wideeyedfunk

Tag: Mini Cooper S

  • Thanks Mini, for getting sick before the dead of winter.

    Team WideEyedFunk spent 5 hours in the garage Saturday, transplanting the Mini Cooper S’s failing electronic thermostat housing. It wasn’t quite freezing outside and I could feel my toes for most of the afternoon. Sure, some nice folks at the Mini dealership could have done it for us, and I could have stayed all warm and toasty on the sofa. But, the WideEyedHousehold is cheap.

    Start
    The sick Mini.
    SupportStaff
    Team WideEyedFunk support staff.

    We suited up in chilly weather gear, prepared the surgery table, and started the multi-hour Mini evisceration. First the air box came out. Good thing we had a new air filter ready, the old one was caked with Buffalo street filth. Poor Mini was feeling asthmatic.

    SurgeryTable
    Surgery table.
    DirtyFilter
    The Mini’s sinuses were crusted with urban decay.

    We unplugged a couple of vacuum hoses, a bunch of electronic stuff, and yanked out the wiring harness box. We drained most of the antifreeze out of the engine. Messy, like pumping a stomach. Then, the WideEyedSpouse leaned deep into the engine and unhitched six hoses from the thermostat housing. Some went to the turbo cooling system, some feed the heating system somehow, and a really big one shot back into the water pump. That one vomited some nasty when it came undone. The old thermostat housing had caked up leaky holes marks all over it. I was driving a Mini that was ready to puke out its guts all over some busy, probably rainy, highway. Poor Mini. Poor me.

    EmptyGuts
    Evisceration.

    In less than an hour (listening to iTunes radio playing hipster songs) we plonked the new housing on, shoved the hoses on, plugged in the vacuum hoses, reattached a bunch of electronic things, put the air box back, and zip tied the crap out of anything loose. The WideEyedKitchen sacrificed the iced tea jug for mixing the Mini soup, er, antifreeze and we fed the little guy some juice.

    Finish
    Transplant complete.

    In an act of great bravery, we zipped down a dark and rainy Main Street to pick up our large pepperoni. The Mini held strong. Go Mini. Go Team WideEyedFunk. Wish us all luck when the water pump goes – and please, think warm thoughts in that wish. None of us feel like cranking apart the passenger side of the car to transplant that in January. But we’ll do it. Because we’re cheap. And because we want the Mini to feel ok.

  • A vexing loss in the spousal competition.

    I’m not saying that the WideEyedSpouse and I compete against each other. That would be a gross exaggeration. However, it is nice to get a win every now and again, to be better at something, like say, concocting the best dill pickle or power shifting in the powerful Mach 5 (the demon on wheels, my Mini Cooper S). Of course the decision as to who is better at any given event is subject to in-house debate. Data proofs and examples are required during the win-lose negotiations. We may query the dogs for their perspective. The judges, Spouse and I, are not impartial. It has happened that I determined myself the winner regardless of the Spouse’s contrary findings. It’s all in good fun. Mostly.

    Yesterday an external judge gave the Spouse a win that will haunt me for decades.

    This is from before we had our own gear. Even then there were hints that I was going to not win.
    This is from before we had our own gear. Even then there were hints that I was going to not win.

    We have had exactly the same number of Olympic recurve-style archery lessons. Six. At them, we stand side by side at the range and are coached as we shoot. We have almost exactly the same gear, except for our differences in size and strength.

    Until yesterday I believed that neither of us was winning at the archery skills affinity contest yet. This took a certain amount of self-delusion because I could clearly see that the Spouse’s arrows were more often in the bullseye. Mine are little wider ranging. But still, belief is powerful.

    Evidently after you loose an arrow you are supposed to maintain your posture while allowing the bow fall as it will. I was told it is like following through in golf or bowling, neither of which is in my skillset. It seems that after I loose the arrow and I immediately collapse my arms and back, entirely ruining the shot. Coach corrected me several times, using a variety of phases: “Keep that arm up. Where’s that arrow? Watch that bow. Stay in position. Follow it through.” Then she uttered the words that, to be fair, I may have deserved.

    “Watch your Spouse,” she said, “he’ll show you how it’s done.” Silence fell across the range. The Spouse, poised to shoot, froze. His eyes wandered over to me and I could his see him trying to stop the spread of him smarmy smirk. I glared at the side of his head. I tried to bore a hole into it, far enough to give him a tiny memory lobotomy with my laser eyes.

    I failed.

    For years I will hear “watch me, I’ll show you how it’s done,” irritating in its own right, and an eternally vexing reminder of my failure to win on that day.  Can you hear my teeth grinding?

  • Car Fever Part 3: New Cars Come with New Tires.

    “Spouse,” I say, coming in the house after driving home in the rain, “we need to research new tires for the Mini.”

    The WideEyedSpouse perks up. New tires means hours of research on TireRack, DiscountTireDirect, and Mini Cooper S forums. Productive research, not idle research. The Spouse opens his laptop.

    Do we get tires that perform best in snow and rain but are less ideal in summer asphalt conditions? Would we prefer a better warm weather adventure driving experience and have tires that are merely adequate during the times of year when it is best to go slow and careful anyway?

    Do we replace the run-flats that give a buckboard ride to the Mini with conventional performance tires and toss a donut spare in the boot? “How spirited is your driving?” the Spouse asks me. This isn’t a subject I care to discuss. I pretend I didn’t hear the question.

    As we watch evening TV (Episode 107 of Star Trek Next Gen), I listen to the Spouse clickety click around the internet. I see that he has several windows open simultaneously and he isn’t really paying attention to the TV because Captain Picard makes a funny face and the Spouse doesn’t laugh.

    “Ok,” he finally turns the laptop toward me, “I figured it out.”

    Pictured on the laptop screen is a BMW 3 series station wagon. A vehicle widely acknowledged as providing one of the best driving experiences in North America. I look at the image and then look over at the Spouse. “Heh?” I ask.

    “It comes with new tires,” he says.

    And that friends, is how the WideEyedHousehold handles every day vehicular wear and tear. So far I am resisting the car fever. It is kept low-grade by the winter temperatures this week. It is too frigid to make any decisions about anything. And way too cold to have a really enjoyable test drive.

  • Hamish Rides Console

    He’d ride shotgun but he is too small to see out the window. So he rides Console.

    Riding Console in the trucks we’ve had over the years is easy. The space between the driver and passenger seats is huge. The console is a big padded platform that looks like it was designed to provide mattressy respite for beefy man arms. There’s enough space that a passenger beefy man arm would not accidently touch a driver beefy man arm already using the console. Hamish the Corgi fits on truck consoles with room to spare. His panoramic view of traffic, countryside, and snacks being eaten by the passenger is unparalleled from the console.

    However.

    When Hamish cruises the urban scene with me and the Mini Cooper S, he struggles to maintain the attitude of superior contentment. You can see that he is smiling, but maybe his back teeth are clenched. Smile and clench your teeth – then say “this is great”. That’s exactly how Hamish looks riding the Mini console.The Mini console is low and he mainly has a view of the giant Mini speedometer. The console is narrow. He wedges his barrel chest between the seats and perches one front paw on the console in front of him. The other he rests on a human or waves in the air to counter balance g-forces on spirited turns. The console is short. About two thirds of Hamish hangs off the back, dangling in space over the rear seat floor boards.

    None of this deters Hamish. He will shove Sweet Miss Tibbit out of the way to ride console. He calls Console before we’ve even left the house. Before my shoes are on, or keys are in my hand. As I lift the dogs into the back of the Mini, Sweet Tibbit watches Hamish hustle his fuzzy person into the console position and sighs. She sits behind the passenger seat and leans against it to watch the world pass. Sometimes she peers over Hamish’s ears, asking what’s going on up there?

    Nothing much Sweet Tibbit. Nothing much.

    Miss Tibbit wants a turn on the Console. Never going to happen.

  • Why Teenagers in Beater Cars Always Speed

    The Spouse and I were ripping down the QEW (Queen Elizabeth Way) from Niagara On The Lake in Canada to the Peace Bridge border crossing. Our bellies were full of British style pub food from the Angel Inn and the Mini Cooper S was enjoying running at higher rpms for a little while. The speed limit on the QEW is 100kph – about 62 miles an hour. Normal highway pace. Rarely have I seen anyone moving so slowly.

    Traffic was pretty light. It was midday and the Canadian rush to the U.S. for cheaper mall shopping was over. The Spouse had the Mini cruising in the right lane without obstructions. Every now and again a massive BMW or Mercedes would blow past in a blur of color and grace. We’ve seen this phenomenon in Europe too, and have long speculated that other countries must offer a Speeding Pass to the owners of luxury performance cars. I am always jealous when the tail end of a Beautiful Car disappears ahead of us.

    I noticed that the Spouse was intently watching the rear and side mirrors. Usually this signals the arrival of something spectacular: A Boss 302. A Ferrari, Aston Martin, or Bugatti perhaps. I glanced behind us and saw what looked like a red brick lumbering down the QEW passing lane.

    The Spouse stoically watched it pass us: an ancient, rusted, teen-filled, bald-tired, exhaust belching beater.  “Pour it on Mercury Topaz,” he said, “gotta stay ahead of the breakdown.”