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I would LOVE to have another Spitfire, but I would MUCH rather have another Miata. The Miata gave me just as much driving enjoyment, but is a much better car and more reliable. With the Miata, there is no need to adjust the carb and timing every time you want to take it out for a drive. However, that Spitfire was a time in my life that I'll never forget!
I would LOVE to have another Spitfire, but I would MUCH rather have another Miata. The Miata gave me just as much driving enjoyment, but is a much better car and more reliable. With the Miata, there is no need to adjust the carb and timing every time you want to take it out for a drive. However, that Spitfire was a time in my life that I'll never forget!
I've never driven a Miata. They almost seem "too perfect." All the driving characteristics of a British sports car, with the reliability of a Japanese.
Now that it's a hobby, I can enjoy the quirkiness and demands of maintaining a British car. 🤣
Now that it's a hobby, I can enjoy the quirkiness and demands of maintaining a British car. 🤣
I think there is cure for that.... As in owning almost any other car after owning a British car...
I owned a ‘72 Fiat 124 Spyder after the MGA. That cured me of ever wanting another British car. I have to believe that was what the Miata was modeled after. It was a great car, except for the rust.
I think there is cure for that.... As in owning almost any other car after owning a British car...
I owned a ‘72 Fiat 124 Spyder after the MGA. That cured me of ever wanting another British car. I have to believe that was what the Miata was modeled after. It was a great car, except for the rust.
My mom had an X19 after she sold her 72 Midget and before her MGA. That car cured the whole family from ever wanting to own a Fiat. 😬
Over the years I have found a lot of things stuck in the tread of the tires on my cars, but this is a first...
A diamond?
I found this stuck in the tread of one of track tires on Smokey, my R56. Ok, whether or not it is a real diamond can be debated (I may have it checked out). But the fact that I found it stuck in the tread of my car tire is amazing.
At the end of April I took Smokey to LRP for a day on the track. Since then, I have had him out on the street a few times just to run him. I am now in the process of prepping him for a couple of days at NYST and I always check the tires for any sort of damage. With those sticky 200 TW tires, they pick up everything. The thing I found is small, only about 3/32” across, but it was the glint in the garage light that caught my attention. There is a tiny thread stem on the back that went first into the tire tread. Not sure how long it has been in there. My guess would be it was on the street in front of my house or on the sidewalk that goes across my driveway. So, maybe it was only in the tire for the length of my driveway?
Finding it in the tire, however it got there, made my day...
Have you ever wondered the difference between a Max performance tire, a Ultra High performance tire and a Grand Touring tire within a brand. Here is a comparison of just those tires in the the form of a PS4S, PS5 and a Primicy (respectively) from Michelin...
Next is Racing... MINI won big at Road America recently in the TC America championships. MINI USA though LAP motors campaigns 3 MINIs in this series with a JCW Pro, and 2 JCWs in the TC and TCA classes. In the first race both the JCW Pro and a JCW won in their respective classes. In the second race the JCW Pro won its class and the 2 JCWs took 1 & 2 in their class... Congratulations
If you were wondering what a “JCW Pro” is, you are not alone. The best I can tell it is a MINI race car based on the GP, but not quite. For one it has a manual gear box. But it does have wheel flares, big tires, a big wing and front splitter, and lots of HP. It competes in the TC class up against the likes of BMW (2 Series I think). This car debuted last year and had a lot of teething pains including a horrific crash at VIR. However, it has come back this year showing it has the “stuff”.
Lastly, Albert’s garage mate, Smokey my R56, is having surgery. I have a set of JCW Red springs for it, along with new front shocks. With some issues I had with him the last time out on the track, I though this would be a good time to put these in and check out the car in general. The right front shock came out yesterday and I found the bearing in the IE Fixed camberplate is loose. Not surprised give the number of track days it has seen. But it does mean that those need to be replaced too...
So Smokey’s surgery, which was to be a simple operation of removing the old shocks and springs, which I have done before, turned out to be not so simple. Both front strut assembles came out without much effort. The bearings of both IE camberplates were loose. Replacing the camberplates should not have been a big deal as I have a new set of K-Mac caster/camber plats to go in. I hadn’t planned to put them in yet as I planned to put the IE plates in as I wanted to try out the springs first (one change at a time). It turns out that now is the time.
The thing is, the K-Mac caster/camber plate is significantly different from the IE plate and the HF spring compressor doesn’t fit over the spring top hat. Well, it actually does, but once there the actual camberplate doesn’t fit... Arrrrrg... Time to take it to a shop that does that sort of thing. My first shop is down on employees and doesn’t have time to do it. And won’t touch aftermarket parts. Ok... Off to my second shop. He won’t touch MINIs, no way, no how. But he will do simple things like State inspections and suspension work on them. Oh, then he is not sure if the shock/spring/camberplate will fit in his spring compression machine. He is willing to give it a try, though.
2 hours later and I get a call from my shop... The job is done... Joy!
In the mean time I remove one of the rear shocks. Again, all came out easily and came apart easily. This should have been a breeze. But no. The center shaft in the shock is loose. How can this be? Conventional wisdom is that the rear wheels of the car don’t do anything; they are there to hold the exhaust off the ground. So how can the shock be worn out if they don’t do anything? I was figuring the shocks would good and planned on reusing them. I didn’t buy new ones when I bought the fronts. Once again conventional wisdom bites me in the butt. Off to order new rear shocks... But, they are back ordered. Just my luck
I’ll have this project done just in time to put the car away for the winter...
On a side note, here is what the JCW sports suspension red spring looks like next to the black sports suspension spring (the base JCW spring).
Front JCW base spring vs the JCW sports spring
Rear JCW sports vs base spring
I am amazed as to how good of condition the black spring is in. That is after about 70k miles of driving and track.
It is really hard to find out any information about the springs that MINI uses. There are spring rates floating around, but I never remember what people claim. And, because of the powder coating, it is hard to get accurate measurements. The easy thing to tell is they both have the same number of coils, so the length of wire is the same. Where the increase rate of the red spring comes from is the wire being thicker; about 0.5mm thicker. Front is just over 12mm and 12.5mm base vs sports, respectively, and the rears are 11mm vs 11.5, respectively. With the rear being a larger percentage change, that will move the roll stiffness more towards the rear (eg: less understeer). This will be an interesting change... It should also be noted that the coiled length is shorter for the red springs. This is where the 10mm of drop will come from. I am seeing no sag in the black springs. That doesn’t mean there is none, just that if there is, it is not obvious. Pretty good for 70k miles.
As for the old and new front shocks, just a hand compression would say that the old front shocks are softer than the new ones. This would not surprise me given that they came off a pro level autocross car. If they were revalved, they would be softer in front to increase the car’s rotations. Not sure if the rebound is different; can’t tell. Of course, this difference could all be due to however many miles of wear they have on them. Either way, it will be interesting to see how the car performs with them and the new springs.
Every time I work on the R56 and see what MINI/BMW did with the suspension changes for each model, the more impressed I am with how they made the changes. Stiffer springs and swaybars front and rear. But with each change the proportion of change front to rear is to aways increase the stiffness of the rear more than the front. As a result, each change reduces the propensity for understeer. I know from experience the difference from the S suspension to the base JCW suspension was dramatic. Where the S would wallow on the track, the base JCW suspension would allow the car to carve its way around. In my mind, the S was not a worthy track car, whereas the base JCW was. Now I wish I had had a chance to drive an R56 JCW with the optional JCW sports suspension on the track. Albert, being a F56, is not the same and not a fair comparison. None the less, I really appreciate how good he is, right from the factory.
Albert spent last Wednesday and Thursday at NYST, trying to wear out his Falken tires. It was a grand 2 days for Albert. He performed almost flawlessly. The driver, not so much, at least not on the first day.
Day one - the track was slow to come back to me, which was a bit frustrating. Albert did his best to reassure me that he could handle anything I had the nerve to throw at him. The Carbotech XP12 pads were perfect for the track, which makes 3 different tracks that they perform well at. The Falkens took a beating and kept coming back, looking for more. “Reassuring” is the best word I can come up with to describe these. Go a little faster through a turn and they say - I’m good with that. At their limit, they give up slowly. Keeping in mind, Albert is basically stock. This means it relies on the eDLC (electronic limited slip) to control wheel spin in corners and he has little in the way of camber. NYST has several turns that are slow and sharp, Albert would, as expected, push through them with the front tires taking a beating. But it was manageable. Would more camber be nice? Yup. Do I feel that I need to add camber “tomorrow”? Nope. The understeer is manageable.
Day two was much improved. Not Albert. Me. It was like I had driven the track a hundred times. I was sliding the car coming out of T6 and setting up for T7. Albert was at the limits of adhesion. Shift into 4th just before Wheely Hill (T7), so power is just coming back on when the car lands. T8 is a left dog leg that I was almost able to take flat out in 4th. “Almost” is a short lift just before the turn-in. No braking here as it upsets the car too much. Then full throttle just before the T8 apex. Then hard on the brakes for T9. Nine more turns and there is the long front straight. I was able to shorten up my braking going into T1 and dragged in a little more trailbraking. And do everything all over again.
Last year I took Smokey, the R56 S, to NYST. This year was Albert. Albert is a bit of a gas-oholic in comparison and he has 2 gal less capacity.. This meant going out for gas at least once in the day along with using the 5 gal I brought with me. Gas is 15 to 20 minutes away. So a half hour round trip for 7 or 8 gal of gas. A bit much. In this area of the State, most gas stations carry no alcohol 90 or 91 octane. Farm equipment needs it? Not sure. So it is a hike to find 93 octane that Albert likes.
The other thing I noticed is Albert used a bit of oil, which I haven’t seen before. Not a lot, but noticeable. I am wondering if the 0-20W oil is not the greatest for the track. It had 3 track days on it prior to this. I think the next change will be with some 0-30W or 5-30W, which will need to be done before the end of the month for 3 days at WGI.
Albert did have a brake issue on the second day. Going into T12 the pedal went way down. Not to the floor, but noticeably down. T12 is an off camber, downhill turn and the braking is done while turning. Not the place to have brake issues. As soon as I came in off the track, I did a quick pump of the pedal and all became solid. When things cooled off I started an inspection and found a little brake fluid around the threads of the bleeder on left front caliper. It wasn’t as tight as I expected. So I gravity bled that caliper and, because the car was already jacked up on that side I pulled the rear tire and bled that caliper, which rewarded me with a bubble. Hmmmm? The system was bled a week before... So where did that bubble come from? Leftovers from last year’s debacle of getting air in the ABS? Don’t know, but the brakes were fine for the rest of the day.
Brake pad wear was minimal, which was a bit of surprise. There are a lot of braking zones and few take a bit of effort. And there is little time for cooling to occur, so they run pretty worm. Even so, the wear was much less than what occurred at WGI. 3 different tracks and 5 days of running, and still have half (or so) of the pads left. An observation... When I pulled the pads I noticed that the taper that develops on the pads causes the caliper pistons to not sit flush on the pad. There is clearly some asymmetric loading on the piston face. I wonder if this is what leads to that “non-metal” face to break down?
The first day we did a track walk. This was very interesting. 1st - the quality of the pavement could be better. It was made up of large stones, which made for a very rough surface. Hard on the tires. Another thing is how many turns loose camber towards the outer edge. Braking for T1 starts going up hill, then flattens. It is easy to over brake for this turn if braking is started early while still on the hill. Best is to late brake, with trail brake into the turn. This takes major confidence. It is hard to work up to because of the hill transition to flat. Braking needs to start either before or after that transition, not in the middle of it. Being in the middle of it just messes up everything.
All in all, a good two days. And Albert had friends...
Both days started out in fog, with day 1 having a bit of misting upon us at the start. The start of day 2 was postponed a little as fog blanketed the area and visibility was less than 100 yards. Day 1 was cloudy for the day and day 2 was partly sunny after the fog lifted. Perfect temperatures both days with day 1 being in the low 70s and day 2 in the upper 70s.
There are some nice areas to park Albert hanging out with friends, including a Gen 2 JCW in the background.
Gen 3 Facelift S
On day 2 this JCW showed up. The color is a little off in this picture, but in person it is really nice. White silver? At any rate, very nice looking. Gen 3 Facelift JCW
This was the first time ever for the driver being out on the track and, as with most newbies, he said he was a bit overwhelmed with it all. He does have “car experience” with his other car being a M2 CS. Interesting he thought to bring the JCW. Talking later in the day, he said that the suspension (this is bone stock) was a bit soft and wallowed. Albert has the JCW Pro suspension and I find it to be very good on the track. So, an interesting comparison between the base JCW suspension and the JCW Pro version. I am glad I did that upgrade. And I am impressed with MINI having done their homework in developing the Pro suspension.
If it has an engine and goes fast, I am interested...
NYST started as a motorcycle track and wouldn’t you know, there are motorcycles here. I know little about them, so I can’t say what this is but I can say it looks fast, the engine must be amazing and the driver very skilled....
It is a motorcycle track after all!
The redline on this thing is 15 grand! That is F1 engine territory! Amazing! F1 has nothing on this engine
The tire wear show a different level of confidence for the driver than anything I could imagine. How is it even possible for this bike to corner with what has to be 75 deg of lean? Nope, not me. Not the kind of tire wear pattern a car tire should have
Some day I may come to NYST to see the bikes run here. Unfortunately, there is little in the way of viewing areas at this track to see anything in person; only the front straight.
Now, time to prep for WGI at the end of the month.
The Falken tires took a pretty good beating at NYST, but did better than I thought they would. I expected that one or two would return home with no tread on them, but they all survived with at least 1 day left on all of them and maybe 2 days left on some. They have done really well. I have lost count... 9 or 12 track days on them. However, there is no way they will all last 3 days at WGI at the end of the month. So time to change them out. When Bridgestone ended their run of the RE71R tires I bought a set from TR at their close out price. Great snag... This should be fun to get a comparison of these to the Falkens. As for the Falkens, I use them on Smokey and his set is wearing out. I’ll use the ones from Albert to supplement those and get one or 2 more days out of them. That should take Smokey’s track days out a ways before needing new tires.
My usual tire shop had said that they were understaffed and were turning work away. To change out the this set of tires I opted to have my mechanic do the tire change. It turns out that not being in the tire business, his equipment was ill equipped to deal with these performance tires. He told me he got it done, but don’t ever bring those tires to me again... The sidewalls are too stiff for his machine to deal with. Well, it will be next season before I have to deal with any more tire changes. Hopefully by then my regular tire shop has people to do the job.
There were a couple of things at NYST that had me going - Hmmmmm? That’s odd....
One was the gas gauge; not the distance to empty/. The gauge itself. As expected it would go down until almost empty and the distance to empty would be a few 10s of miles. As I noted, it is a hike to get gas, about 15 min of driving. As I was driving I noticed that the gas gauge was actually increasing in level. I was making gas? I never noticed that before. Now I have had the distance to empty increase. That is really fun to watch on the way home from LRP. I’ll leave with it showing I have 80 miles to empty. When I get home it will show that I have 110 miles to empty. That is after driving for 90 miles. I understand that one as it is a calculation based on current mileage (of sorts). But the actual gas gauge increasing? Nope, don’t understand that one. It is off a sending unit. What? The sending unit goes down below the static level when the car is in a 1g turn and then doesn’t return real fast? And when I say “doesn’t return real fast” I mean that it is 10s of min later that it will come back up. Something doesn’t seem right there. So not only did MINI drop 2 gal off the size of the tank as compared to the R56, it has a cantankerous gauge... Got to love MINI.
Another thing I noticed was how/when the traction control is activated. As you may remember, I drive with the traction control fully on when I am on the track. No, it does not usually interfere unless I screw up. However, I did have an occasion for it to come on when I didn’t expect it to. Coming off T7, wheelie hill, leads onto a pretty long straight and speeds are pretty high; over 60 mph coming over that hill. I screwed up a shift coming off Wheelie hill. Now the missed shift was not really a problem. No harm done. But it represented a brain fart and that is not a good thing on a track doing 9 or 10 10ths. So, I just left the clutch pushed in for the length of that straight and coasted. That is when I noticed the traction control light flashing at me as I rounded the left hand dog leg in that straight. I didn’t feel it doing anything, but it was flashing, meaning that it was doing something. Now this dog leg is something that I could take almost flat out and I was coasting at well under that speed. The car could not have been doing anything that should have triggered the traction control. Could it be that all of the sensors and program were thinking that something wasn’t right with that cornering because there was no engine drive? Strange...
Early fall at Watkins Glen International for three days of driving fun.
Late Thursday afternoon looking north up Seneca lake from just outside of Montour Falls
Looking up Seneca Lake
What a great way to start an event.
Friday Morning was cold; high 30s at the Motel and 32-ish at the track. This was the fog rolling south off the lake that morning...
Foggy Friday
Sunrise Friday morning at the WGI Gate 2
Albert surely did his best to make me look good. Friday, the first day out, was open track forEVER... 8:30am until 5pm and I did what I could to make the best of it. This is open to high level experience trackers as well as instructors and a mix of cars with a modest pace (think MINI JCW) and uber fast whatevers - think GT4 Porsche Cayman, Porsche 911 race car, ZO6 Corvettes, C8 Corvettes, and whatever shade of M BMW, some with extra muscle and wings. What fun is this! And Albert held his own and made me proud. I did get some pointers from a coach who I played a little lead-follow with. He suggested that I work more with rolling the steering into the corners, especially T1 and T2. This is something that I do, but I found that I needed to be more conscious about my execution and timing. Once I started to pay attention, I found these turns to be easier to take. In fact, on T1 I found that I could get away with only shifting from 5th to 4th at the entrance to T1 instead of shifting down to 3rd. So it seems that I was able to then carry more speed through T1 by having a better turn-in, although I don’t have the data to prove it.
Saturday was group sessions, which I am fine with. There were some great drivers out there. More practice with what was suggested the day before. Plus it was suggested to not downshift 4th to 3rd for T6. I always have done that as it feels like the car has better pull out of the turn, but the time in 3rd is short. When I left it in 4th, I missed the pull but I realized that I no longer had the delay of the upshift to 4th just beyond the track out. I was definitely carrying more speed going into the Toe and had to move up my braking point.
Sunday was a half day for me, as the plan was for me to leave early and be home for dinner. As it was, I was pretty beat by then and was happy to quit early. I am not as young as I used to be and I feel it. Not complaining; just stating what is. At any rate I did get home by dinner and the ride home was nice and uneventful.
There were 2 other MINIs there; a black R56 JCW and a red F56 JCW. Both of which were at my previous WGI event. The black one was in my run group. However, it was Sunday before we actually were able to run together. Both of us were in basically stock JCWs, mine however has the JCW Pro suspension. The other was sporting the 215-40 version of the Falken 660 vs my 215-45 version of the RE71Rs. Both of us started the event with brand new tires. Not surprisingly the cars were very evenly match. Even though Albert has 20 hp over the R56, we were dead even in speed down the back straight. I think the lighter weight and slightly wider and less tall tires than what I have gave the R56 a slight edge in handling in the turns. We were both within a second of each other in lap times. The woman driving the R56 is really good and it was great fun wheeling around the track with her. Unfortunately, she has plans for suspension upgrades, which will probably leave me in the dust next season...
The Carbotech XP12s continue to impress. I got 5 or 6 (5-1/2?) days out of them and they were down to a little less than 0.1” when I changed them. The replacement XP12s took a little bit of time to bed in, but when they did, they were flawless. However, I am thinking I still have air in the system (ABS pumps maybe from last year?) as a couple of times I could not generate the braking force I wanted. This put me off the track both times (no harm), but will need to be something that gets checked out before next season.
My new tires were a set of RE71R ‘Stones that I got when TR was closing them out. The same but different from the Falken 660s. On the road, the ‘Stones are quieter, even after 3 track days. They had less rubber pickup and the car had none of the wiggle going up through the esses that I had with the Falkens, which I think was caused by by rubber pick up. The ‘Stones were more than half gone after 2-1/2 days on the track... Not real good. But it is said that the first half of those goes quicker than the last half. We shall see. But does that also mean they drop in performance? As for overall grip... In comparison to the other MINI with the Falkens, maybe the Falkens have the edge in that department. The ‘Stones seemed to be edgier or a bit twitchier on the road than the Falkens, which may be why I think I had more confidence with the Falkens. No rain, so no chance to check that performance. But, I think everyone know the ‘Stones are great in the rain. Overall, I think both tires are great tires for the track. The new ‘Stones, I hear are even better. A lot of tire fun to have.
There was a person with a new set of the new RE71RS ‘Stones and on the first day out he bested his best time by 1.5 seconds. He definitely gave them his stamp of approval. He also said these are not an autocross tire. So, maybe a good choice for the track. These are asymmetric which means that they should not be flipped over on the wheels. This could be a major drawback from using them on a car with little camber and is prone to wearing off the outside edge of the tire.
There was a Porsche there, in line behind me to get tech’ed for the event. When I first saw it, everything was fine with it ticking over very nicely at idle. A few minutes later I saw it with its bonnet open and smoke pouring out... The battery was burning up...
Li-Ion battery... Hmmmm ... not for my car
Luckily no damage to the car, likely because the car was just sitting there and they were able to turn the car off and disconnect it before any real damage was done. It did, however, take a bit to get it out of the car. It blew a bunch of fuses, but otherwise the car was fine with a replacement conventional battery.
Overall a great event and was pleased overall with how I did. This is the end of the season for me and I am already looking forward to the next season.
These events seem to always attract some amazing cars...
Nope - The Pantara didn’t go out on the track. Still it was amazing to see.
The Porsche bay...
Some cars just look great from the back. This is one of those cars. Nicely done, Toyota.
The wing on the back likely cost the driver 10 mph on the straights...
This car sounded like a NASCAR on the front straight...
This was one of 30 race Fiats that were made for a failed series in Europe. It was quick in the twisties, but lost to others where power was needed. The driver came from racing a Ferrari 355 Challage car and thought this was more fun to drive.
BRZ race car... Blisteringly fast in the corners; not so much in the straights.
A couple of M240 race cars that the current owners lucked out in getting. Being at the right place at the right time is important...
Not sure why no back lid, but it is run what you bring, as long as it passes tech...
I have always been curious about Ferodo brake pads, in particular this time because the other Black JCW was using them. I believe they had a set of the 2500s. The driver claimed that the braking was good (I think she just didn’t use the brakes ), but it looked like they would only last 2 days of the event...
The 2500s are basically in the category of “street/track” pad, with a temp range of up to 500C (~1000F). Anyone who has been following me know that I have no love for this type of pad. A better pad in my book would be the 312 or 412, with a working range of up to 850C (~1700F), which is plenty good for a street car on the track. I also look for how linear the pad’s performance is and these 2 seem to fit that bill.
At any rate here is a snap shot summary of their track pads:
When I changed the wheels on Albert I had a thought about the braking issue I had that put me off the track, and decided to do a simple gravity bleed at all 4 calipers. Several clearly had air in them. Not good for being out on the track. At the time I had the issues, I thought I might have missed my braking point or I was traveling at a higher speed and didn’t compensate for it. But now I know it was air in the lines and I was likely at the end of the pedal travel.
OK, I should have known the pedal feell wasn’t right, but the brakes were fine for all of the other brake points, which lead me to think that it was “me” not the brakes But these are not hard braking points, and the MINI brakes are so good with the Carbotech pads that the air in the lines was likely masked.
Now the question is - Where is the air coming from? And why do the brakes feel really solid when I bleed them and after use air shows up? Since the issue I had last year of getting air in the system I have been really careful to not let the reservoir level to get low when I bleed them and nothing else seems wrong. The car only has 15k miles on it so the master cylinder should be good.
My theory is that there is or was (hopeful thinking it is all gone now) air in the ABS pump where it hides until the pump is activated. My plan is to have the dealer change the fluid in the system and do the ABS pump cycling. I don’t have the equipment to do it myself so that seems to be my best option. This will likely not happen until next spring so no post about this until then, unless plans change. Right now the brakes are rock solid and the car will be going into semi-hibernation mode for the winter. Not worried about driving on the roads...
Yesterday was a spectacular day to take a ride up into the Adirondack mountains north of where I live to view the peak of the fall foliage colors. Up along the north shore of the Sacandaga reservoir... Shoreline view
The iPhone doesn’t do justice to the spectacular colors, but you get the idea.
Albert “hiding” in the woods
From there it was onto a little village called Speculator where the views just continued to hold us in awe of the beauty...
Then it was off to one of my favorite road of glorious twisties and back home again.
The surprise of the day was the roads being devoid of other cars. We had the ride pretty much to ourselves. Everyone else missed out. All the more fun for us.
I did takes some video and data when I was at WGI last weekend. This was a bit of an experiment using Harry’s lap timer and the iPhone together. It worked, but something about Harry’s and the iPhone working together left out some of the image stabilization that the iPhone by itself has. None the less, an fun, short video... enjoy:
Albert’s life has been quiet as of late. With winter approaching, he will soon be relegated to the garage unless the roads are dry and reasonably free of salt. Linus the Wrangler is excited to once again take over the driving duties and is hopeful for a periodic dump of a foot or so of snow to take me to one of many ski areas near here.
While I enjoy the Conti DW tires for the street, there is no place for them on the car in this coldest of season. In the cold their performance can be outright dangerous and they may be susceptible to cold weather damage. I have already noticed flat spotting on cool morning. So they have been changed out for the “winter” shoes.
The winter shoes are the teeth rattling OEM, crap-tastic, Hankook all season runflat tires that MINI thought were a good idea to put on the JCW. The added weight of these tires fits right in with the boat anchor wheels to make for the perfect sports car tire and wheel combination, much like the “road hugging weight” of past Pontiacs.... That mark was missed, to say the least.
However, the Hankooks do have one advantage over all of the other tires I have for Albert... The “all season” rating. This makes them perfect for propping up the car while it sits in the cold, waiting for a clear day in this season of snow and Albert can get out for an Italian tune-up. And who is to say that tires with rubber as hard and grippy as linoleum can’t be fun? Even without a Dinan Elite the traction control light can be set ablaze on dry pavement with just a bit of an aggressive application of the throttle in 2nd, and then there is 4 wheel drifting around corners to be had.
It's getting to be that season! No snow up that way yet? My parents in MA say they've had some days recently in the 70's - it was a warm fall here in ND too, but we now have snow - fast dry snow perfect fro cross country. Hope to get out this weekend and make some tracks! BTW, love that Pantera and the green Merc in the pics up toward the top.
I have been doing the track thing for a number of years now, and go out several times a year. Yet, every time I go to an event I am blown away by the variety of cars that people bring. Some cars I see from one event to another. But other cars are new to each event. It is like a reoccurring car show with the added bonus of actually getting to see the cars being driven. The Pantera was a first for me to see, let alone up close and personal, in all these years since I read about it back when it was first produced. So that was a bit special. As I said, though, it wasn’t driven on the track, which is okay by me as, compared to today’s cars, it is a death trap. I did get to hear it run and see it driven, though, which was nice. It is a special street car.
I saw that you got hit with snow and cold. Nice you get out to enjoy it. Yah, just a few days ago it was close to 70 here, too, and no snow yet. But I did see that the Great Lakes “snow making machine” was doing its thing the other day. That generally doesn’t reach me, though. Where it does land is all flat; great for the snowmobilers, not so much for the alpine skiers. This morning was 24 out and there is snow in the forecast for tonight and into tomorrow. The first real snow of the season. The day time temps will be up in the 40s around here, so I doubt the snow will stick around. Hopefully it will stick at the ski areas, which would be nice. The ski areas have gotten a late start; too warm to even make snow. Killington, which tries to be the first to open in the area, is late to get open. They are supposed to be hosting the women’s (?) World Cup racing and that looks iffy. I miss the days when I would go out and ski in natural snow on the first day of December. These days I am lucky to have a ribbon of man-made that same weekend.
Maybe I should pull the old snowblower out of storage...
Hope everyone’s new year is one that brings them many smiles.
Albert’s life has been very quiet as of late. Linus (the Wrangler) has taken up his winter time duties, faithfully, but not without issues. He is showing his age. Several thousand $s in front end work has left him with an overly worn re-man steering box, making it uncomfortable to drive. I am pondering the next action about that. Do I claim “warranty” and have another re-man unit put in? Put a new unit in? Not likely at $1.5-2K for the unit. Or buy a new Jeep? Now what did I do with the title to the Jeep I have? Ugh… Linus is an 2006 Wrangler, with only 65k miles old. But in this case the years are bring on a rolling set of issues. A new Wrangle is looking pretty good right now… Maybe…
Through the years of us owning MINIs there has been a lot of discussion on NAM and elsewhere about oil change intervals. When MINIs were reborn by BMW the company thought it would be a good idea to extend the oil change intervals as shown by the computer generated service interval displayed on the dash. On our R50 I remember that interval being over 20K miles. After a while I heard stories of V8 BMWs, sold as CPOs with warranty, coming in needing their very expensive engines to be replaced, ostensibly because of these long oil change intervals.
I have never seen that documented. That is, the issues that might arise from running oil too long. Until now….
This is a very interesting YouTube post on the subject. Admittedly, the guy in this video doesn’t know the exact details of how this engine was maintained. However, his experience with engines tell him that what he sees here is the result of oil being run too long. It is a bit long, but all of it is interesting. I watched it at 1.5x speed and it was fine…
In my opinion, the issue with extended oil change intervals, especially with cars that have on board maintenance schedules, is oil consumption. What folks fail to acknowledge is 10-15k mile oil changes aren't all that bad, but they can be catastrophic when combined with an expected "normal" oil consumption of 1 quart per 5k miles. If your engine consumes 1 quart of oil every 5k miles, and the oil change interval is 15k miles, if you never check the oil, you'll be down 3 quarts of oil by the time the oil change is due. Add the lack of a dip stick in modern BMW engines, and your engine life is going to go in the crapper. If you have the mindset "I'm going to change my oil every 5k miles regardless," your engine is still going to have a suitable oil level.
I have seen Blackstone oil test results posted and discussed here 0n NAM, that would say, in a MINI, a good synthetic oil is good for 11-12k miles and degrades from there. So I would wonder about going to 15k. Also, the mechanic at the end of the video talks about this subject. He says, in his experience, engines can get destroyed without being low on oil but because they are run to high mileage before changes. He didn’t give an exact number, but made it clear not to run oil to 20K no matter what the claim and implied that damage could occur well before that. He is a fan of the 5k oil change.
Even so, your point is a good one about the measurement, especially without a dip stick. I find it darn near impossible to remember to check the oil on the JCW. The car needs to be driven about 20 minutes before the stupid system will check the level…. That really blows chunks. Then I need to specifically remember to have the system perform the check, which takes 2 to 3 minutes to perform. At my age I am lucky to remember what I went to the store for. There is little chance I’ll need to remember to perform an oil level check when I get home. It is ridiculous. I have also found that the JCW may use more oil than my other MINIs. I found it a half quart low after a track day. The oil had just been changed and I didn’t think to check it before going to the track thinking it should be full. I now know I should have as it could have been under filled. It take 5 liters. Likely the dealer put in 5 qts, which would put it almost a half qt low. Problem is, with hard cornering the older MINIs were known to loss oil pressure if not kept topped off. Don’t know about the Gen 3s, but I don’t want to find out that is the case with mine. A side note, I understand that all race BMWs have dip sticks. Go figure.
13F below zero at some point around 5 AM this morning. What was I doing up at that time? Letting the dog out to do duties that he didn’t do the night before because, as he put it… “It is too fluffing cold out and my pee will freeze before it hits the ground!. You can’t make me and I am going back in where it is warm!”
It was 8F below zero when I finally got out of bed, officially.
It will be a cold ride to Great Barrington when I do head out to meet up with ZRE at a nice brew restaurant.
Found out a new thing about Albert as I was letting the car warm up. He honks twice when I hit the lock button on the fob when outside of the car and it is running. Hmmmm Did not know that. If he is not running, only the lights flash and there is no horn.
And the power this engine makes when it is this cold is just amazing! This gives new meaning to the term “Cold Air Intake”. Third gear will set you back in the seat for what seems like FOREVER! From 20 mph until the gas pedal needs to be lifted for some important reason, like the rear of the car in front is coming close really fast… or there REALLY is a speed limit on these roads and 3rd will exceed it if pushed. And just forget 2nd gear… mash the throttle and the traction control light immediately starts to flashing like an angry old man yelling at kids to “slow down”. Nannies…. Ya, I could have turned it off, but that only happen once. Really, just once. Well, maybe twice…. Or…
The hour plus ride to the restaurant was uneventful. But when I arrived at my destination and turned off the the engine, I was greeted with message screen that said I needed to drive more. While I really do like driving Albert, the rest of the message was a bit disturbing: Low battery voltage. What!!!!?
I love driving Albert, but this can not be good
Multiple messages, really must not be good
Well the car was already turned off when these messages popped up, so I decided to not do anything about it. Time for a nice lunch; turkey rubin with chips. And had a great visit with ZRE, who I have not seen in a while. At some point we made tentative plans to met at LRP for a track event at the end of April. That was just part of the conversation.
At the end of lunch, Albert started up just fine. The battery turned the engine over the same as always. No warnings; no check engine lights. Everything was fine.
All was fine, until I noticed that the check engine light had come on at some point while driving. Well, it is not “RED”, so travel on and the rest of the ride home was uneventful.
As expected the 2 warnings noted above came on when I turned the car off.
I restarted the car and I got a 3rd warning:
And when I got home, it is What? Discharging?
Really? It is discharging when stopped? Ok what do they mean by “stopped”? Do they mean when the car is stopped, and the engine is idling? Or do they mean when the engine is “stopped”. That is, turned off and not running. Neither is good. The former would be the alternator is not working the latter would be there is a short in the wiring somewhere or the like. WTFluff….
Well, it is 6 above zero right now; not doing a thing about it now. Tomorrow is another day. And it is supposed to be in the mid-40s. Much better temps to be trouble shooting something like this.
My guess - the battery froze. Almost 4 years old; I have never had much success with MINI batteries.
08-16-2022, 06:18 AM
As in owning almost any other car after owning a British car... 
Just my luck
It was a grand 2 days for Albert. He performed almost flawlessly. The driver, not so much, at least not on the first day.
I understand that one as it is a calculation based on current mileage (of sorts). But the actual gas gauge increasing? Nope, don’t understand that one. It is off a sending unit. What? The sending unit goes down below the static level when the car is in a 1g turn and then doesn’t return real fast? And when I say “doesn’t return real fast” I mean that it is 10s of min later that it will come back up. Something doesn’t seem right there. So not only did MINI drop 2 gal off the size of the tank as compared to the R56, it has a cantankerous gauge... Got to love MINI.
Third gear will set you back in the seat for what seems like FOREVER! From 20 mph until the gas pedal needs to be lifted for some important reason, like the rear of the car in front is coming close really fast… 
