New to Me ride

She has been wanting to get a gas economy car. Been looking, I can't see dropping a lot into a Honda, etc. So I got this.


2008 Mini Cooper Clubman

Standard model but has the stripes, moon roof, third door. It's longer than a standard mini so it has more room. I left the dealership (me and the dealership) thinking I had NO spare tire. They sell the standard mini's with out one as they have run flats on them. The clubman is suppose to have a space saver one though. Well I knew there were two lift up compartments in the back, when I got home I found yet another space under there and there was the spare, lol. Oh well, it worked to my advantage when talking price. The asking price was 12,325, got them down to 10,325.

The automatic has the steering wheel shifters too, you can swap to sport mode and it has the sport suspension. Then you have full control over the auto to shift like a manual. I have heard they dropped this feature on the non

Nice new car. I know a few people who own Minis and they love them. Looks like quite the juxtaposition with the Mini parked beside the Ram. Have fun, and great negotiating!

Drove one Cooper when my wife was still obsessed with getting one, and it was a fun car to drive. She ultimately decided that it was just too small -- all that I had to tell her was, "You can't do garage sales in this car." Ended that permanently. Mind you, we were not talking about a Clubman, but on the other hand it was a stick instead of paddle shifters. How responsive are the paddles on the Mini? We have them on our Fusion, but they are pretty sluggish.

On the other hand, I pick this up tomorrow:



Fully loaded, Tangerine Scream paint, full leather Recaros, nav, moonroof, etc. Listed for $31,500, but because it was a 2014 still on the lot, and with other discounts we got it down to $26,000.

Being a non S model ( I haven't driven a S model yet, but it's 60 more HP so I know it's got to be good) it feels good, and has better pickup than expected. It has the same rims, tires and suspension as the S model it was ordered with the sport seats and 6 speed auto with manual auto shift so it handles very well. When you swap it into sport mode you don't get any more horse power but the trans is reprogramed in auto mode for higher rpm upshifts and the fuel map is reprogramed for better broader performance. Reading in the Mini forums they dropped some of those options for the non S model mid 08 model year. So this one must be a early model.

My wife is also stricken at the search though garage sales and thrift shops. She has that, I have the junk yard and it works out fine, lol.

With in the 2000 price range I paid for this one there was a regular mini and two S models ( a white mini and a green convertable) most of them were standard model. She can drive a stick but prefers the auto. That and the much more spacey room in the rear and more rear seating room made the decision for me.

If it holds together well in a year or so I may go looking for me one for days when I don't need my pickup, but it would HAVE to be the S model. The wife seems intrested in it as well performance wise. She had me show her the basics of the shifter and sport button today. You can even turn the traction control off as well.



In news of the 52 ford F1 I have been ordering parts for it here and there. I was down to figuring out two basic problems.

The problem on the brakes ( I was thinking it was a under sized master cylinder (7/8" bore and 12" front disks with 2.9" calipers not the 2.5" I thought was on it) but it turned out the master was bad. Only the disk brake side of the master cylinder was working and it didn't seem to work that well. A "new" junkyard Ford 1-1/8" master cylinder off of a Ford 90's pickup solved the problem and works well now. I haven't had it over 40mph in the yard and the long drive way but it still seems to stop fine now.

Another problem I had was with fuel pressure. I am on the third fuel pump on this truck. The first was a Mr Gasket pump. I installed it, it worked fine. Went to work and came back. It wouldn't work, no matter what I did. So I just scrapped it. I decided it was over kill time and got a Holley blue pump. I kept the twist knob fuel pressure regulator I had on it, started it up and regulated it down to about 4 psi. In less than a minute it blew it out and I had 15 psi of fuel pressure. I then installed a new regulator and went to adjust the holley pump pressure down. Then I had a new problem, the pump couldn't be turned down enough pressure wise even though the regular I had on it was down as far as it went. That was about 7 to 8 psi. Edelbrock carbs don't like more than 7, most like less than that.

A new carter electric pump with the same regulator solved that problem. After that it had developed problems where it would crank fine, idle fine, then as soon as you put it in gear it would die and refuse to recrank after checking everything else out timing, etc it turns out the carb was bad. I don't know if the 15 psi hit damaged it, or it was on borrowed time already as it was a used unit. I put a spare electric choke 600 cfm unit on it and it runs fine now. I can even leave it un-touched for 3 or 4 days and it will fire up first crank.

Once it ran fine like it was suppose to I can drive it around now, lol. I even had the two youngest girls (my daughter and the wife's youngest) in the bed and did a good burn out on the way back from it's first short run.

Only thing now on the much shorter to do list is.

Pull the electric choke and swap the manual choke on.
New tires
Install moon disks
finish wiring job (Runs fine, but have little issue like lights work on hi beam but not on low, tail lights work but not the front tail lights.) I will get it sorted out soon.
Body work
paint scheme. I have it narrowed down.
redo the seat pan. I plan on keeping the original seat frame, but doing a custom seat bottom frame out of 1" tubing I have. That way the bottom can be used for storage and nothing can slide around.
Behind the seat where the gas tank was I am now dropping a box I am going to make for storage of stuff like the jack and other MISC stuff.
Radio in the glove box (found a good pioneer disk player with remote in the yard for 35 bucks)

For paint I am thinking of this style.

HRCC_GHN_panel106 by Safjist Nipnog, on Flickr

HRCC_GHN_panel109 by Safjist Nipnog, on Flickr

20150314_180004 by Safjist Nipnog, on Flickr

20150423_174804 by Safjist Nipnog, on Flickr

20150423_174821 by Safjist Nipnog, on Flickr

20150316_160631 by Safjist Nipnog, on Flickr

20150422_143914 by Safjist Nipnog, on Flickr

20150422_143849 by Safjist Nipnog, on Flickr

20150422_153002 by Safjist Nipnog, on Flickr

That is going to look cool (well, cooler) when it's done.

I hope so, a lot of work and digging has gone into it so far.

I am down in new orleans right now, got a safety class to go to, then back to the rig tomorrow. She put more gas in the Mini today. Said it wasn't down to the red zone yet on the digital gas gauge, it was still in the orange. She did some quick figures and came up with a average of 33 mpg on it. This is a couple of longer trips with most of it being in town trips.

That helps. My new ride had 60 miles on it when I bought it, and most of that would have been test drive mileage. Aside from the forty minute drive home, I have been doing nothing but short runs around town. Currently it sits at 18.6 mpg. Should be over 30 on the highway, but with it being my knock-around-town car, I doubt that I will ever pull much better than a lower twenties average. 33 is mighty nice!

Looks like you have a long road ahead on the project truck, but keep us posted!