elpollodiablo

Cool! I may have some parts that could use blasting. On a similar note, I've got a small parts vibration polisher with walnut media (used it in restoring all the brightwork in a couple pinball machines). . .anyone needs some smallish parts cleaned and polished and I could hook you up.

I had the same issue when I swapped radios. Turned out the antenna to adapter connection came loose when I slid the radio into the dash. Wrapping the connection with electrical tape stabilized it enough that its been solid since. Good luck!

Come to garage nights and ask lots of questions! If you can stand to wait until I get back in July, I'd be happy to answer any questions you have.

If I'm in country, you can count on it!

Awwww Alice is getting jealous about all the Dragon talk!

Part of Nikon's 80th year celebration

Hmmm, maybe the gen 2's don't have a water temp gauge. It's standard on an R53 (like mine.) Anyone got a scangauge Catalina can borrow

Catalina, does the water temperature gauge needle read at the middle (the mini gauge doesn't read anything but dead center unless it's way cold or way hot. . .apparently there are less repair inquiries this way) after 20 minutes or is it still pegged at zero? If it's at the midpoint, you should be pumping out heat. Have you checked your coolant levels (only do it when the engine is cool! Even if you're seeing near-zero temps (assuming there's not ridiculous wind) your car should be warming up as sits and idles.

Hey Ali, what seats do you have? I'll be swapping my seats out soon and could trade you for one of mine since I'll be gutting mine for the heater elements to transfer to the new seats it doesn't matter what the covers look like Could save you the time and money of hauling them to the shop.

Make sure to take lots of pics for those of us that can't make it! Can't wait to see what you guys come up with!

Oh man another deer banging up a mini! I'm glad to hear you're okay. Is the damage to Sonja repairable? Crazy about the deer out here, I thought I'd be escaping those beasts when i moved away from KS!

DIY is awesome but just research to see what you're getting into. Changing a clutch on a FWD car is infinitely more difficult than a clutch on a RWD. That being said, I've changed over a dozen RWD clutches and have done one FWD. . .and I'll never put myself through that foolishness of doing a FWD clutch by myself again. NorthAmericanMotoring has a pretty good DIY clutch change thread with lots of photos. Well, it's more of a this is the worst way to do it and this is what i learned thread. But this guy made the mistakes so you don't have to. http://www.northamericanmotoring.com/forums/how-to/218303-clutch-change-from-hell-how-not-to.html Good luck!

Alice got the usual stress fracture around 60k miles and had a *ton* of pitting and chipping. . .the PPG glass has been stellar. Also feels weird driving around with no pits in the windshield. . .it's insanely transparent now. Who woulda thunk it right? Had it done through a local glass shop that came and did it in the parking lot where I work and took about an hour. I've had zero issues with the trim, fitment or anything else. . .aside from the installer getting black window glue *everywhere* (seriously, it looked like a 2 year old had gotten ahold of a cupcake with black frosting on the hood of my car. . .good thing the glue comes off of paint easily.) Was about $400 installed.

I've installed a couple of these, the Alta v2.0 was pretty nice. I've got a Cravenspeed 17% on mine at the moment. Pulleys have been around for a while so the technology is pretty solid and aside from the Alta, their design is pretty consistent across the board. I believe Mach V Motorsports is supposed to do pretty good work or you might be able to find some members of the club to give you a hand.

I'm about as low as anybody ('cept ricky. . .) and am running aftermarket control arms as well, I just used zip ties to attach the leveller to the arm, they've been working fine for the last 15k miles or so.

Oh booooo saw this too late. Oh well. Next time!

Ooooh man. I'm betting that's why he wanted my old front bumper.

Holy cow that's low! I bet you know where all the speedbumps in the city are!

Sometimes the maths give me a headache too

Those were 235 40's not 225 40's, since the sidewall is a percentage height of the tread width, the 235 would be a little bit taller than the 225 which causes further issues since the inside of the wheel well is rounded Also the 2nd generation minis have a bit more room in the wheel wells than the first gen's. The numbers on the side of the wheel are width in mm, height of the sidewall as a percentage of the width and rim size . . . Soo for a 215 45 17 The tread would be 215mm wide (or 8.46") The sidewall would be 96.75mm high (215mm x .45 = 96.75mm or 3.8") and the rim size would be 17 inches Add all that together and you have a tire that's 8.46" wide and 24.6" tall (don't know how to calculate the contact patch since that math's a bit more scary since you have to figure in tire pressure, sidewall flex, weight sitting on that particular axle and so on Not sure why they combined metric and english units but that's what they did.

I've been looking everywhere for a selection of non race 225 40 17's but haven't had much luck. Seems like 45 is the only common size made in the 225 17's

Welcome to the club!

Yeah, it's been 3-4 years since I had to have my front bumper redone so I might have a case of memory rot. But they had my car for well over a week and I had to bring it back to have the film redone. Could it be different paints cure to hardness at different rates? Seems like they put some flex agent in mine so it would flex with the front bumper more. . .maybe that slowed it down. Paint guy more than likely knows what he's doing (or do some more research on the side with the kind of paint they're using.) Actually it's loooking like I should redo my front bumper again. . .mind shooting me what they're charging to repaint the front?

After i had my front bumper repainted from a similar incident, the clear bra place wanted to wait something like 3 weeks to a month for the paint to cure before re-applying to avoid the paint from fusing to the bra adhesive. Might want to look into that.

Holy cow that's pretty