As I have been a long time lurker I wanted to share my journey with you guys. I always like reading projects of others, I especially favoured the one from ChiefM as it was very inspiring. So I thought, maybe I can inspire someone else with my new project!

This is not my first Mini, it started with a 2006 R50 Cooper Parklane five years ago. I always wanted to wrench one cars since I was a little kid but never did; I didn't have the guts. That Mini needed some love so basically I started looking at ModMini and did some jobs with my dad to get some confidence. At first in a DIY garage but that was very stressful as you needed to get the in and out in your reserved timeslot without knowing how much time it would costs. So we got acces to the garage of a family friend. It was timy, like really tiny as the Mini could just fit in there. Anyway, long story short; did a lot jobs, moved to a house with a small garage and bought a Pure Silver R53 with no clutch. Two years later it was finally back on the road and that R50 was sold.

Wrenching has since became a hobby I do a couple of evenings a week. I now needed a new project and found this 2006 R50 One in the 7 trim. Here in Europe you had three "final editions" of the first gen Mini: 7, Checkmate and Parklane

It was at a garage which stated the gearbox was broken. Took it for a drive in the pouring rain and yea, the bearings must have been heavily pitted. The noise was louder than a faulty wheelbearing. Brought the car home and inspected the car fully. It was bad, real bad. So bad I wanted to scrap the car. Things I found: oil leaking from every seal and gasket (to be expected), tiny hole in the exhaust, battery box had been broken at the back to fit a larger battery, which was held in by a blok of wood because it was too long for the bracket (box cover covered it all up nicely), coolant looked a bit oily, the crankpulley was chewed up, the waterpump has signs of leakage, front left shock has been leaking, various heat shields are missing (manifold, starter motor and at the fuel tank) and I'm probably missing some more.

Anyway, I could either scrap it with a loss of put in a lot of time to save it and hopefully play even. Since I'm here I've choosen the latter and I'll do up all that's needed and am going to learn how to do spot repairs as there is also some rust at the taillights.

So far I have done: head gasket, sump gasket, front main seal, oil pump seals, chain with guides and tensioner, chain cover gasket and the oil filter housing gasket.

I make quite a lot of photos to share with my now 71 year old dad and I will be sharing them here as well.



Home on my driveway.


Leaky shock


Holding the battery with a block of wood...really?


When I came home from the 3h drive oil began to show in the coolant (not the other way around though)


That's a tiny hole in the backbox, not after I poked it through though.


This was to supposed to have a back. Some hill billy wrenching happened here unfortunately.


The shifter cables weren't the smoothest, now I know why.


Did a compression test and cylinder number 4 was way to low.


Its like something chewed on the pulley. I think someone used a wrong puller on it. You should hook it in the middle center, not on the edges.

More to come in the future!

 

Hey! Welcome to NAM.

Glad to see another R50 being saved.

We have had ours since new and still love the car. My only suggestion at this point is to replace the shocks with the KONI FSDs (or the latest version of those). We replaced the MINI shocks with those and it was a great improvement. Oh, and for exhaust, I put the Miltek SS exhaust on our R50. Slight increase in volume, really nice tone, a bit more power and better gas milage.

Looking forward to how your restoration/save-the-car goes.

 

Thanks!

If this car would be here to stay I agree with you, Koni FSD (Special Active these days) would be the proper replacement. But I think I forgot to mention; this car is to do up, learn a thing or two and sell on without a loss.

After seeing the oil in the coolant and the low compression in #3 and especially #4 I did the headgasket. That was a first for me. Luckily ModMini was there as a guide and to behonest, nothing more than nuts and bolt and a lot of elbow grease for cleaning it. In total around 8 hours scraping, rubbing and cleaning with carburator cleaner. There was some carbon on there and I couldn't just bolt it up as it was.






I measured the head and block for flatness and I couldn't fit a 0.05mm feeler between my straight edge.

I have a new exhaust coming my way. I didn't opt for a Miltek but I did go for a JCW replacement one from Walker. It should produce a nice sound without sounding like a boyracer.

Monday I want to close the block up by doing the rockercover gasket, cam position sensor o-ring and dipstick tube o-ring.

 

Wow! You did nicely with the head clean up!

Got ya on selling it.

A JCW exhaust from Walker for a R50? That is different. However, I do know that there were a number of MINI JCW performance option parts for the R50 back then. I actually snagged a MINI JCW exhaust off the Market place for our R50 and it did sound better than the stock. Very mild volume increase. I liked it. Hey does the Walker one come with the JCW chrome tip? I still have the MINI one from mine if you want it. I think it is 3” vs 2” for the stock MINI one. And I think it is in pretty good shape.

As for coolant - The coolant in that MINI is not the right color. It should be blue. A vague memory is telling me that the orange and blue don’t mix, which can cause problems. Maybe check into that before filling the engine.

 

👍

 

@LukasH , I wish I could give you more than one like on the head gasket job.
Therefore - I hope ...will suffice.
Great pics and write-up too!
Best of luck with the rest Mini.
(should be a memorable adventure)

 

I'll share some pictures when it arrives. Its not a genuine JCW but it should be an aftermarket replacement as it shares the same OEN. I bought the tip as well that Walker had as an additional unit, pretty sure it won't have the JCW inscription but that's fine with me.

Thanks all for the positive feedback on the head. As it was my first one it was a bit intimidating.

I got some more bits done this evening, this was before:


I saw this before but didn't share it, some mechanic before me scratches the surface quite deeply. Have put some RTV on it before the new gasket went on.

New gasket and sparkplugtube "o-rings"

The old ones were very brittle

If you look closely you can see a blue o-ring

Old vs new. Fun fact, I buy small parts like these from the BMW dealer as part stores don't have them. As I am a regular client the parts guy now knows me by face and name and I got this o-ring for free.

All closed up

I knew the pump was leaking (play in shaft) but look at that tiny hose going to the block. Its all swollen up. Will need to order a new hose.
€18 at the dealer, €2,20 at my favorite auto parts store in Germany. Will wait until later because there might be other unforeseen parts needed.

Next time I will probably drop the subframe and pull the gearbox. Going to be fun as I had issues with some balljoint bolts.

 

Great thread Lukas, thank you!

 

Parts arrived! The new exhaust from Walker came in today, all fluids (motor oil, blue! coolant, hydraulic steering fluid, dot4 brake fluid and gearbox oil) and a new belt tensioner pulley. That last one was... interesting:

I was ready to install

But I got 12 conrod bearings for a BMW 6 cylinder

Lets install the new crankshaft pulley. The old one was literally chewed up.

Looks so much better!

New thermostat with housing on the right, old one on the left. Didn't look bad to behonest but I was worried about what seemed to be oil in the coolant when I got the car. Since the thermostat and hoses are so clean I begin to believe that maybe someone mixed blue with pink coolant, as someone mentioned earlier in the thread.

Almost forgot, the new exhaust. It came in one piece and its quite heavy. Really curious how this JCW replacement sounds.

 

Not sure if this helps, but this is the JCW sport exhaust I had on our R50. You can read the MINI part number on the resonator. Looks like it is a 2003 vintage.

R50 JCW sport exhaust.


It is missing the strap and hangers

It seems the Walker is an acceptable replacement. As I mentioned before, the MINI one sounds really good; not loud. I would think the Walker will be similar.

For the coolant, I would flush the orange out before putting the blue in.

 

Hey, gotta love bmw inline 6’s. Maybe find something fun that will fit those bearing shells? 😅👍

 

I will be flushing it out, thanks for reminding me.


About three years ago I replaced the exhaust on another R50 and they all seem a like. The right one made a bit more sporty sound than the left one. I guess they real difference lies inside the silencers.


Hehe, maybe one day again. I've had an Z3 and Z4 years ago, the Z4 with 2.5l inline 6. Great engine but the car just didn't fit me. It was too posh. Where the Z3, with just a 1.9L 4 cylinder, was perfect. I have fond memories of that car.

My current daily, a '06 R53, is probably the most fun car I've owned.

No update on the One 7 today, maybe I have some wrench time tomorrow evening.

 

Some good news and some bad news. Let start with the good:

I pulled the crank position sensor..

.. and changed the o-ring

Also pulled the subframe out. A bit dirty and rusty but nothing I can't sort out. I did had some issues with getting the balljoints out of the arms but a hamer did the trick.

And now for the bad:

Both control arm bushes are toast. They don't have *some* play. No they take a field trip when you wiggle the control arm.

I have my old R53 bushings + control arms laying around from when I refreshed my suspension earlier this year. They are in good nick but maybe I buy some new ones. I did have nightmares from replacing them, just couldn't get the new bushes on the control arm.

I'll let this rest for now as I want to get the gearbox out and open it. That should bring in some interesting pictures as I suspect one or more bearings are heavily pitted.

 

Yep that R50 JCW sound kit exhaust is what i have on my R52 Cooper, sounds great!

 

Another Monday, another 2 hours in. (Incase you are wondering, I can only wrench on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings, have to keep the wife and little one happy)

The other day I was thinking how easy the R50 is to work on compared to my daily R53. Well today I got proven wrong, I got the gearbox out but boy it was HARD work. There is zero play between the chassis leg and the gearbox and there was one steel coolant pipe hooking on the edge of the gearbox.

Now time for some pictures.

It seemed easy at the start, so much room right?

Starter motor bolts were strangely oily

The starter motor itself was also oily

What? Someone put a washer on the gearbox drain and fill plug?

This steel coolant line was making my life very hard. In the end I had to take off the thermostat housing so I could just fit the line over the gearbox edge. You can see the gap between engine and gearbox, it was just not enough to get the gearbox out of the crankshaft spline.

Pleased Ingot it out in the end

Seems a bit oily. I'm thinking rear main seal, will investigate in the future when I take the clutch and flywheel off

Yep that is the clutch

 

So, if someone put a washer on the gearbox drain and fill plug, you think that someone changed the oil?

If so, what is the chance they put the right oil in? Especially considering that they got the coolant wrong. Could that be why the tranny is bad? Ugh!

Hey, did you look up the vin to see what options it might have? I’m am thinking about a limited slip in the tranny. It would be rare in a R50, but possible. I don’t know if that would make a difference with the transmission oil. Don’t remember if you said you were replacing the tranny or going to try to rebuild it. If replacing, a LSD might be worth something on the market or to put in the replacement.

 

Hold up. Who made an LSD for the facelift 5 speed Getrag? I must know.

 

Hello!
First, great job on the R50 overhaul so far!
I'm really curious about your low compression and head gasket job, since I got a low compression issue going on and still trying to figure out my next plan of action: I got 160 / 200 / 175 / 215 roughly, with the engine hot. Not concernedly low, but a bit too unbalanced. Oil analysis also revealed high sodium in the oil, indicative of a bit of coolant going there (not enough for mayo, but enough to notice the coolant going down over the span of a year). So far I'm leaning toward opening the rocker cover, inspecting the rockers & tappets, the timing chain, re-tighten the head, slap a new rocker cover on it and see if it fixes my issue before committing to a head job.

Anyway, my questions:
- did the head gasket job fix the low compression?
- did you have anything else to replace on the head, like the valves, rockers or camshaft?
- did you give the head to a machinist?
- were the tappets a bit stuck in the rockers? I heard it's a common issue, and I'm pretty sure mine are noisy and probably a bit stuck
- did you test or replace the timing chain? If yes did you also replace the sprockets?

I'll probably open my own thread in a few days/weeks to ask questions, but I'd love to know your feedback about how it went!

 

I wish I could tell you. I am going by a vague recollection from when we ordered our R50 21 years ago. Back then you could option almost anything on any car. That vague recollection is that we could have gotten a LSD on our CVT equipped MINI. I am assuming it could have been had with the 5 speed. I could be wrong. I did bring up checking the VIN for a LSD because it may not be known that it was an option back then and thought it was worth checking for.

 

Let's start with I am no expert 😉
But none of the above wil fix a coolant leak as coolant only flows through the bottom of the head.

I haven't started the car since doing the headgasket as I have more issues tot fix before I put it back together. I didn't replace anything else on the head as I'm a bit on a budget but also there were no signs of this engine consuming oil so no point in replacing lets say valve seats. This engine only did 170k km, around 100k miles so its by no mean worn. Depending on the mileage I would replace the chain and sprockets. This is a very easy job actually.

The head didn't go to a machine shop as I couldn't fit a feeler gauge of 0.05mm between the straight edge and the head. It had definitely not warped but it didn't overheat so not too concerned about that

If you don't have any running issues I wouldn't recommend pulling the head and do a lot of work on it. Your compression results as a bit weird to me as I thought these engines should have around 150psi.

 

This one doesn't have an LSD according to the VIN check. This is only a One which means it produces 90hp, this type was never on the US market I believe.

However, my old R50 Cooper Parklane was built in October 2006. When I met a parts supplier he told me that at the end of the production of the gen1 Mini's they put the LSD in without people actually checking the option. Now this could be a myth but that R50 pulled around corners in the wet WOT without wheelspin. Not saying it had LSD but I wouldn't be surprised.


This was that Mini

 

It sounds like a myth to me since, AFAIK, there was never an LSD option for any R50.

 

Ahah, obviously, I was looking for a DIYer feedback

So far I'm assuming that a tiny bit of coolant gets into the oil through the head gasket. Water gets evaporated by the high temperature, but sodium stays. That's my theory about both "a bit of coolant goes missing" and "there's high levels of sodium in the oil" facts. I could be wrong though.

Thanks for the feedback! My Mini is at 220k km, but its history is mostly unknown. Money is not a big object if it's to buy reliability for the next 100k km or more.

Got it!

It's hard to start when there is high humidity, sometime resulting in crank / no start on the first try (then starting on the second try), with some idle dips and delayed throttle response sometime shortly after starting. Plus it's noisy at idle. I've pulled my hairs trying to diagnose it (there's a lenghty thread about it) but so far have come up empty (though I've not had a good diagnostics session during a high humidity period). So it's not like there is "no issue", though it does run for now.
As for the compression results, here's what the Bentley manual says:

I suspect the Cooper and Cooper S lines are inverted, as my hardback manual says it's the other way around, so 131 to 196 psi. 2 of my cylinders are slightly above spec, which is slightly surprising, but could very likely be attributed to the significant carbon buildup at the top of the pistons. What's more concerning to me is the difference between cylinders, which is way out of spec. And I've only listed the hot compression test, but it's even worse when cold, with cylinder one being at 130psi, so right at the bottom end of the spec, and likely worse than that when accounting for the carbon buildup.
I do wonder now if my cheap tool could be giving higher readings than reality.

Oh, by the way, I was wondering: what did you use to clean the pistons head and cylinder walls? I assume you did not remove the bottom-end, and I was under the impression those could not be cleaned without doing that.

 

As far as I know, neither the Getrag 5 speed or Midlands/Rover 5 speed had room for an LSD; moreover, no one, to my knowledge, built one that could fit either.

My R50 would at times feel like it had an LSD but I know it didn't. When the steering angle was just right and the application of the throttle was also just right, the open diff would act "kind of like" and LSD as both axles would have the same amount of torque being applied and thus put power to both wheels nearly equally.

So, I know what the OP is talking about. I had felt it many times in my R50 but I can assure you there was no LSD in that Midlands/Rover transmission which I did have to get rebuilt.

 

Boy, did I open up a can of worms…