My intention is to use a more modern power distribution center with fuses when I rewire. I posted a walk-through in my technical section, but I didn't really discuss the options available to someone that wants to tackle this themselves. I'll go through this in several sections.
In keeping with yesterday's theme of 21st century upgrades and my mention of rewiring the Mini, I thought I'd take the time to introduce some of the research I've found. I've come across a couple different companies that sell components, but I've yet to find anyone that makes a new harness specifically for the Mini. British Wiring will sell a new harness, but it is based on the original harness. Auto Sparks will also sell those harnesses in addition to other wiring components
My intention is to use a more modern power distribution center with fuses when I rewire. I posted a walk-through in my technical section, but I didn't really discuss the options available to someone that wants to tackle this themselves. I'll go through this in several sections.
0 Comments
Please produce this immediately! And it runs! You can find more information on Nick Barrett's amazing creation by going here
Well my Mini is officially in storage until I have a new home with space to tinker with it. It's a very sad day but I'm hopeful this will be a temporary situation and that it will come out the other side to a much better equipped garage. Since my current garage was shared with other tenants of my complex, I was never able to fully spread out. I'm hopeful my new home will have enough space for a work bench and a place to put an air compressor. In a dream world, I would be able to install a lift as well, but that's a bit of a dream.
However, the world continues to turn and my brain keeps on churning. Along with my hopes for a better equipped garage, it means I can hope to be more ambitious. I've talked for a while about rewiring the Mini to hopefully solve some of the issues I've had with my horn, turn signals, guages, wipers, headlights and so on and so on. Today's inspiration comes from mtymous on The Mini Forum and his excellent post on HID retrofitting. He was able to modify a set of crummy eBay projector lenses with some Acura TL bi-xenon projectors. This is a project that I would love to tackle and just adds to my list of things to come. I have done some research and found The Retrofit Source to be an excellent starting place. They offer for sale numerous HID compatible projector lenses. It seems to be a pretty managable project for a weekend. I imagine I will still want to upgrade the wiring before I tackle this project, but it gives me something to look forward to during the next couple Mini-less months. I will just have to continue updating my magazine archive. I have a great deal of respect for many Minis that I see and read about. many are built on shoe-string budgets by very skilled owners. Others are restored to levels the original factories couldn't have dreamed about. I could only hope to match the level of these projects, but every once and a while, I'm left in awe of someone else's handy work.
I really enjoy reading about projects where people have taken a theme and ran with it. I remember in a recent magazine, there was an article about a lightened Mini and the owner had even drilled the door handles to shave precious grams. This attention to detail and the overall simplicity of the final product was very impressive. But tonight, I have spent the last couple hours reading about a pick-up truck that ranks as one of my all time favorites. It started off as a reasonably sound pick-up, ends up incredibly customized with a theme based on a machined look. I've posted pictures of the dash of this car before, but now I finally have the full story. I love the little touches like the custom hinges. The effort that was put into hiding them and then integrating that into the door panels. The door strikers have been installed inboard on the doors. The dash and gauges are a work of art. And even now, after more than 6 years of work, it continues to evolve. The owner is in the process of installing a supercharged engine. I urge everyone to take a look at this one-off pickup build. http://www.minipickup.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=244 Just like my previous post addressed my quest to decipher coils, I have also been researching gauges as part of my rewiring research. I know lots of people would be upset at the thought of replacing the gauges with anything but a Cooper S style center binnacle. I've always liked the 3+3 style dash on the later Coopers and have wanted to incorporate that style in my Mini. To that extent, I have found a couple different options.
I think the most complicated part of switching gauges is replacing the speedometer. It seems extremely complicated because you need to find a speedometer that's compatible with the speedo cable that's currently in the car. Because that seems pretty complicated, I have found several other options. The first option is to use the Mini Speedometer Drive Adapter from Digital-speedos.co.uk. This makes it possible to replace your speedo drive cable with a more universal electronic sender. This should be compatible with a wide array of electronic speedometers. The speedometers that I like are Auto Meter's Ultra-Lite or Ultra-Lite II or Speed Hut. They both have a wide variety of styles and MPH/KPH ranges to suit anyone's tastes. They also offer various sizes. Speed Hut offers their gauges in kits and Auto Meter offers some of their styles in kits like the Arctic White series. The next option has really only popped up recently. Many companies are now offering GPS based speedometers. Speed Hut and Auto Meter both offer a GPS speedometer. Auto Meter also offers a GPS sender unit that can be used with any of the electronic speedometers. It may even be compatible with other brands. GPS technology really opens up many doors for people with unique needs. Fuel gauges are also important because you need one that is compatible with the Mini's fuel sender. Generally you want one that is full at 240 ohms and empty at around 20 ohms (many gauges will assume that 30 ohms is full which is fine). Some gauges are set to a fixed resistance, but others are adjustable. Both Auto Meter and Speed Hut offer adjustable gauges to suit any sender. The other consideration when looking to purchase gauges is the overall style. If you're happy with one of the many styles of gauges already on sale, then pick your favorite and plunk down the cash. But if you want something a little different, then it's good to know that there are now options for custom designing gauges. Speedhut offers all their gauges as a customizable. You can choose different background colors, illumination colors, needle colors, font and hash styles. This can also be done with a GPS speedometer. Auto Meter has only recently started offering custom styles through their AMP Custom Shop. The last item I want to address is something I had never considered: warning lights. There are certain warning lights that you have built into your dash like high beam, turn signals and low fuel. With certain gauges, you have to add these on with additional lights and sensors. A big benefit to the Speed Hut gauges is they offer several with built in warning lights. This can really clean up your dash and make the installation super easy. Check out their speedometer (also available as GPS) with built in turn signal and high beam lights. They also offer their other gauges with warning lights like fuel or oil pressure. They can also offer all these gauges in a very convenient quad gauge pack which combines multiple gauges into one ring. A full body respray is nowhere in the near future, but I got to daydreaming about what color I could respray the Mini. I've decided to forego the usual Mini colors. Tahiti Blue has long been a favorite of mine and Old English White looks fantastic when paired with a black roof. For the purpose of this post, I'm going to look at some non-original colors that might look good on a Mini. Here are my votes for best colors across the spectrum. White: I never used to like white, but it's grown on me over the last few years. The new Matte White Mercedes has used on their AMG models is very unique. I decided that a pearl is the white of choice and to that end, I've settled on BMW Mineral White. It's a subtle pearl color that isn't too overbearing. Blue: As I said before, Tahiti Blue has long been my favorite Mini color, but there are some fantastic Blues out there. It was hard for me to pick one, so I didn't. Instead, here are my top picks. It was hard to rule out some great blue's like Ford's Sonic Blue, BMW's Laguna Seca Blue, Audi's Estoril Blue or Lamborghini's Monterrey Blue, but here is what I've gone with. First up is Audi's Nogaro Blue. This has a subtle color shift but its just a real lovely blue. Number two on the list is a classic: Subaru's World Rally Blue. This has been a staple on Subarus for years. It might be about time to give it a British twist. The final choice comes from this side of the pond, straight off the Mustang GT500. I know it's available on other Ford models, but I prefer to think of it as a Mustang color. It's a nice deep blue that compliments a silver accent nicely Black: While many might argue that black is black, there are certainly blacker blacks. I'm dipping back into Ford's bag of tricks for my black of choice. I'm picking Ford Tuxedo Black for a couple reasons. First, if you're going to pick a black color on a daily driver, it's gotta be a metallic. Non-metallic paints look like glass when they're new, but after time show every scratch and can look dull. Tuxedo Black is a gorgeous metallic paint that looks incredible in direct sunlight when you can see all the little colored flecks. Red: I don't have a specific red in mind, but I think I would be a nice deep Candy Red. I could be tempted by Mazda's Black Cherry, but a deep candy that looks like you could swim in it, is beautiful. Something like this Mini would be nice. Porsche's Arena Red is about the closest I can find in a factory color. Orange: Even if I wasn't thinking about painting a Mini, Volcano Orange would be high on my list of Oranges. I could also be tempted by Infiniti's Liquid Copper, but Dodge's Toxic Orange is going to make it on this list. Although...I may need to reconsider Volcano Orange Purple: There's only one choice here: Nissan's Midnight Purple. It's no contest, although I probably wouldn't choose to paint a relatively stock Mini this color. Silver/Grey: I struggled with this one for a long time. In my opinion, a great silver or grey has to be metallic or it just looks bland. I honestly struggled with this one because it's tough to pick out a really nice silver. Some are too light and others border on Grey. Some almost look white and others look gold. In the end, I couldn't find a silver that compelled me enough to list it specifically. The only silver that really stands out is BMW's Frozen Silver. Yes it's a matte finish which makes it difficult to care for, but boy does it look good. Misc: I don't think I would ever paint my Mini this color, but Mystichrome is worth mentioning because it's awesome. It's not as radical as BASF's Rainbow paint, but it has some very intense color shifting properties.
Today's post comes courtesy of Autoblog. They posted this pretty kickass video by Electric Federal which showcases the Mini and HeritageGarage.com. I'm just going to let the video speak for itself Following my, err, incident, I decided it was time to seek some professional advice. I've seeked out the services of Bill at WTRoadsters in Frenchtown, NJ who promised he can give my Mini a once over and an idea of the major things that will need replacing and potentially help me rectify anything major. He is also capable of performing full restorations and could be someone that could help me strip and repaint the body.
I've also needed to add a couple parts to my wish list. I will certainly need to replace the brake disc, but this makes me wonder if maybe I should use this as an excuse to upgrade the system. It is about ten times the price of just fixing the disc so its going to take some thinking. The other parts I need to consider replacing are the lower control arm and the ball joint that connects it to the wheel. Of course I would love to get some lovely wheels. The question is which one? I've narrowed it down to 3: Once again, I have found myself in love with another Mini with a beautiful set of 12x6 wheels. This Mini belongs to benjib1990 on The Mini Forum. He has a set of 12x6 wheels and I love the combination of the wheels, tires and the sportspack arches. Beautiful!
So I've mentioned before that I would like to get new wheels. Something that is a little more aggressive and offers a hint that this is not and will not be a standard Mini.
If I really wanted to go with a really brute look, then I should get a set of 13x7 wheels. I'm very fond of the look and nothing else says "aggressive" like a set of deep dish 13s. (I don't think that statement would be correct for any other car in the world.) However there are numerous drawbacks to the big 13 inchers. (So difficult not to make jokes...) For starters, you need to cut the fenders. There is also the potential for rubbing on the inside of the fenders when taking turns. Most experts also agree that it complete ruins the ride. It's for these reasons that I've decided that I should get a set of 12x6. I may still need to cut the fenders because I would like to fit Sportspack arches, but apart from that, things should be business as normal. And just to convince you that 12x6 are the way to go, here are a couple shots of some nice Minis sporting their tidy wheels. All pictures are copyright of their respective owners. |
Archives
January 2022
Categories
All
|