1 - Greetings, Mini Folks

 

Thanks for having a gander at our very first blog entry. We really appreciate your coming by to see what we post here, and we hope you enjoy the updates!

First off, let me just apologize for what has been somewhat of a slow start to these blogs. Shortly though, the brewing thunderstorm of updates starting off softly in the distance, will be booming and raining down photos from on-high. As we're getting closer to the race, more and more is happening on an minute-by-minute frequency. A few months ago things progressed by the week. As time went on, things happened day-by-day. We're now moving ahead at warp-speed, where not an hour goes by without having to make an important decision, receive an important call/email, or discover a significant new problem in need of repair.

So, in brief, here's where we stand now:
We bought the car at the very beginning of August, less than 2 months ago. For the first 3-4 weeks we were simply trying to locate and repair the bigger problems, i.e., like why did the front end feel like it was falling apart, (turns out it actually was falling apart).

Fast forward a few weeks, and now we're installing the last of our long list of modifications. Things like mounting the fire extinguishers, replacing the cracked windshield, and say... bolting down crotchstraps and lap-belts.

Same story in more detail:
When we first started going over the car, we eventually found issues that only a BMW dealer could address, so we figured we'd just bite the bullet and bring the car in to a Mini dealer for all the repairs. One week and $2,000 dollars later, we picked up the car from BMW Dealer X to test it out. The same feeling of imminent front-end collapse was still omni-present, but now there was a horrid metal on metal scraping noise to accompany the effect. Oh, and all the little things they were supposed to fix were still broken too. I'm looking forward to dealing with BMW Dealer X when I'm back from the rally, but I can't be bothered to sort them out now.

So about 3 weeks ago, Don at Mini Mania put us in touch with Jacques up at Bay Bridge Motors in Oakland. Soon, gone was the feeling of impending doom from the front suspension, and up was the horsepower from 182 to 210! The car is now running like top, even on the pot-holiest of downtown Oakland streets, and a heapin' helpin' of modifications have been bought from Mini Mania and installed by Bay Bridge. One of the coolest things installed by Bay Bridge Motors however, was not bought at Mini Mania... a seat-belt buckle from a 1959 Cadillac as a window net lock. Technically speaking, I think I can enter the historic classes now, not just as an Unlimited Class entry.

Bay Bridge Motors /almost / got our new Recaro seats and Pyrotect harnesses installed in time for testing at Infineon... almost, but not for a lack of trying. Unfortunately, we couldn't quite squeak in everything in time to reach Napa at a reasonable hour and pass tech inspection in the morning. But this is pretty minor if you ask me, what's important is how well the car is running and how little we have left to do. Even better, I had a great day meeting up with other Carrera drivers like Gerie, Gary, Che and Karen. Of course the Mini folks up there were great to meet as well, and I spent some good time picking the brains of some very helpful Mini owners.

My friend Tim however, (who drove us up from Santa Cruz in his BMW Z8 Roadster), passed tech inspection no problems and had a fantastic day without a single chip in his paint to show for it. The Z8 is just an amazing car I have to say, not only does it look and drive like a supercar, it fits two sets of golf clubs in the boot, with room to spare! Tim wanted to keep the clubs in his boot while doing laps, just on principal, but NASA insisted he take them out first. Really NASA, this is a Z8 you know!

But I digress; NASA failed us because the driver-side lap-belts were not installed at an angle between 10 and 45 degrees, (or simply connected to the stock seat-belt connector point like the copilot harness is). Instead, in our haste to get the car to Sears-Point, we just ran the lap-belts back to the B-Post of the roll cage, and planned to bolt them down in place for real next week. NASA wasn't having it.

Oh well, I didn't have time to argue as I was meeting Tony from UniChip outside Infineon just a few minutes later anyway. So, instead of spooling around the track for a few hours, Tony and I spooled around the wine country and tuned the Mini's engine computer system. We'd drive for a 1/4 mile, pull over to set some values into the laptop, drive a mile with the hammer down, pull over to set/reset/save data, drive a mile with the hammer down, pull over... you get the idea. Turns out the wine country is much more suited for this than Infineon anyway. We worked on the car for 2 hours or so, until Tony was happy with the way things were set, and then we flashed 5 different map settings for us to use during the rally.

Those settings were, in order of preferred use:
Bad Fuel, Bad Fuel -1, Bad Fuel - 2, Bad Fuel - 3, Bad Fuel - 4, and Bad Fuel -5. We are now ready for Mexican gas.

So while I was out in the hills of Napa convincing my Mini that 87 octane is race fuel, Tim was doing hot laps around Infineon in his Z8 roadster. Because our schedule's were juxtaposed, I couldn't hop in the passenger seat with Tim or snap more than one shot with my camera-phone for his kids. He still had a ton of fun on the trip, and who knows...
maybe next year there will be a Z8 entered in the Unlimited Class.

Our plan was to drop the Mini back off at Bay Bridge Motors, then finish the drive together in the Z8. But as we approached Oakland, I realized I was simply having way too much fun driving the Mini, finally, even if it was in Bay Area traffic at rush hour. So I pulled up next to the Z8 and told Tim to set a new course for home. He gave me the big Thumps-Up and we took off for the Santa Cruz Mountains, where I finally got to put the Mini through some turns...
It keeps up with the Z8 just fine, I might add.

Thanks for reading our first blog post and keep an eye out for more updates to follow!