Mini Maintenance

Ladybug’s New Shoes

The first time we looked at the Mini from behind, not long after we brought it home, we both commented on how skinny the tires looked. Being used to seeing the 205mm wide Miata tires, the stock 175mm wide tires on the Mini looked like bicycle tires.

After a little over 32,500 miles, the 7-year old tires were right at the wear bars, so I decided to go tire shopping. I started in the usual place, tirerack.com, and quickly found out that a replacement in the stock tire size left you with only a few choices. We sort of wanted something a bit wider to rid the car of that Conestoga wagon look, but because of the narrow stock rims, 5.5″, the widest recommended tire was only one step up at 185mm.

At least at the 185/60 R15 size there was a much wider range of tires to choose from. There were ten tires in the Grand Touring All-Season category, ranging in price from $65 to $125 a tire. After sorting through the group, weighing price and review results, I settled on a set of General ALTIMAX RT43 tires.

While I love the TireRack experience and have bought a ton of stuff from them, and will again, I always like to check at my favorite independent local tire store. I don’t mind spending a few bucks more to support the locals. Turns out Aiken Discount Tire could get a set of the exact same tires, for a little more than $10 a piece more than TireRack, so I bought the tires from them.

Road Closed

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…

No More CEL

At about three o’clock I got a call from Jason at Newton’s Automotive, the Mini was ready to be picked up. He did a little research about the P2177 code on Minis on some auto mechanic forums and found the same thing I did on the enthusiast’s forums; the code is always associated with cars that have a very rough idle or failing to start. Neither of which the Ladybug suffered from.

He cleared the code, took the car for a spin and the light didn’t reappear. He told us that if it does come back, bring the car in and leave it for a while to give him a chance to do some in depth troubleshooting before he starts changing things out.

So, with our shiny new oil filter and four and a half quarts of pristine synthetic oil, Donna in the Mini chased me in the Miata back home.

P2177

The empty can with an exclamation point inside wasn’t the only light that appeared on the Mini’s speedometer yesterday.

After lunch Donna went to the other side of town for her allergy shot. On the way back home she noticed that to go along with the tire pressure warning light there was one that she recognized right away. It was the one that preceded the downfall of the Emperor, the check engine light.

When I got home, after filling all the tires up with air, I downloaded the Torque Lite app onto the phone, took my bluetooth OBD2 scanner out to the Mini and found out the Ladybug was suffering from a P2177, AKA: System Too Lean Off Idle Bank 1. So I Googled “P2177 Mini” and got a couple dozen hits on forums, but almost all of them included other codes and scary symptoms like won’t start & rough idle. Some of the cures sounded even scarier like replacing the high pressure fuel pump or pulling the cylinder head of to de-coke the guts of the motor. Or my favorite, multiple dealer visits with still no resolution.

To fully reset the low tire pressure system you need to drive the car around for a few minutes for the sensors to calibrate to the new pressures. So, I started the car, it fired right up. It idled fine. Donna hopped in and we went for a couple mile drive around the neighborhood with no problem. Not wanting to take any chances, we called up Newton’s Automotive and we dropped off the car tonight for an oil chance and some diagnostic work.

Mini Wiper Blade Fun

Back in October, the first time we drove the Mini in the rain, we found out that the wiper blades squeaked/squealed when they do their job. So I did a search on the North American Motoring Mini Forum and found that the most recommended replacement blades seemed to be the Bosch Icon, so I bought a pair from Amazon.

On a side note, is it really too hard to design it, so the wiper blades are the same length? Mazda didn’t have a problem with the Miata, it uses two 18″ blades. Our recently departed Hyundai Sonata had a 24″ drivers side and an 18″ passenger side blade. The Mini? An 18″ blade for the driver and a 19″ one for the passenger side. (I wonder if on the right-hand drive version of the Mini those are flipped?)

Two days later I got some really nice replacement blades that will not go on our 2013 Mini Cooper. This is because in the middle of 2012, Mini in their infinite wisdom, changed the standard hook ends on the arms to a straight connection and forgot to notify Amazon. So I boxed the Boschs back up to return them and headed to the local parts store. Of the 8-10 different kinds of wiper blades they had hanging there, none of them included an adapter for the Mini’s straight-ending arms.

When we got home, I went back to the forum and re-did my search for wiper arms. This time instead of stopping after the first couple of threads and posts, I dug deeper and discovered that there really isn’t an off the shelf aftermarket blade that’ll work on the 2013 and up cars. I ended up buying some stock blades from a forum sponsor ECS Tuning.

While perusing that site, I discovered that they actually sell a kit to change from the earlier style to these new-fangled aero blades. Is there a 2-ounce weight savings involved here? Am I crazy for considering going the opposite way and getting the older hook-ended arms next time I need wiper blades? OK, maybe I am crazy for wanting to go backwards (and I probably won’t), but for someone like me who drives longer than he should on crappy wipers, finally decides that enough is enough and buys news ones on a rainy day, it is a little unnerving to not be able to walk into the local chain auto parts store and get some replacements.

2 Months In

We’ve owned the Mini for two months now and have driven it a little over a thousand miles, bought 2 tanks of gas and a new battery.

I found a local shop here in Aiken that does BMW/Mini work, Newton’s Automotive, to register that new battery to the car instead of a dealer. I called them and the fellow who answered said if I brought it in before 4 PM he could do it in a few minutes and it would be $20. So, today, in the cold and rain, Donna and I dropped in on them. They did the battery registering for free. Probably for a couple of reasons, 1) it took all of three minutes to do and 2) it was a shrewd business move, it created a guarantee that if we ever needed something done on the Mini, they would be our first call.

Afterwards he compounded the good feelings by chatting with us for another 10 minutes or so about the meaning of the cryptic service messages and how they relate to real world experience and wear. I asked about oil changes and doing them myself because that is what I’m used to doing with the Miata. He told me that if that was what I wanted to do, it was certainly doable by me, no special tools. But they only charge $25 plus the cost of the parts, so why would I. Sounds tempting.

Shades of Lucas Electric?

Sure these new Minis are a BMW product, but their design was inspired by the original British Motor Company’s icon, but I wonder if it has gone too far with the homage, by leaving just a few random electrical gremlins. For the past couple of weeks we have had the little symbol on the left show up in the center of the tach on start up.

There were no other warning lights, it would go off after a couple of seconds and the car ran fine, so we have been ignoring it. From the owners manual:

Lights up in yellow:
> Control of the brake lamps failed
or
> fuel supply malfunctioning

You can continue your journey, but
moderate your speed and exercise
due caution. Have the system in
question checked without delay.

> Drive malfunctioning
You can continue your journey, but
moderate your speed and exercise
due caution. Transmission limp-home
program active with restricted range
of gears. Have the system checked
immediately.

It took me several times to work my why through the odd procedure to set up my key to unlock both doors with one click without the car stopping me mid key press by shutting off (you have to have the ignition on, but engine not running.) And I never have gotten to the next step after that to activating the daytime running lights. Once or twice since we’ve had it the car seemed slow to crank, but it would always start, so we took it to the local parts store and had them check the battery. It was a little low. We chalked it up Donna only using it to go back and forth to the gym, only about a one mile trip one way, so we’ve been taking it for occasional long drives.

Today, when Donna quickly ran into a store to settle a mis-rung up purchase, I decided to wait in the car with the radio on. After about two minutes I heard a “bong”, the radio shut off and in the place where the car on lift symbol has been showing up a battery one did. This time we took the hint, I read a little on the Mini Forum and headed off to the auto parts store and bought a battery.

Now here is where we stop thinking old Lucas Electric and start thinking new Bosch Electric as the Mini has something called an Intelligent Battery System and you are supposed to register your new battery with your car. If you don’t the car will possibly over-charge the battery because it thinks it is an old and needs more juice, thereby shortening the battery’s life span.

And guess what? It is not something you can do easily yourself. A Mini Dealer (Charleston – 130 miles away) or a BMW Dealer (Augusta – 30 miles away) could do it, for a fee, and I bet it wouldn’t be a small one either. There is an app you can buy called iCarly for nearly $60, so you can do it yourself, but from what I read on the web it will only work with their version of an OBDII adapter which is another $60 or $70. A third option is something called NCS Expert/INPA software which looks cheap (~$15, unless I’m missing something), but it will only run on 32-bit Windows XP, which means buying an old laptop of some kind and a USB- OBDII cable. Plus the coding doesn’t look easy to understand and I’d hate to totally screw something like that up. Time to see if there is a shop in Aiken that can do it.