a disappointing part to this trip. It is early June and we have had nice bits of rain alternating with sun. This usually translates into deep green coloring in the trees. However, in this ride I notices that the trees had a yellowish cast to them, like it was early fall instead of late spring. There were also a number of dead and dying trees along the whole route. The forests are clearly stressed; at least what I could see of them. I have been doing this ride for years now (since before we got Blue in 2003) and this is a change that I seen worsen over the last few years... Disappointing, for sure.
Interesting observation re: trees. Here there is more of that spring green color in the trees than is typical for this time of year also. We have had a very cool spring here and that weird late blizzard and the second smaller one cooled things off after they had already warmed up and started things growing. So we had a stunting event. What do you think is responsible for the stress there?
A couple of other observations. I grew up in this area many, many years ago and have lived here since for many years. I have camped and hiked in this area over the years. The Adirondacks used to be a place to go to cool off. This was the place of the Great Camps of the Gilded Age (early 1900s) that the rich built to get away from the heat of the summer in the big cities south of here. Even when I camped there as a kid, summer evenings would cool off to the 50s and the daytime temps would be 70-80. But that is no more. In particular the nights don’t cool as much. I have also skied in this area for most of those years and find the winters have gotten milder, there is no longer the snow packs and there are big swings in the winter time temperatures.
Maybe some of this has put stress on a forest that has spent millennia being much cooler than it is now. That might explain the dying trees, but I am at a loss to think of what might be causing the yellow (fall-like) look to the trees. I live only a little south of the area I drove in and our trees here are full and dark green, although we have some die-off, which I have been told is more than usual.
It is concerning to me...
For no particular reason, I have never posted this route (never thought to?)... My MINI route
The map does it no justice at all. From the start on the right through to point D is full of hairpins and 25mph curves, ups and downs mixed with lefts and rights with almost no straight sections in between. B to D is wall to wall camps along the lake, so no pushing it there. But Rt 10 has nothing on it and it is easy to take on the challenge of the 20 - 30 mph curves through beautiful wooded forests. Best of all, my wife likes my driving (she’s not shy about telling me when she doesn’t ). So I get to enjoy the JCW, properly...
Albert is being prepped for his upcoming play date at Lime Rock. Fortunately, he has just recently had his 3rd and last inspection at the dealer and from there are just the brake pads to change, flush the brake fluid and put on the track tires.
I glanced through this thread and noticed that I have brake pad change stuff scattered throughout. So I thought I would summarize here. Links to full full write ups are in underlined blue
I am no fan of how the front brake pads are installed. The pads a pair of nipple things stuck to their back side that engage in the caliper pistons... Meaning the calipers have to be taken off to change the pads. REALY? No wonder it took me 2 hrs to change pads... For the track, these are not installed and likely would become detached as soon as any amount of heat hit them.
The JCW Brembo calipers use pins to hold the pads in place. I use an 1/8” drive pin to knock them out. One issue I found is brake pad dust crud will build up on these pins, making them really hard to get out. I use a small brass brush to clean them off before removing them. Afterwards I clean them up with fine Scotch-bright pad.
Brembo brake pad pin cleaning
To facilitate reinstallation of these pins I put the top pin first, with the pad retaining spring hanging from it. Then I use a small screwdriver to pry down on the other end of the spring so the second spring will slide into place.
Then I made a pin drive tool (scroll down in the link) to help drive the pin in place and minimize the chance of hitting the caliper with a hammer or the like.
For the rear caliper, I use a Harbor Freight caliper tool to screw in the piston. Sometimes the rubber boot sticks to the piston making it almost impossible to turn. I use spray brake parts cleaner to loosen the boot and lubricant it. Yup the left behind dampness from the cleaner lubes the boot.
I also pulled the rotor retaining bolt and put never seize on it. As you can see, it is all over the bolt.
Never seize on the rotor retaining bolt
I was surprised to see that this bolt has been redesigned (or is MINI using the BMW bolt that has always been around?). It looks much better than the previous MINI bolts and it uses a hex head drive that will be less prone to rusting out in comparison to the previous Torx version.
For those caliper screws, I'll coat them liberally with never-seize and only turn them in finger tight JUST enough to hold the rotor in place. Once the wheel bolts get torqued down, they don't do anything anyway. No issue removing them the next time.
Last year I some how managed to get air into the brake system. This year I vowed that wouldn’t happen again. I first changed the pads and pumped the pedal to get those in place. Then I removed the filter from the reservoir. Topped off the reservoir with fresh Motul 600 and proceed to bleed the brakes. I use a pressure bleeder with 10 to 15 psi pressure. To keep from draining the reservoir, I took only about 2 oz from each caliper and refilled the reservoir after 2 calipers. This was well above the min level mark. I went 2 cycle of bleeding the 4 calipers. On the start of the second round I got the right rear done with no issue. Next was the left rear. The first bit of fluid came out fine. Then came a stream bubbles...
PANIC
I checked the reservoir. Plenty of fluid. I started the engine and pressed the brake pedal and it was firm.
I felt relived, but very confused...
Then I remembered seeing bubbles when I used to use a vacuum pump to bleed brakes and it pull air through the threads of the bleeder valve.
I think that is what happened this time. The tube started to syphon fluid and that pulled air through the threads of the bleeder. I have no other explanation...
I finished bleeding the rest of the calipers and took the car for a drive. All is fine.
Success!
BTW - On the Gen 3 MINIs that reservoir filter is a PIA to remove. There is nothing to grab a hold of like there is on the Gen 2s. So I used a small screwdriver to pry the top of it away from the filler neck. Then I was was able to grab it with needle nose pliers and pulled. It came out, not too bad once I figured out how to grab it.
I often wonder that as I try to do things on the car. We do know the ICU have been locked down and there is no more dip stick.
The brake fluid reservoir is under a section of the windshield cowling, and the cowling has to be removed to get to it.
The battery is under another section of that cowling and other bits just behind the engine.
The oil filter and drain plug are behind a big plastic underside pan that goes under the whole engine. It does have access covers for each, though. And the oil filter is no longer as impossible to get to as it is on the R56S.
All of that seems to be unnecessary hinderances. Maybe some is done for “looks”, like the engine cover that critters like to nest under... And hides the spark plugs. Or it could be functional like the pan under the engine that might help with aero. Or to keep heat away from things...
My new Bosch dishwasher is the same way. Only certain dishes will fit in certain locations. If that dish isn’t part of the load, that area stays empty, or at least there is a struggle to find something that will sort-of fit... I am a person that can load most anything (ask veggivet about how much shows up to a track day in my MINI ) but this dishwasher has bested me...
I can vouch for the amount of equipment an engineer can cram into the boot of a MINI. Observant fellow track addicts will walk by where we are set up, stop, stare and then ask where our trailer is😁. The scene repeats at the end of the day when everything gets repacked. Lower jaws often have to be scraped from the asphalt😉.
Well, just a little belated Happy Father’s Day. I was busy yesterday doing Father’s Day things with family. That was very nice and I had a grand day.
I treated myself to a short ride in Albert to a place a little south of us, a State Park called Thatcher Park. It is on the edge of the Helderberg Mountains or escarpment. I guess you could say it is the northern edge the Catskills. It was a gorgeous day, mid 60s and clear blue skies.
Looking NE into Vermont
While it doesn’t look like much, close to lower edge of the picture is a 100’ cliff. The landscape that the picture overlooks is the ancient lake bed of Lake Albany, which was a prehistoric glacial lake that stretched about 160 miles in what is now the Hudson river valley. I live just outside of this picture to the upper left in a area of sandy remnants from this lake.
Fitting with this ride, one of my Daughters gave me a very nice bottle of mead (the drink of the Vikings and others) from the Helderberb Meadworks...
This was oak barrel aged and has a note of oak flavor along with the honey. Very nice. The craft brewing around here has produce some great and interesting products.
Here’s to what was a gorgeous, great day, with many more to come.
Last edited by Eddie07S; 06-20-2022 at 05:11 AM.
Reason: Fix typo
Nice shot! Happy belated Father's Day to you too! Sounds like you had a great day. If I squint really hard, I think I can see my house in that pic over in the Berkshires😉
Some day I’ll figure out where your house is... Last time I got lost and Google was no helpl. I think somehow you have managed to hide from the “G” entity...
I remarked earlier has to how the trees in the Adirondacks looked to be stressed and dying. It seems that some of this is due to the recent infestation of spongy (formerly known as “gypsy”) moth caterpillars, an invasive species in the NY here. I have a 100+ acre city park across the street from my house and this is some of the damage they have done:
Clusters of trees affected
More tree damage
Stripped bare
The irony of this is they won’t eat the climbing vine plants that have invaded this area, uninvited...
So, we now have insects stripping trees bare and vine plants that will eventually be so heavy on the trees that they pull them down... what a mess.
Last edited by Eddie07S; 06-20-2022 at 02:28 PM.
Reason: Typo
Healthy trees will recover next year. We sprayed the area around the house as we have several trees that we're nursing along and we didn't want them to get any more stressed than they already are. The Bt worked wonders, and the caterpillars were dropping like bird ***** 😁
06-05-2022, 06:23 AM
And keep a little conservatism in my car’s setup just in case....
Disappointing, for sure.
). So I get to enjoy the JCW, properly... 
And hides the spark plugs. Or it could be functional like the pan under the engine that might help with aero. Or to keep heat away from things... 
