Mini service time

Miffi – my Mini- is currently my main daily driver. Since I restored the car in 2018/2019 I did just under 10000km without any noteworthy faults. It is clearly more a city car and only on the recent longer trip to Hamburg and Cuxhaven I noticed something is rattle under the car occasionally. My guess was that it is the exhaust. This was the last thing I changed when I had to take the rear part off (along with the rear bumper) to change the broken boot hinges

Locating the problem took a while. The exhaust has a tight fit at the heat shield of the catalstic converter (Miffi is one of the last 1991 built Hif44 carb Coopers – sold 1992 and therefore retro-fitted with the infamous G-kat at this time). There is less than 1cm between the cat and the heat shield and no matter how I angle the rear brackets of the exhaust – it is always a close fit. Just by coincidence I noticed that the nut on the front bracket of the heat shield is not tight. And sure enough – this causes the rattling sound.

I also never got around changing the winter tires this spring – so this was overdue as well. Everytime I swap winter/summer tires I also check the suspension and grease it. Fluid levels were also all checked and topped up – nothing special. The small inspection incl. tire change etc just took three hours. The only annoyance is that the steering column rubber covers, the rubber on the swivel hub ball joints and the engine mount poly bushes are starting to crack. They are not torn or completely damaged but I expected them to be better. I applied a bit of silicone grease and hope that this will keep them soft for a bit longer. Nevertheless I will order spare parts for the service (incl. fluent change) coming up in November.

One task I never completed after the restoration was to nicely mount the Bluetooth receiver and USB port I got as a replacement for the old radio. The walnut dashboard came with a matching, wooden blanking cover. Three years ago I built my own cover from plywood and painted it black – but I never liked the look of it. Today I finally got my act together and replaced it.