Don't buy any cheap mini as your first car, I have and have learnt the hard way.

My first mini was totally gone with rust, so I was planing to sell it piece by piece... And sell engine seperately. I was ripped off I paid $2500... i thawt it would be cheap rust repairs, but it was much more than i thawt

Then i found my current mini, i thought it was a great buy $1200, until i took it to MiniCraft and get a look over... The engine block was cracked and was running on 2 cylinders, needed new brakes and much more, and plus paint work got worse as i drove it more..(weathered) So i paid another $1200 to get the car working.... Used my first rust buckets engine etc in my craked block mini.....

My grandad helped my get a 96 Rav4, wasn't the car for me, i wrote it off in an accident and had to give insurance payout back to grandad and back to my mini... Which was fine....

this lasted me until last week the car started running crap, took it back down to minicraft and got them to look at it, it needed $500 worth of repairs...

So got the car back fine on tuesday after the lovely bill, was driving car last nite on freeway home. And i hear a huge knocking noice from the engine, so I pull over to find that there is white smoke comming out of my rocker cover, CONROD Looked at oil... none SO got it back on tuesday working fine now today i am stuck without a car Now it's either a re-build or a new engine...... What makes it worse is that I am soo young and have no money due to fixing car this week and only earning apprenticeship wages.........

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Ian - My Ve SSV Ute - Looking for a Mini

That was so good you had to repeat it!!!

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Talk is Cheap because Supply Exceeds Demand

yeah it's such a great thing to experience I love my mini but hate the mechanics of it

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Ian - My Ve SSV Ute - Looking for a Mini

yea dont buy a lemon mini or keep throwing money at a lemon mini either, check your oil etc often, its an old car.. you need to do that with old cars.

buying a crap mini can ruin the whole mini thing, and its not just minis, get any car you wanna buy checked out properly.

I am so sorry you are having this trouble. and you are right my daughter paid $4000 for her mini and it turned out to be crap and unsafe. Luckily hubbie fixed everything with some help from Mini Classic, but by this time she was so totaly upset and over it that it was sold. It totaly ruined the whole mini experience for her. What shgould have been the best time of her life in her car was a nightmare. In the year and bit that she owned it it spent more time off road than on even to the point that she did not want to drive it in case she got stranded.
So all you (can't say it on here) who may be thinking on ripping people off with your oh so cute minis please try to be a nice person and think about the reprocussions that your selfishness may cause some one else.

The mini experiince should be one to cherish for your life not remember with disappointment.

I hope you get your mini running again and wish you all the best with it.

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Hellooo from OODLES my mini. Is being restored to be revealed in all her glory one day in the future she looks forward to meeting you all.

Honestly I am giving up on the mini It's just not worth spending the money i will just be without a car for 6 months and save then when I can i'll get a loan.......

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Ian - My Ve SSV Ute - Looking for a Mini

yeah i would not spend money on a lemon mini, save up and get a good one or do the sensible thing and buy a corolla

unfortunately it happens again and again..... if you want a mini, be prepared to spend money on it, or do all the work yourself... traditionally my minis spend all of January/February off the road - engine changes, suspension rebuilds, rust repairs.... I share my wifes car when I'm working on the brick, otherwise its a daily driver

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did I tell you that I won a trophy?

had it run out of oil becuase you neglected to check it or had it run out because when they repaired it they neglected to fill it?

Sorry to hear that I hope you stick with it and end up with a gooden. If you learn enough the labour cost goes out of repairs - this makes it far cheaper. The parts arent that expensive (that is not dearer than anything else)

What would you expect for a $4000 mini? Some people really don't know the value of mini's - be prepared to pay well over double that for even something remotely reliable and even then IT IS GOING TO BREAK on you. These are 40 year old cars?! How can people expect them to run and last like 2007 tech? Where would the progress be in that?

Maybe you're daughter got sick of the mini and the novelty wore off so the reliability issues gave her an excuse to drive mum and dads car?

I can tell you i currently work on 4 or 5 mini's and there is ALWAYS something wrong - had to do a wheel bearing on the weekend - parts ~$60 labour $nil cause i did it myself and i tell you if i didn't know and i had to pay someone to do it i wouldn't keep pumping money into them for long. Cause i guarentee i just saved myself $300 and i can do a lot more repairs with that on the other 4 cars - cause guess what - they are going to break too.

If you want to drive them daily be prepared to maintain them. Don't go blaming previous owners. The green clubman that was in the paper on friday was $4500 - guess what it's one of the best mini's i and anyone else has ever seen, it's completely original, drives amazingly well and was a two owner car with all the paperwork and fuel usage with the mileage since this guy owned it. He drove it to work regualarly etc etc. Well guess what, it overheats, the brakes needed adjusting, i just replaced the wheel bearing, there is still a terrible noise coming from it. Is it a lemon? No. It is a great little car, problems are to be expected. Did the guy try and rip us off by selling a lemon? Most definately no.

Fact is WE decided to buy the car, he didn't make us. You buy it, you're stuck with it - no one made you do anything - You have the opportunity to inspect, drive/check do whatever you want. If you're not happy don't buy it on impulse just cause it's a pretty colour.

Mini's are an emotional buy, many people without a clue go out there and buy them as a spur of he moment, gee look at them they're cool and don't think about how they are going to maintain it or they drive it into the ground like you can with a corolla and the novelty wears off quick smart!

/rant

I'm sorry to hear that YoungMiniac - Unless there is someone around you willing to teach you how to work on and learn to fix them (and it's a valuable lesson to learn) Then sell up and buy something reliable. It's the harsh truth.

As bloke said why did it run out of oil though?

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Starlet Conversion:
http://www.ausmini.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=15484

I have sat and debated about making a comment on Screech buying a mini and using it as a daily driver between the central coast and the Sydney inner west.

I simply feel its going to end in tears. Cass, buy a mini by all means. Treat it as a treasure and use it on weekends etc for club runs and cruises. Even if you bought one of those immaculately restored cars for $25K it will eventually let you down as a daily driver. However as historic car its real fun and you may be able to get historic registration and insurance far far cheaper.

Buy a $2000 jap car (corolla etc) and drive that every day. It may not be a mini but it wont be unpleasant to drive and if you buy carefully it will give you a few years of relatively trouble free motoring.

You would still be in your $6-8K budget and a lot happier.

I'm not going to be driving into Sydney, not in a mini. I'll be taking the train into work, and the trainstation is 5 mins up the road. on the days that I'm not able to take the train,there will be busses running, or I will drive in, with my dad, who will be working in the same place.

I'm not going into this naively. I understand the risk involved in buying a 40 year old car. I know that if it breaks down and starts to annoy me that its my problem, and I can be as upset about it as I want, but that I am to blame no one else except myself for not buying a completely reliable car. on that note, I dont think any car is completely reliable, whether it be due to the cars condition or to leaving the headlights on.

I want a mini, not only because I love them, but becuase i think it will be a good car to learn about the mechanical side of things.

Whether I buy a mini, or any other car, its going to be driven for a tops of maybe an hour a week. And on top of that its not going to be totally relied on.


In saying all that, I won't be looking at actually buying a mini (or a car) for a while yet. For starters, I dont have my licence, and I havent even started sacing yet. But I am trying to do my research on it to know what will be best.

Cass

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Talk is Cheap because Supply Exceeds Demand

Okay - I missed the small part about the train - I'm sorry.

Good to see you are approaching this with eyes open.

To answer YoungMiniac,

I dont think a Mini is a good first car for someone who either can't work on it, or doesn't want to work on it every day.

That's the nature of the beast.

If you find one that never needs a spanner put to it (like my daily Clubman and lots of other Minis out there...maybe), then if abused by leadfoot P platers they will start to break and fall into the first category above.

YoungMiniac , I am not saying that you are any of the sterotypes I have noted. I am generalising.

The only thing my daughter got sick of was being ripped off. We understand you have to work on a mini that was not the point of my message. Pratically having to rebuild the ******* is a joke apart the fact that it was unsafe god know how it passed for Rego in the 1st Place. But we all know how to get around that.!
As for her wanting to drive our cars you really need to go back to the planet you came from. She is perfectly capable of driving her own car. This excuse oh well it a 40 year old car is a load of garbage!!!! We have jag that is older and it drives pefectly. You know why because it was not put together to make a quick buck out of a young trusting person, That's why!
Over the excuses really over it. It about time we encouraged the young new drivers in the mini wolrld otherwise the following of the Mini will roll over and die real quick.

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Hellooo from OODLES my mini. Is being restored to be revealed in all her glory one day in the future she looks forward to meeting you all.