Posted May 29th, 2011 at 6:26PMThe MINI was off the road and up on jackstands for two weeks earlier this month, as I went about replacing the front control arm bushings, front ball joints, header, and added a short shift kit and new gauge faces.
It was an ordeal, but I’m glad to have done each and every item. The bushings were apparently shot, but the replacement Alta Positive Response Steering System firmed things up and gave me 1.5 degrees of added caster per side.
The old ball joints were probably fine but I replaced them anyway.
I bought a used Alta header off of North American Motoring for pretty cheap. It had been hacked off below the expansion pipe, so I went to Synapse Motorsport in Cohoes to get the stock cat and flange welded onto the new header. They were able to make a jig and get the fit perfect without ever laying an eye on the car.
The new header has three inch longer primaries than stock, but they featured identical bends. The car now pulls harder and sounds meaner, fer shure, and I’m not throwing any codes. Not sure on the air-fuel, but I did pull the plugs recently and they looked in tip-top shape, with 75,000 miles on them and a 100,000 recommended replacement interval.
I do have a new obnoxious exhaust heat shield rattle, but that’s due to the short shift kit install. I bought the Helix unit (but received some other company’s imitation piece) which snaps onto the stock shifting mechanism underneath, keeping the same geometry but reducing shifts by an advertised 37 percent or something. It’s pretty neat. I like it.
I also finally pulled the plug on OutMotoring‘s colored gauge faces. I got the charcoal color, which does indeed match up nearly perfectly with the stock black interior. I was a little disappointed when they first arrived, but that was mainly due to the chintzy-ness of having tachometer and speedometer faces in-hand. Once installed, I think they’re a real nice little improvement. And they look really great at night, with the different font and all the extra hashmarks.
Make sure you do the two little ‘mods’ to the back plastic, however, or you’ll get ugly “dead” spots not lit up. Also, if you’re a chronic speeder, be like me and leave the speedometer off-center and indicating 2 MPH faster than the car believes you’re going (ie. 5+ MPH faster than reality). Even though you know it’s wrong, you’ll still cruise at the same indicated speeds, and your blood pressure will not soar when you get behind some lumbering barge doing the speed limit (or under).
I also have some R56 front brakes to install, and new rear control arm bushings. Then it’s time for an alignment, and then June 12 is Watkins Glen International with Patroon BMWCCA.
I took photos which I’ll upload sometime, somewhere.
And I need to do some maintenance to that damn Subaru.
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