My Mini Day.
By Tadhg.
Given that the first thing I did with the Mini this morning was drop my son to Pre-Prep, I thought I'd do this like a school story, or show-and-tell.
After dropping my son to Pre-Prep, I went out onto the Ipswich Motorway, at the end of the street from school. I entered through a roadwork zone, so I was in first, and the traffic was murder. I straightened it up, wrote the number 11,
and headed for Ipswich. There, I spoke with the Seat Belt Certification bloke, as listed
here. Happy with the results, I turned to go home, to do an oil change.
But I stopped for some Vortex 98 first.
As I reached the last three streets, my indicator stalk went awry, and stopped working.
It's a new stalk, maybe a month old, but the way the cancelling knob on the column was located, I had the switch half off the outer column shaft, and the stalk was vertical to suit the cancelling knob.
So that meant that, before I could look at the oil change, I had to fix the column.
That meant I had to find my old Gregory's Manual, which took a while.
Amazingly, I was able to remove the column, adjust the outer shaft, re-adjust the column lowering bracket, re-route the indicator loom through the column lowering bracket (so I won't catch my knee in it), and even, eventually, get the pinion spline collar bolt back in.
And the car steered straight! Amazing! Success!
Next, I went to do the oil change. I thought I had a 15/16 spanner, but I didn't.
So I tried an 8" shifter. But the shifter was flexing.
So I tried a 10" shifter, which I bought to change the steering wheel (needed for the big nut!). That flexed too.
So I went down the road to buy a 15/16 spanner.
After the first roundabout (3rd street), the engine started to rev on a gearshift - and it felt like the throttle was stuck open.
So I keyed it off and pulled over. Started, did the same thing.
Got under the bonnet, looking for a broken throttle cable, only to find the rocker cover oil cap stuck in the linkages of the twin HS2's.
I'd taken it off, ready for the oil change, and left it on the rocker cover - it'd fallen back into the linkages when I accellerated from the roundabout.
No harm done!
Surprisingly, on the way, an MGB owner waved at me!
Hagar (on here) would be amazed - and I didn't even have the grill in at the time (so that I could get at the oil filter).
That was 40 minutes (20 minutes each way)...
After I got home with my new 15/16 shifter, I put on a rubber glove, and burned my fingers through it on the sump plug.
But the glove stayed in tact!
One quarter turn with the new spanner, and the rest of the way the plug came off by hand. Easy!
Filter came off nicely too.
Didn't spill too much oil, and the glove survived a full hour, in heaps of oil, before eventually tearing. But not before I'd reinstalled the plug and installed the new filter.
My left (gloved) hand was amazingly sweaty and pink and prune-like, and my right hand was greasy...
I then had to go pick up the boy in the 4WD - Pre-Prep was finished for the day.
He came home to help me install the electronic ignition kit.
Well, to watch.
Surprisingly, this made my hands much, much dirtier doing that than the oil change.
I got on here, to find out what Points were,
did it all as per the instructions,
and then...
No one's answered me yet.
So that was my slightly manic, very long winded, Mini day.
This is a lot less than I plotted writing! Is this the sort of thing you want, willy..? Really?! I think it needs more smilies.
And, on the Number 11, I didn't dip the clutch or anything, I just got it straight and flattened it in 1st - no intention to do anything that might be considered illegal. And I have Kumho 145's.
