Josh Wardell’s MINI Cooper S

Just over a week ago my driver’s side HK door woofer started making a grumbling noise, and the next day it would cut in and out completely. Last Saturday I pulled things apart to find the problem, and found this:

Water had come in through the window seal (which is confirmed by my service tech as normal) to the inside of the door, but the speakers are fully exposed and as you can see got dosed with water. The fragile wire going to the actual speaker corroded and was no longer conductive.

After a few days of driving with no music but that of my engine, I drove up to MINI of Peabody and got the speaker replaced under warranty. But I certainly do not want this happening again, so I made another cheap HK fix. A $7.99 pair of foam speaker baffles now protects the speakers from the elements.

I have detailed the process on my HK Door Fixes page. I also took the opportunity to rewrite the entire page and update it with some new information. This is something that may eventually happen to every MINI, so it is worth the quick and cheap fix before it happens to you.

My hosting has been moved over to Site5.com. I’ve been reluctant to move from my previous host, whom I’ve been with for over five years; I was mostly happy with them, except they never upgraded their hosting plans to be more competitive. I’m moving from 50meg space/2.5gig bandwidth to 3gig/50gig for almost the same price. Since starting the MINI blog, my bandwidth has been steadily increasing, last month hitting over 2TB. (The total data in all of my website is 16MB, so that’s impressive!) So I really needed to make a jump.

I followed closely Ian’s and Gabe’s server movements to PowWeb and InMotion, and wanted to switch with them. But those hosts do not give you your own IP address and do not give you unix SSH shell access, two things I did not want to give up. More recently I had recommendations for Site5 by GMINI, Rich, and Mark, and Site5 offers all the features I am looking for and more. So I made the jump.

The last two days were a nightmare getting things set up and running, especially the database for this blog. Unfortunately, site5’s support was terrible, taking hours for each reply and ultimately not solving any of the issues I asked. But I just figured things out for myself as I usually do and hopefully everything is working correctly now. Let me know if you witness and problems or performance differences.

On Saturday, I joined a bunch of the Rhode Island MINI owners on a run to the Purgatory Chasm. I’ve missed a number of MINI events this summer due to scheduling conflicts so I was looking forward to this somewhat smaller MINI run. Sometimes the smaller ones are better; you get to meet everyone personally and the fun on the twisties is usually higher.

It was especially timely as on the way down my MINI hit 20,000 miles! What a great way to celebrate saying goodbye to childhood by carving up blind corners. I should again mention that I have had no major problems with my MINI. I don’t think many other cars would prove so reliable after being driven like you stole it every day.

I met about ten other MINIs in Rhode Island, where we headed on local twisty roads northwest back into Massachusetts to the Chasm. We parked in a line (pictured above), and were joined by two others. We ate our packed lunches, and then hiked into the Chasm. it was a great place to hike, with rock cliffs and boulders everywhere, making for some ankle-twisting fun. The weather was also perfect for hiking, warm with no humidity, a rare occurrence around here.

I was undecided till the last minute about joining–it’s tough to get me to promise anything early on a Saturday morning. But I’m glad I did. I had not met any of these guys before (I had missed a few other RI runs last year) and they’re a great group. I hope to make their upcoming Haunted MINIs Run, which sounds like it will be even better than last year’s.

This weekend I ripped apart the dash yet again and added another of Ian Cull’s excellent circuits. It allows me to toggle the traction control from my steering wheel.

There are times when your traction control kicks in when you are pulling into traffic and need to get moving but it robs engine power for several seconds even after the tires get traction. You can’t look away from the road to toggle it off. But a quick flick of the steering wheel button would immediately cancel it.

I also suspect that during an AutoX–where I already use Ian’s MINICircuit to permanently keep DSC off for the day–that the DSC’s independent corner brake control might do a better job than a human in holding through a slalom. Speed should be held the same so the lack of engine power should be OK during those few seconds. But you can’t take your eyes off or hands off the wheel during an intense autocross… So on my next one on Oct 1 I will experiment to see if switching DSC on quickly just for the slalom sections and immediately back off on exit will allow for a higher speed through the slalom.

The 2-spoke MFSW has a rear middle button on the left side that isn’t used. The problem is the wheel’s buttons do not have their own wires to splice into, they communicate their presses onto the MINI’s iBus network. The stereo and the engine computer see the messages and change function or cruise control respectively. So it takes Ian’s excellent iBusRemote circuit to decode the signal and watch for that button. I had to solder the output and power wires from this board onto my existing MINICircuit as pictured above. After some Sneakers-like signal searching with an oscilloscope to the connectors behind the Radio, I found and tapped the remaining wire into the iBus.

It is working perfectly. I can toggle the DSC on and off very quickly. I can’t wait to make use of it at the next autocross, and for some fun in the snow too!