orcadog

It's pretty much available wherever you would buy your car cleaning supplies. I think Wal-Mart has it and of course Pep-Boys would surely have it. I THINK I picked up mine at Advance Auto last time (just because it's the closest place to my house to buy automotive what-have-you's)

No, not really. If you're not mechnically inclined it will seem a little scary at first, but it's really one of the more simple things you can do. Fronts are the easiest, and the rears (at least on the R53) are a little tougher just because of the lack of slack in the brake lines.

I also run the Hawk Ceramics. And they are very good re: dusting. And they are quiet. Though I did have issues with them bedding correctly even though I followed their procedures to the "T". A couple of phone calls to Hawk got them to "admit" that they had issues with them bedding-in to brand new rotors. I thought that was odd, but after taking the pads off, and scuffing them and the rotors with 120 grit (as instructed by Hawk) they seem to be operating within spec. (if you want full disclosure PM me - it's a long tale!) I have not had the opportunity to track these pads yet, I did not have issue with my stock pads so I am hopeful that these will perform at least equal to them on the track. ALSO - Although I mostly use Meguires car care products, I have found that Eagle One makes a good spray on "wheel wax". It does a REMARKABLE job IMHO. It comes in a yellow "Windex" style bottle. If I were to find that these Hawk pads are problematic, I would revert to OEM pads and just use the Eagle One...it's that good. -Ryan

:top:

What about that DIY place in Sterling? Think you could work a deal out with them? I was just thinking that using a "shop" of some kind would be less likely to have someone call the fire department or the cops over all the "toxic smoke". Dealer might not be too keen on getting mixed up in "non-factory recommended maintenance" events.

Indeed - thanks to this thread, I did my "other" car - a '97 Isuzu trooper with 184,000 on it. The engines in those are famous for valve train tick due to build up on the valves. Usually I can run some lower viscosity oil through it and that fixes the issue for a while. But this time I had the "tick" so bad it sounded like a Cummins diesel. Long story medium, I seafoamed it, it smoked like heck for 2 or 3 minutes but it's been very very smooth since. Oddly, none of my neighbors questioned why that old beast was smoking! It should be noted that I put 1/2 in the crank case and left it in there about a week (50-70 miles of driving) and then sucked up 1/2 in to the PCV that weekend. I put another 15-20 miles on it and did an oil change.

...And I'll refer back to my posts 10 and 12. Have you had the autoparts store folks check out the battery/charging system? Sounds like a battery, but I'd hate to buy a battery and that NOT be the issue.

SOoooo, any resolution on this?

Again, it could be many things - I don't recall ever hearing of a common hard start issue with the R53. I'm 1.5 hours to the nearest dealer, so I always explore before I take it to the dealer. You guys have a (relative) plethora of dealerships to choose from so you might just want to take it in. If you have an autoparts store near by you could take in to see if the charging system is operating within spec. They normally do that for free.

It could be a lot of things. From something simple like a battery that is slowly dying to a leaking injector. (I had a hard starting issue last summer that was due to a leaking injector) Has your check engine light come on at all? It's going to be $100 +/- $20 for diagnostic at the dealer - I don't really remember it's been a long while.

I use AVS. They've got software for nearly everything, but I use the video converter, the video editor, and the video remaker (for just trimming them down). And FWIW once you get them uploaded to YouTube, I noticed that they will now let you add text and some other things. It's probably not very powerful, but it sounds like you are just getting your feet wet so it might be an option. Good luck - and don't forget to share when you've got them ready!:rock:

+1

That's awesome - I hear the Phil Wicks programs are great. Especially since they are MINI centric.

Absolutely! Again, I wasn't doubting or knocking your skillz re: The Dragon, Ali. I hope I did not offend. I go to Summit Point to kart all the time, (which is a great and comparatively cheap skill builder) - but I have also done one of their HPDE days and had an instructor who was also an instructor for BMWCCA - top quality stuff IMHO. It would be great fun to get a group of MINI's and take over the HPDE! Friday At The Track (FATT)

Mach V will have your answer....http://www.fastmini.net/wheels.html