Way back in November, 2008. I turned 200K miles and had my first breakdown; the alternator died.
Alternator was replaced with a rebuilt unit that I sourced from an independant parts house in California. Money was very tight, so with some help from my brother-in-law, we replaced the alternator. That is definitely a job that falls way outside of my skill set, which is why I enlisted help.
Here we are, 51K miles and 21 months later and it happened again. Driving home today, the battery light came on, again. I was able to get home, but the power steering and brakes were behaving badly. A few text messages to Chad (DetroitTuned) and some testing that I shouldn’t have done confirms that the problem, more than likely, is a bad alternator.
At least I wasn’t stuck in the middle of the desert this time.
(0) CommentsSure we all followed along with the factory electic cars. There was that one company that was also selling electric MINIs through Sam’s Club a while back. Now, CravenSpeed has gotten into the game and they just did their first test drive of their electric R53.
The donor MINI is a 2002 R53. Great testbed for such a conversion. Be sure to click back to read all about their progress.
Anyone have any interest in doing something like this to your MINI? $25k seems pretty reasonable for this kind of conversion seems pretty reasonable to me.
(0) CommentsFor those that haven’t seen the latest Top Gear yet.
Overall a great episode. What you don’t see in this clip is Capt. Slow tearing around the hills in a Rally Mini Cooper S. Awesome.
It’s really not that hard to find these before they hit BBC America. You just have to know where to look.
1 commentYou remember when I said this back in March.
Instead of placing blame, I’m instead going to choose to help educate where I can like a proper fan boy should. I will continue to let all y’all know that it’s time to check your oil. Help spread the word that the MINI is safe and reliable by evidence of the ’03 MINI Cooper that is rapidly approaching 250,000 miles on the odometer. And I will continue to encourage MINI owners to send questions into the show so that Chad and the rest of us can help answer them.
Today, I continued and here are some tips for you to do the same.
Imagine you are out a club outting or dealer function, much like I was today for the first Sunday meet-up at MINI of Tempe. You’re hanging out, checking out the cars, seeing who likes the Countryman, talking about the Coupe, wondering what kind of wheels that person has on their MINI. You’ve been there.
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