Mini

New Wheels for the Miata?

They are only temporary though. The Mini’s new winter tires arrived fashionably late, Saturday instead of Thursday, so I spend that afternoon mounting them on the car. Instead of storing them for the winter I had the idea to mount the all-seasons on the Miata so we could take the car out for a spin at least once a week or so, even if the top is up1, to keep it fresh and and not ruin those ultra-high performance summer tires which really shouldn’t be driven in temps much below 40 degrees.

I had done the research ahead of time and they would go on the car, the offfset was only 10mm different and the Mini wheels had a larger center bore diameter, but would the taller tires work on the slightly lowered car? After I installed them they seemed to fit OK. They didn’t hit the brake calipers and turning the steering wheel lock to lock didn’t induce any rubbing that I could tell. But a test drive was needed because the springs still needed to settle from the being jacked up.

I took a quick spin around the neighborhood and all seemed fine under cruise conditions. It wasn’t until I took a quick turn into a parking lot that I heard a scraping sound. Turns out at near full lock, in both directions, the tires do hit the plastics fender well liners. The problem wasn’t with differences in the offset the rim width difference, but with the taller Mini tire. They are 195/60 as compared to the 195/50 of the Miata, so the Mini tires are a whole 1-1/2″ taller or 3/4 inches a side. I have opted to leave them on because any “winter driving” we do in the Miata will be of a cruise around town variety anyway.

Magnetic Mini

On New Year’s Day, we ran a quick errand to Home Depot and on the way back we stopped at Albertsons for a couple of items. As we were walking towards the store from the parking lot, a lady pushing her cart out of the store, waved us over and asked, “What year is your Mini?” When I told her it was a 2013, she said, “Oh, too bad, I have a car cover for a 2007 Mini and I was going to ask if you wanted it.” I told her that in fact it would fit our car as the 2nd generation Minis ran from 2007 to 2014. She said, “Well, I’m giving it away because I sold the car a while ago and it is just taking up space in my garage. Do you want it?” Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, we said, “Sure, we’ll take it.” She then said, “I live just up the street, when can you come get it?” We said, “We are just picking up a couple items. We could be there in 15 minutes?” She then explained where she lived and she wasn’t kidding about the just up the street thing, it was literally a half mile along the same cross road as the store…

After leaving her promising to see her in a few minutes, maybe two steps closer to Alberstons front door another lady comes up and says, “Did you just get out of that Mini?” We nod in the affirmative and she says, “How do you like it?” We both launch into how much we like the car. She said, “I have a older Ford Escape and I have trouble seeing out of it when trying to back up especially.” She was about Donna’s height, if not maybe a little shorter, so Donna told her about selling our bigger car, just to get this to be able to see more. So Donna said, “Would you like come sit in it?” “Sure,” she said. So we walked back over to the car and she sat in it and marveled at the view. She said she saw one at a used car lot and was going to go down with her husband to see about buying it.

We finally got to go inside and buy what we came for. After leaving there we stopped at lady number one’s house. When we finally got home we unloaded a step ladder, 2 gallons of distilled water and a car cover for the Ladybug.

Ladybug’s New Shoes

The first time we looked at the Mini from behind, not long after we brought it home, we both commented on how skinny the tires looked. Being used to seeing the 205mm wide Miata tires, the stock 175mm wide tires on the Mini looked like bicycle tires.

After a little over 32,500 miles, the 7-year old tires were right at the wear bars, so I decided to go tire shopping. I started in the usual place, tirerack.com, and quickly found out that a replacement in the stock tire size left you with only a few choices. We sort of wanted something a bit wider to rid the car of that Conestoga wagon look, but because of the narrow stock rims, 5.5″, the widest recommended tire was only one step up at 185mm.

At least at the 185/60 R15 size there was a much wider range of tires to choose from. There were ten tires in the Grand Touring All-Season category, ranging in price from $65 to $125 a tire. After sorting through the group, weighing price and review results, I settled on a set of General ALTIMAX RT43 tires.

While I love the TireRack experience and have bought a ton of stuff from them, and will again, I always like to check at my favorite independent local tire store. I don’t mind spending a few bucks more to support the locals. Turns out Aiken Discount Tire could get a set of the exact same tires, for a little more than $10 a piece more than TireRack, so I bought the tires from them.

Coccinellidae

The Mini already has a name, Ladybug. First because of the coloring, but after the deal was done and we went to drive it off the lot there was a ladybug sitting on the driver’s outside rear view mirror. Tonight, as if to cement the name, when I went out to pull the Bob Richards sticker off the back and wash the windows better than Nissan of Augusta’s “detailer” did, there was another ladybug walking on the roof.

This car, for now, will be Donna’s daily driver as it replaces the departed Sonata. I am now slightly jealous about her getting the Mini, not because I like driving it better than the Miata, but because it has the lowest mileage of any vehicle in our fleet and I love a new car. But because I asked nice, she is going to let me take the mini to work tomorrow to show all my friends. I will have to back the Miata out of the garage for her to use tomorrow, she will risk driving it in, but just won’t back it out of the garage.

The post title, Coccinellidae, is the ladybug’s scientific family name and as it turns out it is not really even a true bug, it is a beetle, so Donna ended up getting a beetle anyway, just one from BMW not VW.

I spent lunch at work and another half hour at home creating the above avatar for the Mini like I’ve done for our past vehicles for use in online forums and as the avatar for Fuelly. To the right the Sonata is gone and the Mini has joined the Miata in the sidebar. Right now it shows zeroes for the Ladybug as we have yet to fill it up because they topped off the tank before giving us the keys. It will be the second fill up before data gets entered because I don’t know if the trip odo was reset when the dealer gassed it up.

Purple Whale Harpooned

by the Japanese whaling ship Nissan with a German spear made in in Great Britain…

Guess I won’t be submitting the What Car Should You Buy form after all.

We had our eyes on a Mini in Spartanburg and had planned on going up there on Saturday to test drive it. It is a 2012 Cooper Base in Spice Orange for eleven and a half thousand bucks. It has the dual panel sunroof, which really interested us, and had less than 40 thousand miles on it. The only thing that worried us was that it had been on their lot for over 2 years. Why hadn’t somebody bought it already? Then I searched for Minis for sale using different words, adding Augusta to the mix, and found one for sale at Nissan of Augusta (I’d link to the listing, but they already pulled it off the web), one-forth the distance away.

We were going right near there, to go to Cars & Coffee, so after looking around at the lines of Mustangs and stanced imports for a few minutes we drove 1/4 mile further down the road and test drove that Mini. It didn’t have the sun roof we liked and it was couple thousand more than the one in Spartanburg, but it was right there and it was basically brand new, as it only had 16 thousand miles on the odometer. We both liked it. It was smaller then the Sonata, a half a foot narrower and nearly 4 feet shorter, but it rode like the bigger car.

We left there and drove a couple more miles down the road to the VW dealer to test drive a new Beetle. Donna’s first car was a Beetle and we both sort of liked the looks of the new one, so we wanted to drive one of them to see if it could get on the short list of possible Sonata replacements. Short answer no. It was shorter than the Sonata, but almost as wide and Donna spent the whole short test drive scootched up in the seat trying to judge where the front of the car was.

After the Beetle disappointment, we came back to Aiken to go to the Chocolate Festival at St. Mary’s Church to eat lunch, shop for used books and eat several bucks worth of chocolate desserts. By that time we finished, it was too late to drive to Spartanburg to test drive that Mini before the dealer closed, so we went home.

At first we thought maybe we would wait until next Saturday to drive a hundred miles to see if we wanted the big sun roof and the orange color, but then thought, we’d wait, drive up there, not think the sunroof was worth it, hate the color, come back to Augusta and find that the Mini would have been sold on Friday. We stripped all our personal items from the Sonata, grabbed the title and went over to Augusta.

The Mini interior had changed slightly, here is a 2003 picture and here is a 2013 picture. Not really a radial change, so the big change must have been with us. We are still not sold on the big dinner plate sized speedometer in the center of the dash (there is a digital speedo in the bottom of the tach which is front and center), so maybe after a while it won’t bother us.