Trading in my Austin Mini 1987

Today I have traded in my lovely Mini for a better car. It was a necessary step in the evolution towards my new job, but rational thought has nothing to do with it. I have over a 5 year relationship with this beautiful car. I have been working on it in the hot sun, in the rain outside in the street, and I loved every minute of it.

My kids really have loved having "the blue car" in the family and they both giggle with glee when we ride around in it. I will never forget my little girl helping me tuning the points on a sunny summer evening, passing the tools to me and asking Daddy "what is that... what does this do..." With a Mini in your life, you have it really good.

Some of my favorite memories are pictured here and I hope some day in the future to be able to claim that I own a real Mini again. May the future owner of this Mini enjoy it as much as I did. I am afraid this will be my last Mini posting for some time.

BMW builds electric Mini for California

From AutoMotive News, earlier this month an announcement that the new Mini Cooper will be 'ported' to run on batteries. They will only be shipping to California and only 500, but it is a good start.

"This step will allow the BMW Group to gain an initial knowledge of how mobility can be achieved efficiently using purely electrically powered vehicles. Our task here is to combine the ultimate driving experience with an efficient electrified drive with practically no emissions", underlined Dr. Norbert Reithofer, Chairmanof the Board of Management of BMW AG.

Finally a cool car that is a bit easier on the gas budget! Wonder if I could 'port' my 1987 Austin Mini?

Mini blew the water pomp!

I was on the way to work yesterday and I noticed the engine temperature climbing towards the red zone. Hey, it never gets even close to half way, so must be something going on.

I pulled over by a parking lot next to my normal Mini garage (a Rover dealer) and the steam started to come out from under the hood even before I got out of the car. By the grill I could see brown dirty radiator water coming out on the right side. I opened it up and thought for sure the radiator was blown or maybe a hose. The water got all over the fan belt and was thrown all over under the hood. I checked the water level in the radiator (careful, it is under pressure and hot) but plenty of water so it was not leaking there. Turns out the water pump blew up on me.

I let it cool down a bit and was able to drive it over to the garage itself for repairs, about 100m away. They were really great (Damon & Kroes in s-Hertogenbosch), even brought me home so I could take our other car to work.

Austin Mini gets electronic ignition

I took my Mini into the shop for some needed work that I am unable to take care of myself as I have no garage. The front windscreen has been leaking for some time now so had the seals replaced and windscreen refitted. It now has a wider rubber seal as there is some rust starting on the bottom half of the windscreen area.

I have also been thinking about upgrading the ignition to an electronic version instead of the original contact points. I have been having problems with jittery rides a different speeds and at different temperatures. Yes, I can adjust various things to fix it, but have been getting tired of this ongoing game. So I took the plunge and let them install an electronic ignition. What a difference!

Finally, I had them troubleshoot and fix a problem I have been having with the electrical wiring on the drivers side. Intermittent loss of hazards, dome lighting and back windscreen heating elements has continued to escape my attempts to locate the cause. It seems that it was a few in-line fuses that were pretty bad and some of the wiring in the firewall that was corroded. They replaced some of the wiring and included some newer waterproof fuses.

Austin Mini vs Chevy Tahoe

My neighbor picked up a 1999 Chevy Tahoe, the same my sister has so we thought it might be fun to take some pictures with my 1987 Austin Mini next to it for some comparison:

Austin Mini vs Chevy Tahoe

Mini dies on me just before departure!

The Mini needs it APK check in Feb 2007, so last weekend I arranged for time in a friends garage to see what the damp conditions of our winter here so far had done to the poor thing. I spent most of the day with sandpaper and a small screwdriver, opening and sanding contact for a multitude of lamps, switches and such that were not working correctly. Hell, I had mildew growing on the steering wheel if you can believe that!

I have removed all carpets to dry and will leave them out of the car until the winter is over. I have removed the door panels too, no need to watch the MDF panels rot away. I jacked up the car and removed each wheel to inspect the various components under the car, nothing to note. I started the car at the end of the day and all was well.

Sunday I dropped in to pick up the Mini for my trip to Rijswijk for teaching job at the European Patent Office (one week course), but the Mini will not start… sigh. As I only had a few hours and then needed to go, I called the Auto Club (I paid for it, so why not use it) which resulted in telling me that the spool (bobine in Dutch) was broken. I had no electrical for spark generation at the spark plugs. I let them tow it off for delivery to my garage on Monday and had to take the train to my hotel.

Just picked it up this morning and the costs were around 240 euros for a new spool, new spark plugs (somebody broke one… I think the auto club during trouble shooting) and a new rubber around the steering column (protects for dirt and such, old one was split). New APK and off I go. Bummer I could not get this done myself due to the time constraints, but it rides great.

Only point of interest is now that my emergency lights are not working (apparently not part of the APK checks), quick check shows no power to the switch at all… have to troubleshoot this some more soon.

Nice joke

Since i have not had much to report on the Mini front (it runs, and keeps on running without problems for quite some time now), I thought I would post this joke I saw on our local mini mailinglist:

A boss walked into the office one morning not knowing that his zipper was down, and his fly wide open. His secretary walked up to him and said, “Boss this morning when you left your house, did you close your garage door?” This was not a phrase that her boss understood, so he went into his office looking a bit puzzled.

When he was about done with his paper work, he suddenly noticed that his zipper was not zipped up. He zipped up and remembering what his secretary had told him, finally understood. He then intentionally went out to ask for a cup of coffee from his secretary.

When he reached her desk, he said, “When you saw the garage door open did you see my jaguar parked in there?” The secretary smiled for a moment and said, “No, Boss, I didn’t. All I saw was a Mini with 2 flat tires.”

Baby girl was helping me work on the Mini!

Working on the Mini as it has been running worse and worse. It is lagging on power and seems to be using too much fuel. I have spent the evening tracing the fault through the contact points and carburetor, but unable to find it. Made an appointment with my garage to bring it by for a look.

Even though we did not find the problem, my baby girl and I had a good time playing with the tools!

Mini Mayfair 87' makes the APK in one go!

The Mini made it thru the APK check in one go!

That is a first in the three years I have had it. Nice feeling to pick it up and know that all is well under the hood. Actually, I still have bent contact points so will have to take care of these soon. My contact person who can get a bit of reduced pricing is picking up some new components for me and will help to tune the valves, points and timing once they arrive.
More as it it happens!

Found the problem: Contact points are bent

After my wife was having problems with the Mini stopping, jerking and basically running real bad I took some time this weekend to take a look at the cause.

I traced it from the contact points and immediately found the problem. Instead of having two contact heads resting flat on each other, one is slightly off center and twisted so that it is at the right spacing on one side (0.35mm) and too far apart on the other side (over 0.40mm). This will cause problems.

With some help from a neighbor, we decided to set the spacing based on the outer side (widest point) and the Mini is now running great! This week it goes for the APK checks so it was necessary to sort this out.

Fingers crossed for the APK, will I make it thru in one go?????

Mayfair died on my wife

Yesterday my wife was driving the Mini on the way home from work and it started to sputter and cut off on her. She was able to get it off the road and parked in a neighborhood, but when I got home from work I had to go and get it.

I just enriched the mixture a bit to keep the idle running at 2000 rpm and drove it home on full choke. The timing is outta wack so have arranged to borrow a timing light and will take a look at it this weekend.

The last bit of tuning to get it through the apk!

APK preperations continue

Since the Mini has not been running good, even after new sparkplug cables, new sparkplugs and some extra TLC I decided yesterday (Sunday) to go ahead and brave the cold (it was +1 degree C) to replace the contact points and rotor arm in the distributer.

97803 km

• contact points
• rotor arm

Low and behold, all is well in the Mini. Running like a race car! Will take it to work some time soon to see how it holds up, but think I am ready for the APK!

APK preperations for 2006

As my APK is coming up soon in Feb 2006 I thought it would be time to get the Mini in order. After a brief inspection (my wife has been driving most of the time into town with it, I have not had much time behind the wheel) I have replaced the following:

97675 km

• sparkplug cables
• distribution cap
• outside rubber strips
• replaced missing clips in the front and back window stripping
• air filter
• sparkplugs

I have had trouble with the motor seeming to be missing on the firing, might have to replace the contact points but want to check the spacing on the sparkplugs first as I did not do that before inserting them (I did not have a spacer tool, now I have picked one up).

I have a few weeks to sort this all out as I would like to get thru an APK check in one go!