Blimey was still clean from the car show yesterday, and it was beautiful today - so I went for a drive and shot some pics. They’re on the NEW “Blimey Photos” page!
Some members of our club got us into the Raleigh St. Patricks Day parade today - and also got us invited to enter a car show being run as part of an event at a local shopping area. The parade was a blast - most folks decorated their cars for the occasion (some more than others) and we drove the route in “S” curves… it was like being in the “Italian Job”, but in super-slow-mo… the crowd loved it!
I’m still loving my Redline Goods custom shift and brake boots. They really helped bring the Union Jack color scheme inside the car.
I recently replaced my OEM armrest with the MINI aftermarket armrest - it sits higher and is a better anatomical fit for me, and works better, and I think looks better, and liberates the rear cupholder. But it came with a cheap black vinyl pad on top, that didn’t match my seats or anything else in my car. I just HAD to do something about that…
So I contacted Maciek at Redline Goods - but they had never seen one of these armrests before. He agreed to make me a cover for it - but I had to send the pad from my armrest TO POLAND to have it fitted… so I did. A few weeks later, I had this:
Much better than the black pad! This is an easy swap - there are six screws that hold the pad on the lid, and the cover just wraps around and sticks to the pad backer with double sided tape. Redline Goods has a template for this now - so you can just order the cover for the MINI Euro Armrest - no shipping to Poland necessary!
Of course, I couldn’t stop there… so I also had him make me some covers for the door armrests. Blimey’s Union Jackification is nearly complete!
Looks GREAT to me… really livens up the interior, and makes everything look like a package. Ties the stripes, grille and external Union Jacks to the interior. And the door armrests make the entry to the car look like it should, IMHO.
It’s taken almost a year and a half - but Blimey’s UJ theme is finally just about “there”… now time to do more with the engine bay…
For the last several months, I’ve been waffling over replacing my exhaust. I had Dan Zipkin at Grassroots Garage perform the “one-ball” modification on my stock exhaust about a year ago. And for a while, I was quite happy with it. But as I started to see more cars with nice stainless exhausts, I became less satisfied…
Well, I finally spent some time attempting to think rationally about it (yeah, like anything I do regarding this car is RATIONAL…) and realized that I like the way the one-ball sounds (except when it’s cold, and that doesn’t last long), and I don’t expect to get a big performance improvement with a different exhaust, and I like the fact that the one-ball is paid for… I just didn’t like the way it LOOKED…
While I thought the OEM “beer can” tips were cool and understated for a while, I’ve been longing for some more attractive, aggressive slash-cut tips. And I realized the one-ball itself is UGLY… usually some dingy shade of silver/rust/tan, hanging down asymmetrically on the left side…
So I decided to do something about the aesthetics of my one-ball (takes a brave man to say that out loud) without spending the several hundred dollars a replacement exhaust would cost.
About a year ago, I installed a set of Hella 2500 driving lights, in another of many shameless mimics of ImagoX (Matt Cook). It’s almost reached the point of me stalking him, frankly. It’s a little creepy. I can’t wait to see him at MOTD. Oh… maybe I shouldn’t have said that.
Anyhoo, the Hellas were an inexpensive addition that served the intended purpose - they helped light up the road for Midnight on the Dragon.
By the way, that’s ImagoX in the car with the blue lights. He’s my hero.
Oh, where were we? The Hella 2500s have kind of a “floodlight” pattern - they’re good for lighting up the shoulders of the road ahead on my frequent late night attempts to kill deer with my car.
Over the course of the year, I did various modifications to these lights to make them look better and keep out water, and probably drove about 20,000 miles with them on the car. Lately, the paint started peeling off them, and, frankly, they were showing their age in general.
I had been thinking for a while about upgrading to some higher-powered, better-focused, higher-quality driving lights. But I really liked the size of the Hellas about 4″ in diameter, much smaller than may of the better aftermarket lights. I like the size and look of the OEM driving lights (which are 5″), but don’t like the price nor the way they are wired to come on with the high-beams only. I have mine wired to selectively switch between “off”, “on with high beams”, or “on no matter what”. I like having that much control.
I finally settled on the PIAA 540 driving lights. They’re 5″ in diameter, like the OEM lights. OutMotoring sells them as a vehicle-specific set with wiring harness and brackets for the MINI. But I already have the brackets from my Hellas, and planned to use my existing wiring, so I went looking for a good deal on just a pair of lights. I found a set from an Amazon merchant in an open, damaged box, but the lights were new and fine - and about $100 less than usual!
Did a little cutting and soldering to make them work with my existing wiring harness, and cut down the mounting bolts by about 1/2″, and VOILA!
I love the way these look with the blacked-out grille. A big improvement in the front view of the car, I think. I also like that these are not very deep, and mount close to the grille, so they work well from the side view, also.
While they’re not huge lights, they work VERY well. Combined with my Xenons and my 65w high-beams, they light up the road LIKE DAY for over a quarter mile on dark roads at night. And they can nearly melt Chevy Cavaliers in my path. It’s fantastic.
Update: After Ian Cull’s smackdown in the comments, I decided he was right… and my wife agreed… the 540’s were a little too big… then I happened upon a club-mate with PIAA 510’s… which were too small for where he had them mounted on his car… so we swapped… the 510’s are just like the 540’s, but about an inch smaller in diameter.
I’ve been struggling lately.
I love my MINI. I love the color of my MINI. But Cool Blue is just kinda weird. It doesn’t lend itself to some treatments that I think look AWESOME on other colors. Example: The Aero Grilles. I just don’t think they’ll look good on my car. I love them on everybody else’s car. But there’s just something “whimsical” about the combination of my color and the whole Union Jack theme that I have going. And it needs a little chrome to work, and I don’t think it works as well with some of the things that look cool on other cars - like aero kits and aero grilles.
Recently I tried out one of Matt Cook’s (ImagoX) stainless steel grilles. I really like the way these look on every other car where I’ve seen them installed. But they aren’t the right look for Blimey…
See? Doesn’t work. Wouldn’t work if it were a different color, either. I was discussing this with Matt, and he remarked, “Yeah, you have a lot going on on the front of your car.”
No doubt. Trademark Union Jack lower grille. Which is not going away. Ever. Driving lights. Grille badge. Chrome. Custom stripes. And Cool Blue, which is NOT a basic color…
It’s too busy. Damn it. I hate to say it, but it’s true. But I don’t want to give up anything… so now what?
Well, while I don’t think the aero grille is the right look, I DO think maybe the front of the car could do with less Cool Blue… so I took another page out of Matt’s playbook, and decided to try something…
I got a roll of Trimbrite Blackout Tape. This stuff is 1-3/8″ wide and 20′ long for about four bucks. It’s a nice matte black vinyl, that matches the black plastic trim of the MINI well. And it’s the PERFECT width for blacking out the slatted grille. I got mine from AutoBarn, but some folks have reported finding it at their local Pep Boys.
Removed the lights and grille badge holder, cleaned everything up, got an X-acto knife and a bamboo barbecue skewer and a pair of scissors, and 30 minutes later…
I like this MUCH better. It makes the grille area better match the open scoop, and it makes the UJ lower grille really “pop”. While it doesn’t look like it in this pic, the color of the vinyl is a good match for the trim/splitter below the UJ grille. Especially after I re-treat it with Black Wow.
I applied this “dry” - others have said it’s easier to do “wet” (using a spray of very diluted soap underneath, and a squeegee), but I had no problems - the width is perfect, and it’s easy to stretch and massage it into place to match the curve of the slats if you take your time. I use a bamboo grill skewer to work the vinyl into the corners at the end of the slats (careful - don’t poke a hole in it), then use a VERY sharp X-acto knife to carefully trim it in place.
Want to see how it looks with the lights re-installed? Well, read my next post…
When I ordered my car, I was just getting into this whole MINI thing… and I just DID NOT GET the big center speedo… I understood the coolness factor of it, but it just didn’t seem very practical… I can’t believe I used the word “practical” in a sentence about a MINI… I don’t think that way anymore… they ARE practical, but I’ve mutated so far beyond practicality that it seems ludicrous that I once thought this way…
Anyway, I didn’t want the integrated navigation system, because I think those things become outdated REALLY fast. Yeah, I know you can update the maps, and maybe the software, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Nav systems are evolving so rapidly, with completely new features being added all the time (traffic, internet connectivity, real-time local information, phone interfaces, track recording for Google Earth playback, etc.). So I’d rather have a portable nav unit that I can replace every few years - I plan to keep this car a LOT longer than that…
So, I didn’t like the center speedo (I’ve since had a change of heart and LOVE them), and I didn’t want nav… so that left the Cockpit Chrono Pack.
I liked the ability to have more useful gauges - including oil temp and pressure. And I liked getting my speedo on the steering column along with the tach, where I thought it belonged. All was well. Until I decided how much I HATED the OEM gauge faces.
These things are SOOOO busy… all the black spots where the indicator lights are, all the extra numbers on the speedo (I don’t CARE how many KPH I’m going… usually I don’t care how many mph I’m going, but that’s another problem…). Unfortunately, it took a while before aftermarket faces were available for the column-mounted speedo, since those are much less common than the large center speedo. But, eventually, I was delighted to get the first pair of OutMotoring faces!
Only one problem… Now these beautiful faces made the Cockpit Chrono Pack look like crap.
It’s too silver… and it’s got the same ugly zits where the indicator lights are… problem is, the face of this thing is a complex molded 3D part, and they’re not extremely common, so the odds of having an aftermarket solution seemed pretty low.
Well, flash forward to early 2008. Lyle Beckwith - “Lyle’s Vinyl Styles” - starts doing some alternative “overlays” for MINI gauges. I also admired a lot of the high quality vinyl “wrap” work he is doing with emblems, door handles, headlight rings, etc. Then it hits me… I wonder if he could WRAP part of the Chrono face… so I send him some pics, we discuss it, I ship him my face, he does some experimentation, and a couple weeks later, VOILA!
This is fantastic - it’s exactly what I think the face should have looked like from the factory. The outer flat parts are wrapped in satin black vinyl, with holes plotter-cut for the indicator lights - which blend in so well you don’t even notice them. The satin black color matches the surround of that area of the dash, as well as the hazard and panel light buttons - it works VERY well visually. And it’s a MUCH better match for my OutMotoring gauges.
I’m working another option in parallel - Aaron is having a flat face worked up to match the other gauges exactly. From my experimentation with the Chrono Pack, I’m pretty confident that we can make a flat face work - the gauge needle shafts seem long enough to mount the needles higher, and I think lighting will actually work out OK. But we’re going to test it and find out. I ran a flat paper mockup face for the couple of weeks that Lyle had my real face, and that worked fine, so I’m optimistic that Aaron will be able to come up with another alternative for us Cockpit Chrono Pack owners… stay tuned…
By the way - the Chrono Pack disassembles pretty much just like the center speedo - instructions for that are here.