It was time for an oil change for the Lady Bug. I was going to take it back to Newton’s Automotive where we had taken it before, but when I called to set up an appointment, I got the answering machine and the outgoing message mentioned they were in process of moving to a different location. It would be a 30 mile round trip to drop of the car and another 30 to go back and pick it up.
Plan B was implemented, we choose another shop much closer to home. Auto Tech which is a 3 mile round trip. They at one time were an authorized Mini service center and still deal with them, as well as BMWs and other high end vehicles. They were pretty quick about finishing the work and did a nice job (meaning they returned the car at the same level of cleanliness as we dropped it off at.) They were about $30 more than Newton’s and right about the upper level of what I want to pay to have someone else do the job.
If I was to do the oil change at home like I do for the Miata I would want to get all 4 wheels off the ground, so I could rotate the tires too. The Mini (along with BMW) really needs an adapter to fit into a rectangular jack point to safely jack the car up. I would need 4 of these adapters and the official Mini part is $25 each. You can get some aftermarket bits for around $8 each.
The Mini oil change is more expensive than the Miata, but it might be cheaper in the end. The Mini uses 5 liters of synthetic oil compared to the Miata’s 4 quarts of regular dino oil and the filter is a little more expensive too, but it would last twice as long as I do the Miata every 5k miles and the Mini at 10k.
Might be worth the investment in those jack pad adapters…