Josh Wardell’s MINI Cooper S

November 22, 2005

November Motoring

Filed under: — Josh Wardell @ 2:45 pm

There seemed to be less local MINI events this summer than last, but there were more than ever this fall. So many that I could only attend less than half. Here were the most recent two events I joined this month:

On November 5th, a handful of us went driving through the North Shore areas of Mass for “Burning MINIs.” It included a stop at Russell Orchards in Ipswich which had fresh homemade apple cider and apple cider donuts. At the end of the full day of driving, we had a big bonfire and barbecue.

The following Saturday, MINI of Peabody held a huge Care fo Kieth event at the new BMW service facility. As a benefit for Keith Polischuk, they brought in excellent instructors from the Boston BMW CCA 20051113-124359(whom I autocross with over the summer), and held a school for emergency maneuvers and a tight first-gear autocross course. Despite already having my snow tires on, I got one of the fastest times of the day. Over 50 MINIs showed up and it was the first autocross experience for many, and every driver had a huge smile on their face by the end.

I am gradually posting photos of these and previous events in my galleries (I still have photos to process back through MINIsOnTop…over 1000!). In related news, I registered joshwardell.com on a spacious server at 1&1 and moved all my photos and videos there. Previously they were all hosted on my Mac at home, which means I may soon be able to sleep with it off for the first time in nine years! You can find all the photo galleries on the left bar of this page.

November 18, 2005

Who needs steering, anyway?

Filed under: — Josh Wardell @ 2:36 pm

My MINI finally had its first real mechanical issue. For the last month or so, I’ve noticed the power steering fan more and more; it has been slightly louder than I remember but otherwise functioning fine. I assumed it may have had some dirt in it. Then in the past week or so, when first starting the car I could hear what sounded like water flowing behind the steering wheel area. Like the fluid sound you hear a refrigerator or air conditioner make when they turn off. I then realized it made these sounds all the time, but road noise or the radio easily drowned it out.

On Wednesday I was stuck in traffic on the way to work and decided to experiment. I turned off the radio and turned off the vent fan so I could hear the water sound. Then I tried listening to see what actions affected it. I then noticed that turning the steering wheel even slightly made it stop for a second.

When I got home from work I popped the hood and had a look. I opened the power steering fluid reservoir and to my horror it was completely dry!!

I would have driven to autozone to fill it back up but the MINI takes a special CHF 11S fluid, not typical power steering fluid, because of its electrical steering system. So Thursday morning I drove up to MINI of Peabody. They quickly determined that seals in the steering rack had leaked, however the fluid stays in the rubber boots so that you don’t see it on the ground. As is typical with MOP, instead of just patching the problem, they prefer to replace the offending system, so they took the car for a day to give it a whole new steering rack. Under warranty, of course.

In the meantime they gave me a rental from Enterprise, and thankfully not the Neon or Cavalier that I have rented before, but a new Chevy Aveo. Which actually impressed me, aside from the two pedals on the floor that apparently had no function whatsoever, and the steering wheel that needs a knob you have to turn it so much; it was built much safer and smarter than the Neon or Cavalier. Despite its size (and I’m sure you all know this argument) it was better engineered and you actually had more space inside and better protection in an impact. The other two cars were scary to say the least. It is nice to get a rental once in a while to appreciate all the qualities of your MINI, sometimes we need a good reminder of why the MINI is one of the greatest cars. 🙂

Anyway my MINI is back and good as new. I was lucky to catch that issue before I was caught somewhere with no power steering or the power steering pump burned out. A search on NAM turned up several others with the same symptoms and cause (one in my same May 04 build month), so it is an issue. So take an extra minute and check your power steering fluid every once in a while, so you catch a problem well before you drain the whole system. The fluid level should be within the plastic dipstick on the cap. The level should not normally drop. And remember you cannot replace it with regular power steering fluid, it uses CHF 11S.

November 10, 2005

MINI Blog Overload

Filed under: — Josh Wardell @ 12:40 pm

I’ve recently noticed there are now a ton of MINI blogs out there. Some update often, but others only occasionally. Even when using a site like GoMotoring, it can be hard to keep track of what is new and what you have already read. I’ve been using Safari’s built-in RSS aggregator instead, which nicely lists each post in reverse chronological order:



This way I can see what is new today or the last few days at a glance. If there is a post in an occasionally posted blog, it gets inserted right in there with the big guys.

To create this in Safari (2.0, requires Tiger) you create a bookmark folder and check off Auto-Click. Then add bookmarks of the RSS feeds of each site you want. Once it is created, when you find a new site, you can just drag the URL icon of its feed address onto the button and it is added to the list.

…or you can just bookmark this link to all the blogs I currently watch.

This is also possible with RSS Readers that are commonly available for download. I would really like it to be implemented on a web page, for example as an alternate view at GoMotoring, but I’ve mentioned it to both him and MotoringFile, and they have more important things to do. 🙂 (So for the nerds out there, does anyone know of a good php app that could do this?) It sure would be nicer to have it server generated so that everyone could enjoy this wonderful way to get their fix of MINI blogs!

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