Josh Wardell’s MINI Cooper S

Today was my first autocross of the season with the Boston chapter of the BMW Car Club of America. I did two last year at the end of the season, and this year hope to make it to most of them and possibly compete.

Unfortunately mid-morning it started raining. That made the track slick…but still tons of fun! I couldn’t resist capturing this poor guy with his roofless race-prepped Miata (who’s plate is PRA 4 SUN!):

Funny thing was, despite the rain getting continuously stronger during the day and the pavement going from damp to flooded, my last run was my best time. I think the wet conditions actually made me concentrate on driving smoother. It also goes to show my assumption was right, my new Yoko AVS-ES100 tires are amazing in the rain!

There were a total of six MINIs there, most of which were regulars. If you’re not familiar with AutoX, I highly recommend it. It’s a great way to have a ton of fun driving your car without any dangerous speeds or obstacles. There are several clubs in each area of the country that do it. I like the BMW CCA as not only are they the best organized, but you also get more runs than other clubs and at $25 they are also one of the cheapest! And for you locals I strongly recommend you join us next time: May 22.

While I never intended to do a blog, I experimented with the MINI2 Journal system for the last few months and found that I not only posted more often than I thought I would, but I really enjoyed doing it. However due to the limitation of needing to be a signed in member of MINI2, and also my desire to keep things central, I decided to move things here.

On Gabe Bridger’s recommendation, I went with WordPress, which is powerful yet simple to set up, and most importantly free.

I also thought the site was in need of an overhaul anyway. It was originally just a simple throw-together page to list specs and info when I first ordered the car. Unfortunately this now breaks my usual page rule of “keep it simple” but many in the MINI world are already used to these blogs so it shouldn’t cause problems.

I’ve worked hard the last few days to implement this and customize it to my own. I’ve also recreated all the posts from my MINI2 Journal so there is already plenty of content. Not to mention all my regular MINI pages, which are linked on the left bar.

Please let me know what you think. You can leave comments on each article (most importantly this one). Also keep in mind there may be issues here and there which I will work to fix as I learn WordPress, PHP, and CSS. Please note there is a security question field after the comment field, to prevent spam comments which I hear are prevalent (I would prefer to avoid forcing people to register accounts).

So welcome to the new site. Have a look around. 😀

I filled up last night, and calculated only 20.5 mpg. The tank was all commuting, which is always tough on my milage when I don’t have any small highway trips mixed in.

Of course the OBC reported a whopping 25.5mpg! 🙄 You all know not to trust that right?

I’ve updated my gas milage graphs for April. I’m hoping the summer shows some improvement, because the prices certainly aren’t dropping!

I spent a few hours yesterday detailing the interior of my MINI. I had just bought a small wet/dry vac for vacuuming the car and other things–it performed great.

When I cleared out my boot I noticed a small puddle on top of the boot mat. It had just been a rainy weekend. But I know very well of the common issue with the boot seal. I thought I was immune with the 2004, but I guess not. I lifted things up to check the battery, and there was about 1-2mm of water in the battery bay. Of course no big deal and harmless at that level, but nothing should be getting in there to begin with. I will now have to check every once in a while.

Good thing I just bought that wet vac…it sucked that water right out!