Mini Life

Jordan Is A Car Guy

We go through the dive-in line at Chick-Fil-A and when we get our order there are stickers on the both the drink lids and the food bags. The info on those stickers consist of which of the two lanes we are in, the name you gave the order person and a description of the vehicle. This lets the runners know the correct car to bring the food to.

We have been going to get that tasty chicken in numerous forms about once every 3 or 4 weeks since we have been here and every time the Vehicle ID is listed as a White or Silver SUV. Our regular ol’ Cooper, not a Clubman or Countryman, has only two doors and when was the last time an SUV was produced with just two doors?

Today our stickers said Silver Coupe because Jordan must be a car guy and he correctly knew Mini does not equal SUV and 2-doors equals coupe.

Swapping Minis – Part 5

If you haven’t already, go back and read Part 1, then follow the links at the bottom of the posts to find your way back here.

The weather folks were right in their weather predictions, there was no further snow or rain and the temps were above freezing during the day. The roads up and down the Cascades were dry and clear for our trip over & back to Medford and John’s Auto Care Center. The 7 miles of OR140 through the pass, between Lake of the Woods and Fish Lake, did require a bit of slowing down in spots because there was some left over ice on that stretch.

We drove over on Monday and spent the night in a HIE so that we could get the Mini to John’s early on Tuesday. We knew that they needed at least 3 hours for the job and I wanted an oil change and coolant flush as well because who knows when the last one of those was done. After dropping the car off, instead of sitting around their waiting room for several hours we did what we did the other time we had some work done on the old Mini, walked the 1/2 mile over to the Rouge Valley Airport and rented a car.

We went back to the hotel and killed a little time and then checked out. We drove into downtown Central Point and dropped a Travel Bug we’ve had for too long in i5’s Travel Bug BnB. From there we drove back to Medford to shop a little at Harry & David. Next up we wandered around the Rouge Valley Mall looking for a winter knit hat that matched Donna’s winter coat. From there we drove over to get some lunch at chain that we don’t have in Klamath Falls and we used to enjoy back in Aiken, Firehouse Subs.

Having not yet heard about the car and with nothing else we wanted to do we drove back to John’s to ask in person. The Kombi switch was in, but they didn’t have a slot to do the oil change until 3:00 PM, so the car would be ready at 4 o’clock. We still had the car, so I said, “Let’s go for a drive.” After about a mile or so, Donna asked where I was going to go, I had no answer. She said, “I’m tired of driving around, let’s just return the car.

After giving National their Toyota Corolla back we were going to just shop in the little airport store, but the only way to get to it was through the TSA checkpoint. As we were walking out I saw a sign that said Observation Deck, so we rode the elevator up to the second floor and spent a pleasant hour or so watching regional jets take off and land.

With our Mini on the lift getting the oil changed I wandered into the office area and asked if they had contacted CarMax about payment for the Kombi Switch. The fellow handling it said he tried and left a message earlier, but hadn’t heard back yet. The last time I tried contacting the service department I left a message and was called back less than 5 minutes later. I said, “Let me try.” I called, left a message and waited. Nothing back. By now the car was done and we were ready to go. I tried again and instead of leaving another message I hung up and called the main number. After telling my story to someone random in their call center I was finally transferred to a different person in the Salem location’s service department. Finally, with about 20 minutes of emailing back and worth between John’s Auto Care Center and CarMax a working one time credit card number supplied the money.

Because of the time of year, by the time we got home at 6:00 PM, it was full on dark and I got to use our now working as advertised high beams.

Swapping Minis – Part 4

Go read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 then come back, I’ll wait.

After about a week of waiting to hear from John’s Auto Care Center letting me know my $700 part was in, on Halloween morning I called them. The part was there, it came through their door late on the previous Friday. We scheduled a day for us to bring the car in, Tuesday the 8th of November (today.)

We were watching the weather closely as snow was predicted for yesterday and today in southern Oregon. For us to get to Medford we have to cross over the Cascades at five thousand feet where the snowfalls are always heavier and the temps were already just barely rising above freezing during the day.

Late last week it looked like the snow was going to start on Monday night into Tuesday then quit, so we made a hotel reservation for Monday night hoping to beat the snow over the mountain Monday morning. This way we could drive back in the afternoon on Tuesday when it would be the warmest and any daytime traffic might have made leeway on clearing a path through any snow.

Midmorning Monday (yesterday) after looking at a couple of traffic cams along our route I made the command decision to call off the trip. The roads were just wet on the first one nearest Klamath Falls, Doak Mountain, but the one nearer to the high point of the trip, Lake of the Woods, was white with just black top visible in two tracks in each lane.

I’m glad we didn’t go because looking at those cams now, about the time we might have been coming home, Doak Mountain & Lake of the Woods look like no fun to be driving on. Probably could have made it if the situation was life or death, but why take a trip like that if you don’t need to.

After looking at the weather for the following week where it was going to be in the 40s I called John’s and rescheduled for next Tuesday the 15th.

Part 5

Swapping Minis – Part 3

Go read Part 1 and Part 2 and come back, I’ll wait.

When I got off that phone call with CarMax on Saturday, I posted a question on the Mini forum to see if anyone had any ideas or had seen this “no high beam shutoff” issue before. I got a quick reply that it sounded like it was the switch assembly because the ‘flash to pass’ function didn’t work either. They had looked it up somewhere and it is a $700 part.

So, when Monday rolled around, before I called the CarMax service department, I called the shop in Medford, John’s Auto Care Center, and get their opinion. Once again, they passed me along to Dean. He didn’t tell me to run away from this one too, but said that I should bring the car over so he could hook it up to their diagnostic machine to read the codes, if any, and check that the right sequence of events occurs on the CAN (Controller Area Network) bus. We scheduled an appointment for Friday the following week.

On that Friday we got up, had breakfast and drove over the Cascades to Medford. After a quick stop at our favorite bagel place, we made it to John’s. In an effort to ingratiate us to the staff Donna had baked some chocolate chip cookies the night before and we gave them a couple dozen of them when we checked in. After maybe 15 minutes of chilling in the waiting room, the friendly voice on the phone, Dean in the flesh, came in and said, “Follow me.” So I did. We walked out to where the car was and he got in the drivers seat, while I plopped down into the passenger spot. He had his big ol’ tablet plugged into the OBDII port.

I then got a brief synopsis on how the high beam system works. Back in the day when you turn the high beams on or off you’d push or pull the stalk and that would activate a relay that switched voltage between a couple of wires. But now in the modern world pushing (or pulling) on the stalk sends a signal to the main ECU which then passes it to the two headlight modules who in turn signal the LEDs to change state. Looking at the tablet we could see confirmation that the main ECU got our request for the high beams to come on and then on the next screen we could see the headlight module getting our request and the high beams would come on. Pulling back on the stalk, the ECU never got a signal. Dean agreed that the combination switch was more than likely the culprit.

We walked back inside and he looked up how much the Kombi Switch would be and whoever it was on the Mini forum was dead on, its actual cost is $704.68, which they have to order from Mini of Portland. Because it was late in the day Dean said, “Let me work this up and I’ll email you the repair quote. “You’ll probably get it before you get home.” Total for the part, labor, programming the car to talk to the new switch and miscellaneous shop supplies came to a grand total of $1,092.33.

When I called the CarMax service guy on Monday to see if they had a problem with that number and they said, “Nope, go ahead. Just make sure the repair shop have no issue with taking a credit card payment over the phone.” When I hung up I called John’s back and was told that was AOK with them and they would order the part. Now we wait.

Part 4

Swapping Minis – Part 2

Go read Part 1 and come back, I’ll wait.

As you can imagine, in today’s car world where the pick-up and 5-seat SUV are king, used Minis are hard to find, especially with our criteria. Internet searching for available cars in our price range ($20-25k) that weren’t in San Francisco or Portland turned up a few, but they were all over 200 miles away. This seemed to me to be the perfect excuse to try one of those “we bring the car to you” online stores. All I had to do was submit the car’s VIN and then answer a bunch of questions on what I thought its condition was. I tried Vroom and they offered $7,550 for 2013 Mini. I eliminated them because I had already done the price check thing with Kelly Blue Book and they said the trade-in value range was $8,500 to $9,500.

Carvana on the other hand said it was worth $11k. So, we found a car that we liked on their site and I started the process of selling our Mini to them and buy a newer one with an automatic. Trouble was when I entered the delivery Zip Code they told me that I had 2 options for the transaction location, a Walmart parking lot in Salem, OR (240 miles) or someplace off I-80 outside Reno near the CA-NV border (260 miles.) After reading reviews on the Miata forums about dealing with Carvana a couple folks reported that it went smooth, but one person mentioned they didn’t show up the first time for the appointment. So, we crossed Carvana off the list too because we didn’t want to drive that far for a car we hadn’t test driven.

In one of those Miata forum threads I found someone who mentioned CarMax as an alternative. Huh, I hadn’t even thought of that place, maybe there is one in Medford just 70 miles away. Nice thought, but the closest CarMax store is in, you guessed it, Salem (or as I found out later Reno.) A search of the Salem store revealed a 2016 auto Mini base model for $19,998. Well, what the heck, at least we can test drive the car first. I entered our Mini’s details again and within minutes they offered $10k.

After lunch on Thursday, we packed an overnight bag, made a reservation at a hotel and took off. The drive is boring for the first half along US97, but after Bend and heading west on US20 it is up and over the Cascades with plenty of twisty bits. The CarMax didn’t open until 11:00 AM so we explored around the State Capitol grounds in the fog for a bit. Then we took our car through an automated car wash to clean all the bugs off we smashed on the way up. To kill the last hour, we did a bit of shopping in a Target because all we got is a Walmart in Klamath Falls.

We were the first people in the store. We filled out some paperwork, showed our licenses and insurance cards, swapped keys so they could look at our car while we were gone. The car was brought around for us and we took it for a drive. The auto tranny felt weird at first, but soon it felt normal. The car only has just under 29k on the clock and it looks in excellent condition. The cheap tires they stuck on it were noisy, but that was a non-issue because we had earmarked money for new tires and a new set of snow tires too. We can’t reuse our old set with this car because this generation Mini has moved to 5 lug wheels. It had a working radio, the windows and sunroof worked great and everything was working just fine. *foreshadowing*

We returned back to the store and settled in for the paperwork phase. They agreed that we would get the $10k for our 2013 and we wrote them a check for the remainder. In spite of not having to do the 4 square crap with a salesman, the sales manager thing and the finance guy dance it still took us 3 hours to get off the lot with our “new” Mini. After an exciting lunch at a Wendy’s (a whole ‘nother story) we hit the road home. What with the afternoon traffic around Bend, the twisty mountain roads and the slow 18-wheelers and motorhomes, just like the trip up, the 240 miles took us about 6 hours.

Everything was fine until I hit a quiet stretch of US97 and turned on the high beams. They worked fine until I needed to turn them off. Pulling back on the stalk had no effect. After a couple of cars flashed angrily at me, I tried another way, I quickly turned the off the lights totally and quickly back on. This did the trick, but it really is not the way to go forward.

CarMax has a fairly comprehensive warrantee of 90 days or 4,000 miles, so Saturday morning I called the CarMax store. After defeating the robot guardian by speaking gibberish at it (hitting zero had no effect) I was connected to a sales rep. The person I spoke to said that they would fix the problem for us, but at their service center. I explained that I was 240 miles away and would prefer someplace closer. She then offered up the closest Mini dealer to which I said its in Portland which is an extra 40 miles further away than they are. She said I should call the service department on Monday and that probably could be worked out.

Part 3

Swapping Minis – Part 1

A few weeks ago I noticed that Donna was walking with a slight limb. We got an appointment with her foot doctor and he diagnosed it as a “drop foot”. He recommended getting a brace and set us up with a place in town to get fitted for one. When she asked what causes drop foot, he passed a referral on to a neurologist. Met with Dr. Neuro and he tested her with some electrodes and the left leg was noticeably weaker. The nerves that that control this run down each leg and exit the spine between a couple of vertebrae. This usually is accompanied by pain, but she has none, so they scheduled an MRI.

Well, the MRI did show some slight bulging in the disc that is in the right spot, but the neurologist thought it really wasn’t bad enough to cause the problem. He said he’d have a spine specialist he knew take a look. We haven’t heard back from him yet. This weakness also makes it so she can no longer operate the clutch in the Mini which is a fairly heavy clutch for such a small car. So we started looking for a Mini with an automatic transmission.

Couple of Sundays ago we found a 2016 Cooper S at the local Ford dealer. On Monday we went down to test drive it but they couldn’t find the keys. The salesman said it was possibly already sold because it was parked far away from the rest of the used cars. His manager was in a meeting so he couldn’t ask. We looked around the lot and found the only other car on the lot that was possibly small enough to fit on the short side of our garage, a 2020 Honda Fit. We took it for a test drive and it wasn’t a bad car but it lacks any character and is too long to fit on that short side of the garage. When we returned the Fit the manager was still in the meeting, so the salesman said he would find out about the Mini and call us, so we exchanged phone numbers.

Naturally he never called. Nor did we hear from him on Tuesday morning, So I called. They couldn’t find the salesman, but the woman who answered the phone said she’d find out about the Mini and call me right back. She didn’t. After lunch we just drove back down to the dealer and this time our salesman was magically there. The story on the Mini was that it had something wrong with the radio and they were waiting on a part. We asked to test drive it anyway so we could see if we even liked the car or not. We did like it (not really fond of the green with white roof combo though) but what about the radio? The screen of the “radio” was stuck and the only thing you got out of the speakers was AM static. But the radio is also your interface for setup of what your key does, your tire pressure, oil level, setup your Bluetooth, etc. Their answer was we’ll give you $1,000 off the $20k. I said I’ll go home and check out some forums and see about a possible aftermarket solution.

Poked around in a couple of Mini forums and found out that replacing the radio with an aftermarket unit was a dicey play at best, so I decided they would have to fix it before buying. The next day Donna asked me to call the shop over in Medford that we have had Mini fixes from in the past to ask their opinion. I was connected with a very nice guy who took 5 or so minutes explaining how the system worked and letting me know it would be a couple grand at minimum to fix this. His advice was to walk away and never buy a Mini with existing electrical problems. Called the Ford dealer and said, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

Part 2

Small Road Trip

Off to the Great State of Washington. We are heading to the World Famous 4th of July Picnic of Les & Joanie Gilbert, something we haven’t been to for the past 5 years. Today’s leg was around 280 miles and for the first 100 and the last 80 of those miles it was smooth sailing, but the middle section from south of Bend to where US197 splits off was crowded, slow and quite a contrast to the end segments.

We did stop in downtown Bend for lunch and had a great meal at a place called The Point. We split an order of beer battered fish. But the real highlight was something that Donna saw on a chalk board inside, Fried Apples. It might have been advertised as a desert but we had it as an appetizer. The half dozen slices tasted like a sublime fried apple pie and were served with a caramel dipping sauce and some whipped cream.

For the fun of it and to break up the drive we snagged 3 Post Office photos. There were a couple more we were close to, but on a Friday their parking lots were too full to even find a spot to park in so that I could get car and Post Office in the same frame. We may try and stop at a couple few on the way home next Tuesday.