Mini Maintenance

Battery Blues

The Miata purchase last Saturday wasn’t the only automotive excitement of the day.

I had a 9:30 appointment at the Mazda dealer, so when I hopped in the Mini to drive over and flipped the start toggle switch it almost didn’t start. Rrrr…rrrr…cough…cough…catch. Pheew. I made a slightly longer ride over to the Mazda dealer in hopes that it would charge the battery up some.

I forgot all about the battery until when all the Miata paperwork was done and was going home to wait out the retrieval of my new car from McMinnville. Rrrr…rrrr…click. Rrrr…rrrr…click. So, I went over to my salesman and asked if someone could give me a jump. While I waited, I searched for an auto parts store and luckily enough, there was an Autozone just up the street on the corner. Successfully started, I made a beeline to the parts store. The fellow waiting on me showed me a long line of batteries they had in stock that would fit and I opted for a couple notches up from the cheapest at $250. He asked if I was taking it with me and I said, “The one in the car is dead, don’t you offer to put it right now for free?” He grabbed their tool kit and we headed out to the parking lot.

I had changed out the battery on our previous Mini easy-peasy. Two plastic latches, peel back the cover, undo the the two terminals and remove the nut holding it in. Well, that was a 2nd generation Mini and this is a 3rd gen car, which as it turned out, was a whole new ball of wax. First you need to peel back half of the hood seal. Then there were 2 plastic nuts that hand turned off and then three 1/2 twist screws so the cover could be removed. Instead of the typical 10mm nuts holding the wires to the battery posts there were a couple of auxiliary wires coming off the posts too. Looking at the opening, the battery was too big to pull straight up thru it, but it looked like lifting up one end and angling it out would be fine. The battery had a couple of fold up handles to facilitate this, but tug as hard he could the battery just wouldn’t budge.

He shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don’t know what’s holding it in there, but I can’t get it out.” I told him, “Fine, refund the battery cost and I’ll buy one of those jump packs to get me home.” So, I bought something at half the cost of an actual car battery to get me going. And there was just enough juice in it to do just that. When I got home, I plugged the jump pack in and called the Minin dealer to set up and appointment for a replacement battery.

On Wednesday I used my new toy to start the Mini for the drive over to Beaverton. They changed out the battery and as it turned out the Mini battery cost almost exactly the same as the Autozone one, but the installation cost was as much as the battery itself. But hey, that was the original battery, so 8 years is a pretty good life for as much all the electrical crap on cars nowadays.

No Snow…Tires

I put the snow tires on the car back in early November and never really had a chance to use them for their intended purpose. There was one snow “storm” in January that dropped an inch on the ground and then we got lots of ice so we just never went anywhere until the ice was gone.

A warm sunny spring started yesterday afternoon, it continued today and will supposedly continue for the next couple days before typical Portland weather returns. The sunny low 70s will run until Tuesday and then the normal cloudy/rainy upper 50s return. This afternoon I took the snow tires off the Mini and put the regular touring all-seasons back on.

Coincidence?

Shortly after moving here we wanted to take a trip to Washington state to see the family. But just before we left to go, almost 2 years ago to the day from the present, the Mini started acting up. It was misfiring and unfortunately the local place we took it to couldn’t get to it until after our scheduled departure, so we had to rent a car.

Fast forward to this year and Donna’s friend for life Sally Lewis has retired from the State Department and has bought a home in Santa Fe, NM. She would like us to come down and help her settle in to the new home.

The Mini has had a Brake Warning Light on in the dash for a bit, but we thought we should get it looked at before taking the 1,300 mile drive to the New Mexico capitol city. We took the Lady Bug to our friends at Emmett’s yesterday morning so they would have a couple of days to sort it out. We got the call last evening that it was going need some new front brake pads and sensors. No big deal, those are the original brakes and at 44k that seemed about right. But the big bugaboo were the calipers, both sides were showing very uneven wear meaning that one side was sticking. These were the parts that they couldn’t get locally, so the had to order them and they won’t be here until Monday next.

In 2019 the Mini was all we had here at the time, this year we do have the Miata as a back up, but we don’t want take it because it is nearing winter. Our travels will take us through several mountain ranges and ultra high performance summer tires do not go together well with cold temperatures and any kind of winter precipitation. Rather than put off the trip, we opted to do what we did in 2019, rent a car.

42,000 Grains of Salt on 7,000 French Fires

This morning we drove the Mini over the Cascades to Medford to have our leaky water pump fixed and a few miles from home the Lady Bug passed 42,000 miles on the odometer. The 75 mile drive was pleasant and didn’t take as long as the Google maps estimate, but that was because even though the speed limit is posted as 55 MPH I cruised along without an issue at 65 most of the way. I wasn’t worried about a speeding ticket because I was passed by several cars and pickups along the route like I was standing still.

I told the car place I’d be there a little after 10 and had the rental car reserved for noon. We pulled into John’s Auto Care Center right at 9 AM. Instead of our planned leisurely 1 mile walk over to the airport to pick up the car, the folks at John’s said they’d give us a ride over there, as crossing the street to get to the airport was kind of tricky/busy1, so we excepted. This put us at the rental counter by 9:15, way earlier than expected. The lady manning the desk said, “No worries, we’ll fix you right up.” and true to her word, by 9:30 we were exiting the airport in a 2020 Audi Q5.

So far, our being early had not been an issue, but because we planned to eat lunch in Medford, we needed to waste a couple of hours. We didn’t want to head right back because we wanted to eat at a fast food spot that we missed from Aiken and didn’t have in Klamath Falls. At first I drove around aimlessly, then we said lets drive into downtown and see if there was anything to see, Somehow I didn’t really make it. Then we thought, let’s find a donut place. We found a place, but you could only use the drive up and because we like to look before making a choice we got back on the move again. We then reconnoitered where our lunch choices were, but it was still too early to eat or for them to even be open. To kill some time I said let’s go check out the town of Jacksonville. It is a little town east of Medford that has a lot of historic buildings. We drove over, circled the center of town, went hmmm, and drove back to Medford and had our lunch.

There was a Chick-Fil-A and a Five Guys in the same little strip shopping center and these were two of the places we wanted to get food from. A plan was devised that I would go to Chick-Fil-A and get the sandwich portion of the meal and Donna would go to Five Guys and get an order of fries and we would have the best of both restaurants. But you could only get the chicken by going through the drive-up, so we said forget it. We’ll do Five Guys now and save Chick-Fil-A for the return trip when we get the Mini back. While we certainly enjoyed the salty abundant fries we so missed, but it turns out they just didn’t measure up to what our memories made them out to be. Certainly not a 150 mile round trip for.

A few miles out of Medford on the way home the Q5’s odometer changed from 6,999 to 7,000.

79,000 Drops of Something or Other

A couple of weeks ago when I pulled the snow tires off the Mini the inside of the front wheel on the passenger side was all coated in a icky gunk. Back when I had put the snows on, I put the Mini wheels on the Miata and I certainly didn’t see anything like that on any of the wheels. This leak issue has to have come about in the last 3-1/2 months.

My first thought was an oil leak. When I looked at what I could see of the engine and suspension bits they appeared coated in the same grimy stuff as the inside of the wheel. Now I can do some minor car repair stuff on the Miata, but the front wheel drive Mini is a nightmare for the novice me. The engine, all its related subsystems, and transaxles are stuffed into an area the size of a Navy seabag, meaning you would probably have to remove the entire front body works to do any repairs. I decided to call for professional help.

The local place we have used before is very busy, so we had to wait until yesterday to get the car in to have it looked at. We dropped it off after breakfast. Donna drove the Mini and followed me in the Miata so we could leave it with them for as long as needed. The folks at the repair shop didn’t call us back yesterday, but we know it is a popular place and figured they just hadn’t got to it yet.

They did call back this morning and apologized twice. Once for not getting back to us sooner and second for not wanting to fix the problem. From their troubleshooting they determined it wasn’t oil leaking, but coolant coming from around the the water pump. The one guy who was the real Mini expert no longer worked there and the other mechanics there were as excited about tackling the job as I was. They recommended a place over in Medford that was better equipped for Mini work, John’s Auto Care Center.

I called and made an appointment to drop off the Mini next Wednesday. Medford is 75 miles away, so we won’t be doing the follow the leader thing over, we’ll drive the Mini, drop it off, pick up a rental car to have for a couple days. We used to drive 50 miles one way to get the Miata worked on back in South Carolina, so this is not too big a deal, plus this will give us a couple of chances to eat in some chain restaurants that we miss and don’t have here in Klamath Falls.

So the 79,000 drops of what I thought was oil was actually a mixture of coolant, brake dust and road dust from the traction stuff they put on the roads around here in the winter. On the way back home yesterday we stopped and filled up the Miata with gas and when I went to reset the trip odometer I noticed that the main odometer read 79,001.

The Garage Is Mine!

Yesterday the Mini was shuffled off to the shop to get the tires rotated and oil & coolant changed. To get the Mini to Emmetts on the south side of town Donna drove it and followed me in the Miata to drop it off. When we came back home Donna kiddingly said, “Park in the middle.” So I aimed to do just that. About three quarters of the way in, I realized that the Miata is a lot longer than the Mini and I better turn the wheel quick or I’d hit the wall of the bath/laundry room on the left side of the garage. So now it just looks the Miata has taken over just because it could.

Wednesday the 13th

We got up at 5:30 this morning to go to the YMCA (The best time for lap swimming is between 5 and 7 AM.) When Donna went to turn on the bathroom light, it didn’t come on. She used the hallway light as a guide to do her stuff. When I went in I thought it might be a burnt out bulb, but when I tried to turn on something we had plugged into the outlets where the switch was, it wouldn’t come on either. We headed off to the the Y and I’d further troubleshoot when we got back.

The poor Mini has to sit outside uncovered and that means before we can go anywhere, the windows have to be cleared of dew or frost each morning. This morning it was frost on one side and dew on the other, with the windshield it was dew that turned to frost when swiped… We got underway fine, buy a half mile or so down the road the Mini started to hesitate when I shifted. While waiting on the next stoplight to turn green the idle became sort of rough. Accelerating away and shifting into second it bogged down a bit and a giant yellow half-filled check engine light popped up in the middle of the tach. The car ran OK the rest of the way with an occasional hesitation on the 1-2 shift. On the way home it ran mostly better, but still not perfect and the light stayed off.

When we got back to the AirBnB we discovered that not only was the bathroom effected, but every kitchen outlet was not working. Including the one for the refrigerator! So we frantically texted the owner (we had his number because we had been in contact before to repair the dishwasher and fix the very annoying sticky front door.) We also messaged via the AirBnB app the host. After about 45 minutes we started getting calls, texts and messages about our issue. Eventually the owner showed up around 9 AM to start trying to solve our issue. He tried flipping breakers on and off. He tried shutting off the main breaker and turning it back on with little success. We left him physically swapping breakers around inside the box as we had that other bug-a-boo to deal with.

I had gotten a Mini service place recommendation from a fellow Y member just the other day and when I called them they said they could read the code, but wouldn’t be able to do anything today because they were slammed. So we headed over there to see what was going on. The Mini on the way over was doing well under a mile or so from our destination when it was running crummy and the half-filled light came back on. They ran the code and it came back as P0302, cylinder #2 misfire. They asked if I wanted to set up an appointment, went I said yes, they asked how about next Tuesday. Uh, OK.

It really wasn’t OK, we were planning on leaving Thursday morning to go up to Granite Falls, WA to visit the Morrison clan. Having already cancelled on them once because of the house buying stuff, we decided not to repeat it. Solution, rent a car, there is an Enterprise office in town, so we headed there after the car repair place. Bad news there too, they didn’t have any cars to rent. The good news was that they were expecting some returns by 5:00 PM, so they entered our info and said they’d give us a call.

Returning to our home away from home, we found our landlord/owner just finishing up. He finally figured out the issue, a previous tenant had decided to keep his stereo equipment in the hall closet and as a precaution he had replaced the normal outlet in there with a GFCI one and for some unknown reason it had tripped.

For the trifecta of bad news all we needed now was the the owner of our prospective house to turn down our counter offer to return some money at closing so we care afford a new roof for her old place. Sure enough around 4:00 PM our realtor emailed to say that it was a no-go. At this point we both thought maybe this was the universe telling us it was time to tuck our tails between our legs and move back to Aiken.

Well, our realtor and the sellers realtor (not wanting to lose a commission) had talked and suggested an alternate offer might work. Ask for a reduction of the house sale price to match the amount we wanted at closing.

So by the end of the day our AirBnB was back to it’s normal mediocre self, we had a rental car to do the traveling to Washington and we had made a counter-counter offer on the house.

If a Wednesday the 13th was this troublesome, I hate to think what will happen a month from now on Friday, December 13th.