Josh Wardell’s MINI Cooper S

One of the benefits of moving my hosting to Site5 is better statistics. For example I can see what people typed into search engines that led them to my site. I thought it would be interesting to answer some of those questions, so here is a collection from September:

mini cooper blog -You’ve found mine. Head over to GoMotoring for a collection of several of others.

how can hk system have 8 speakers on mini cooper -The speakers you can’t seem to find are actually within the tweeters near the door handles: there is a tweeter on top of a midrange speaker there. Ian has a nice photo here.

mini speaker rattle, mini door panels -The strong bass of the HK speakers can rattle the door panels against the metal door. See my HK Door Fixes page for an easy way to stop it. It is also a good reference on how to remove the door panel.

mini cooper s problems -Your best resource to research technical problems and modifications is by searching the North American Motoring forums.

where is the gas tank on a mini cooper -It is under the back seat. You can yank up the bottom of the seat and you’ll see the panels to access the fuel pump and tank.

what is gas mileage for the mini cooper s with jcw, how can i improve my gas milage -If you’re that worried, don’t get it! Really, it’s still very good, about 24-28mpg. You can look at my fuel milage charts. There are several things to improve your milage that I detailed in this post, but it’s really not worth giving up the fun.

mini cooper roof rack, mini cooper ski rack -There are a few rack options for the MINI. If you plan to use a rack very often, then the factory rack is the way to go as it is much stronger than the others. But the $700 price and holes in your roof is not good for most of us that only use racks once in a while. Yakima and Thule have racks that are OK, but not as well designed for the MINI as the MontBlanc rack, which was my choice.

mini cooper autocross what is it, mini cooper autocross video -A lot of fun! Autocross is a timed race course set up on flat pavement and laid out with traffic cones. There are no other cars or other obstacles to worry about hitting. You don’t even hit highway speeds. They are well organized events that concentrate on driving technique, safety, and fun, and are an inexpensive way to spend a weekend day. This year I have been autocrossing with the Boston BMW CCA, but there are many groups in each state that hold them. I have a video from last time and will have a video from Saturday’s autocross posted later this week.

mini cooper cleaning products -Careful, it’s a bottomless pit! Visit my car care page to see all of mine. I will always try a new product, and will update that page whenever I find something better.

keith polischuk -Keith was a salesperson at MINI of Peabody and recently had a spinal cord injury. Head to careforkeith.com for updates on his successful recovery progress and what you can do to help.

That’s enough for now, If you think this is a good idea to post once in a while let me know and I’ll do another in a month or two.

Just over a week ago my driver’s side HK door woofer started making a grumbling noise, and the next day it would cut in and out completely. Last Saturday I pulled things apart to find the problem, and found this:

Water had come in through the window seal (which is confirmed by my service tech as normal) to the inside of the door, but the speakers are fully exposed and as you can see got dosed with water. The fragile wire going to the actual speaker corroded and was no longer conductive.

After a few days of driving with no music but that of my engine, I drove up to MINI of Peabody and got the speaker replaced under warranty. But I certainly do not want this happening again, so I made another cheap HK fix. A $7.99 pair of foam speaker baffles now protects the speakers from the elements.

I have detailed the process on my HK Door Fixes page. I also took the opportunity to rewrite the entire page and update it with some new information. This is something that may eventually happen to every MINI, so it is worth the quick and cheap fix before it happens to you.

My hosting has been moved over to Site5.com. I’ve been reluctant to move from my previous host, whom I’ve been with for over five years; I was mostly happy with them, except they never upgraded their hosting plans to be more competitive. I’m moving from 50meg space/2.5gig bandwidth to 3gig/50gig for almost the same price. Since starting the MINI blog, my bandwidth has been steadily increasing, last month hitting over 2TB. (The total data in all of my website is 16MB, so that’s impressive!) So I really needed to make a jump.

I followed closely Ian’s and Gabe’s server movements to PowWeb and InMotion, and wanted to switch with them. But those hosts do not give you your own IP address and do not give you unix SSH shell access, two things I did not want to give up. More recently I had recommendations for Site5 by GMINI, Rich, and Mark, and Site5 offers all the features I am looking for and more. So I made the jump.

The last two days were a nightmare getting things set up and running, especially the database for this blog. Unfortunately, site5’s support was terrible, taking hours for each reply and ultimately not solving any of the issues I asked. But I just figured things out for myself as I usually do and hopefully everything is working correctly now. Let me know if you witness and problems or performance differences.

On Saturday, I joined a bunch of the Rhode Island MINI owners on a run to the Purgatory Chasm. I’ve missed a number of MINI events this summer due to scheduling conflicts so I was looking forward to this somewhat smaller MINI run. Sometimes the smaller ones are better; you get to meet everyone personally and the fun on the twisties is usually higher.

It was especially timely as on the way down my MINI hit 20,000 miles! What a great way to celebrate saying goodbye to childhood by carving up blind corners. I should again mention that I have had no major problems with my MINI. I don’t think many other cars would prove so reliable after being driven like you stole it every day.

I met about ten other MINIs in Rhode Island, where we headed on local twisty roads northwest back into Massachusetts to the Chasm. We parked in a line (pictured above), and were joined by two others. We ate our packed lunches, and then hiked into the Chasm. it was a great place to hike, with rock cliffs and boulders everywhere, making for some ankle-twisting fun. The weather was also perfect for hiking, warm with no humidity, a rare occurrence around here.

I was undecided till the last minute about joining–it’s tough to get me to promise anything early on a Saturday morning. But I’m glad I did. I had not met any of these guys before (I had missed a few other RI runs last year) and they’re a great group. I hope to make their upcoming Haunted MINIs Run, which sounds like it will be even better than last year’s.