cripes.. how do you know that there's a place in Coconut Grove??

yeah he's still going, but i've got a mini mechanic, John from Beaver Bay Autos, he's been dealing with this mini for many years.

looks like i'll be giving him a call pretty soon.....again

Google Earth showed me.

No I lived up there for 6 years, he used to service all the oddball classics in Darwin. Cos it's such a small market, he needs to be able to deal with any old thing that comes his way and doesn't specialise too much.

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SooperDooperMiniCooperExpertEngineering

All garage work involves equal measures of enthusiasm, ingenuity and a fair degree of irresponsibility.

LOL - you sure you've never worked at Pine Gap?

right.. spoken to my mechanic.

first thing to do is to put a tube on the engine breather and see if you can blow though it. so i'll try that tonight. he seems to think that something has blocked something up...there's too much pressure in the crankcase and oil is blowing up and through the rocker cover breather.

seeing that the engine runs ok, could not be as bad as first thought but will probably need a rebuild sooner rather than later

Thats a wise mini mechanic. Minis run with quite a lot of crankcase pressure without it necessarily being compression by-pass. Thats the product of it being (grammatically) a dry sump and a swirling mass of gears.

The breathers do gunk up over time and the PVC valves wear and jam as well. Take off the breathers (dont forget the one behind the engine under the exhaust manifold (if fitted)) and soak them in degreaser etc to clean them. Use the wife's/girlfriend's/significant other etc's eyebrow tweezers of loooong nosed pliars to pull out all the mesh inside the breather and discard it. Then get some stainless steel brillo type pads and replace it whith that. Its only there to catch and stop the oil droplets. The gases (and some oil) passes straight through. Don't pack it so tight it retards gas flow though.

And, lastly, recognise that a mini does has quite a lot of crankcase pressure as perfectly normal.