Accidental eBay purchase - 2004 Mini Cooper
Discussion
Some googling and the symptoms suggests it's the 1st stage fan not working due to a failed resistor. Front end apart to replace with genuine resistor, but plenty of people seem to do a fix with an eBay resistor and not dismantle the car. Need to read a bit more before I order some bits.
Update time. Went to the garage and dug it out to have a proper look.
It had no coolant in the header and low oil. It had both coolant leak and oil leak on the MOT advisories, I also tested and the low speed fan resitior is dead as the fan only runs at max or nothing. The cheap fix is to splice in a new resistor between the low speed feed and the high speed feed.
The front pads are pretty much done as well. The passenger door handle is missing the chrome cover.
Some googling reveals that coolant loss is down to either the rad cap or the thermostat assembly. I'm going to replace the cap first (cheapest part) and see how that goes. The oil leak looks to be the cam cover. I'll degrease the engine bay and monitor before tackling that.
Also a couple of tyres are near the legal limit.
So I've ordered/purchased:
Passenger door handle - £12
Resistors x2 - £7.50
Front pads (mintex) - £26
Front pad wear sensor - £8
Radiator cap - £12
Cooper S 17" S Spoke wheels with tyres - £175
Scorpion stainless centre section and fitting kit - £78
Used scorpion backbox - £50
I'll need to buy some oil.
Current total £1,448.50 including the car.
Work will begin next Saturday.
It had no coolant in the header and low oil. It had both coolant leak and oil leak on the MOT advisories, I also tested and the low speed fan resitior is dead as the fan only runs at max or nothing. The cheap fix is to splice in a new resistor between the low speed feed and the high speed feed.
The front pads are pretty much done as well. The passenger door handle is missing the chrome cover.
Some googling reveals that coolant loss is down to either the rad cap or the thermostat assembly. I'm going to replace the cap first (cheapest part) and see how that goes. The oil leak looks to be the cam cover. I'll degrease the engine bay and monitor before tackling that.
Also a couple of tyres are near the legal limit.
So I've ordered/purchased:
Passenger door handle - £12
Resistors x2 - £7.50
Front pads (mintex) - £26
Front pad wear sensor - £8
Radiator cap - £12
Cooper S 17" S Spoke wheels with tyres - £175
Scorpion stainless centre section and fitting kit - £78
Used scorpion backbox - £50
I'll need to buy some oil.
Current total £1,448.50 including the car.
Work will begin next Saturday.
Here's a quick snap of the drivers seat which gives you an idea of the general condition of the car. It's used but very good. Normally these seats have ruined bolsters on the door side from people getting in and out.
I'll get some proper pics of the car next weekend when I start the work on it.
HorneyMX5 said:
Here's a quick snap of the drivers seat which gives you an idea of the general condition of the car. It's used but very good. Normally these seats have ruined bolsters on the door side from people getting in and out.
I'll get some proper pics of the car next weekend when I start the work on it.
Good luck with the car; I really enjoyed mine (but it was a bit of a Friday car; ~£8,500 ex-VAT of warranty work over the first 3 years)
I still loved the car; many fond memories over 4 years and 36,000 miles!
The garage gave me a print out of the warranty work at one point; it was on roller dot-matix paper and they decided the easist way to give me the print out was in a box (the paper went about 30m when extended).
I had the car on both 15s and 17s; on 15s it rode well but was a little light on front end grip (would 4 wheel drift, however) and on 17s it looked great but drove horribly due to the weight of the wheels and RFTs. Slightly improved by ditching the RFTs.
The garage gave me a print out of the warranty work at one point; it was on roller dot-matix paper and they decided the easist way to give me the print out was in a box (the paper went about 30m when extended).
I had the car on both 15s and 17s; on 15s it rode well but was a little light on front end grip (would 4 wheel drift, however) and on 17s it looked great but drove horribly due to the weight of the wheels and RFTs. Slightly improved by ditching the RFTs.
HorneyMX5 said:
Does she want to swap? Green was way down my colour choices when browsing, but drunken ebayers can't be choosers! Lol.
Seems that maybe their should be a Poverty Mini thread like the Poverty Pork thread.
She might (although metallic purple was her first choice), but I won't tell her as I'm not going through that again. Seems that maybe their should be a Poverty Mini thread like the Poverty Pork thread.
What I didn't realise at the time was how p*ssed off she must have been when Mrs Tidy bought a brand new R53 One in 2003 then traded it for a new R56 Cooper complete with the disco lights, full leather, Xenons and goodness know what else in December 2006!
Coolant leak can either be
Rad
Thermostat housing
Cap
Expansion bottle (early cars had a problem with splitting bottles but it should have been recalled)
My wife's 55 plater had both the thermostat housing and radiator go when we bought it so i replaced the lot.
FYI when you replace the coolant its worth buying some new bleed screws as they are really cheap but get ruined by heavy handed mechanics.
bleeding it can be a pain but its not a massive job. even replacing the rad only takes 45 minutes ish
Rad
Thermostat housing
Cap
Expansion bottle (early cars had a problem with splitting bottles but it should have been recalled)
My wife's 55 plater had both the thermostat housing and radiator go when we bought it so i replaced the lot.
FYI when you replace the coolant its worth buying some new bleed screws as they are really cheap but get ruined by heavy handed mechanics.
bleeding it can be a pain but its not a massive job. even replacing the rad only takes 45 minutes ish
Been a busy weekend on the Cooper.
Cat back Scorpion system fitted:
Expansion bottle and Thermostat cap replaced which seems to have cured the coolant leak:
Low speed fan resitor mod installed so that the fan now actually works at the slow speed it should:
Also changed the front pads and pad wear sensor, didn't get any photos of that.
Cat back Scorpion system fitted:
Expansion bottle and Thermostat cap replaced which seems to have cured the coolant leak:
Low speed fan resitor mod installed so that the fan now actually works at the slow speed it should:
Also changed the front pads and pad wear sensor, didn't get any photos of that.
5harp3y said:
Nick whats the low speed resistor mod?
Loads of them suffer from the resistor in the radiator failing. This resistor is to run the fan at half speed when the temp reaches a certain point, if the water temp goes higher the main feed is triggered and the fan runs at full (noisy) speed.When the resistor fails the car runs up to the higher temperature before kicking in the full speed fan. While the half speed fan is triggered earlier, the failed resistor stops it from actually working.
This mod introduces a new resistor further upstream in the loom that fixes the problem but is also easily accessible if it fails again.
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