A Mini Story: Linus, my 2007 R56 Mini Cooper S Linus is my first real car. I've never truly had my own car until now. In high school and college, my parents always let me drive one of the "family cars" which was one of the Camrys. I had one in college and when I moved to Louisiana, they gave me a 1999 black Toyota Camry to take with me. My Camry was a very good, reliable car but nothing fancy or showy by any means. When it came time to start looking into possibly getting a new car, I wanted something that would be the complete opposite of the Camrys I've been driving all my life! We were on a budget of course (otherwise Ferraris and Maseratis would definitely have been considered LOL) and wanted to stay in the $20,000 to $30,000 price range. That gave me a LOT of options. I knew I wanted something sporty but unique. Mustangs, Miatas, BMW 3-series, 350Zs, Acura RSXs, Infinity G35s etc. are very common around here and while all are nice, none of them really screamed out at me. Then one day, we were driving around in Baton Rouge when I said, hey, isn't the Mini dealership here? Want to go look at Minis? And everything was down hill from there! I don't know what it was that inspired me to think of Minis. I always liked them but never seriously looked at them. I remember checking them out online shortly after I watched The Italian Job (as I'm sure thousands of others did the same!). For some reason though, I always assumed that Minis were out of my price range. Boy were we pleasantly surprised when we arrived at the dealership! We went to Brian Harris Mini in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. There were several Mini Coopers in the $20,000 to $23,000 price range with the S being in the $23,000 to $26,000+ price range. Our Motoring Advisor (MA) took us for a test drive in a regular Cooper because that's what we thought we were interested in at first. The test drive was AWESOME! Both my husband, Sean, and I were pleasantly surprised by how well this little car handled and how much "pep" it had. That was it - we were HOOKED! Looking back on it, I'm not sure how I made it out of there without purchasing a car right then! I think I can attribute it to the fact that we didn't know hardly anything about the car. We took a few brochures and vowed to return...which we did...three days later! LOL! The dealership didn't have any cars with all the features I wanted and as much as I HATE to wait for anything, we decided it would be best to custom order the car. I had a very hard time deciding what color to go with. Sean liked British Racing Green or Dark Silver but he is generally much more conservative than I am! I was drawn to Mellow Yellow or some sort of blue. I had ALWAYS wanted a blue car and when it came down to it, we decided to go with Laser Blue with a black roof. It was a tough choice which I went back and forth on between satisfaction and possible regret during the weeks to follow while I was waiting for my baby. We were VERY lucky with the date we placed the order on and our MA said the timing should work out just right where we would be looking at picking up the car in as little as 4 to 6 weeks time. The order went in on September 20, 2007 and here's what we decided to go with: Cooper S Laser Blue metallic Grey/Carbon Black Leatherette Convenience Package Cold Weather Package (I LOVE heated seats!) Hyper Sport Package Premium Package Automatic Transmission 16" Allow Wheels - Bridge Spoke Roof and Mirror Caps in black Pacific Blue Color Line Xenon Headlights And then the wait began! I must have called 1-800-ASK-MINI at least once a day and checked online numerous times a day. I don't know how we did it but we only called our MA to check on things maybe twice throughout the entire build process. The car was scheduled for production on 9/22/07. By 9/30/07 it was at the port awaiting transport. On 10/10/07 the car was finally en route and scheduled to come off the ship on 10/18/07. On 10/21/07 it was at the Vehicle Distribuation Center (VDC) and we were at the dealership on 10/24/07 picking my baby up! WHOOHOO! 10/24/07 - Coming Home! Here we are picking the car up! I don't know about other Mini dealerships, but Brian Harris Mini in Baton Rouge is a top notch dealership. EVERYONE (not just our MA's) was incredibly friendly and the entire atmosphere at the dealership was great! I would definitely recommend this dealership to anyone looking for a quality vehicle (Mini or not!) and excellent customer service! A BIG THANKS again to Hedrick Wood and Matt Lindsey! The MA's went over a bunch of different things with us about our new car and it was hard to stop smiling the whole time! All the paper signing went off without a hitch - even the finance manager at Brian Harris was super friendly and didn't try to sneak anything in or switch anything up on us at all! When we first went in to order my mini, we asked about pricing. We already knew that many dealerships are firm on the MSRP prices and don't really offer any discounts. When we asked our MA, we were pretty much told the same thing, HOWEVER instead of just saying, well, sorry but it's MSRP end of story, Hedrick offered us $500 worth of free accessories!! We were very happy with this and he gave us the accessory booklet to look through. We had until the car arrived at the dealership to decide what accessories we wanted. I always liked the carbon fiber (CF) look so I decided to get the JCW CF mirror caps, hood scoop, and boot handle. 10/25/07 - Let the Mods Begin! The ONE good thing about having to wait for a custom order Mini was that I was able to think about and look into exactly what sort of mods I wanted to do to for the You-nification process! We didn't upgrade the wheels through the factory because I wanted to put some aftermarket wheels on. The main color theme for the car was going to be Laser Blue, Black and Carbon Fiber. The three-tone color scheme on cars is supposedly very popular right now. We decided on a set of 18" Oz Ultraleggera wheels with Yokohama S-drive tires (205/40 R 18 - non run flats) from The Tire Rack. I had a hard time convincing Sean to let me go with 18" wheels because he was worried about rubbing. I read a bunch of different threads on North American Motoring (NAM - the HQ for mini forum discussions) and it seemed like most everyone running 18" wheels had no problem. My plan is to black out all the chrome so we also bought a beltline black out kit from OutMotoring. Lastly, we removed the amber lenses from the headlights giving me completely white/clear headlights. I found a great thread about this on NAM a while ago that tells you how to remove the lens. 10/26/07 - Intake, Lowering, and a new Rear Sway Bar We ordered a few things from Alta Mini Performance that came in today. We got an Alta intake which was a very easy install to do and now you can hear a cool blow-off sound when driving. I also wanted to lower the car to go with the new wheels. After some debate and questions, we decided to go with a set of H&R Springs which lowered the car 1.4". We also changed out the factory rear sway bar and replaced it with Alta's 19mm bar. Notice the visibly smaller wheel gap after we lowered the car when compared to the photos above. 10/31/07 - Blacked Out Headlight and Tail Light Rings To continue blacking out all the chrome, I started working with Lyle from Vinyl Styles. Lyle is a great guy and very easy to work with! He's great on communication, offers very competitive prices, and has a great product. Best of all, he offers a core fee/refund where he will charge you a core fee and if you return your chrome pieces within a certain time period, he'll refund you the core fee! That's perfect for me because I really didn't want to drive around with no headlight or tail light rings while getting mine wrapped. Anyways, Lyle did a great job on these and I couldn't be happier with the quality and the way they look! I've got a few other projects for Lyle to work on. 11/1/07 to 11/2/07 - Audio: Let's Get This Baby Bangin'! When we were ordering our Mini, we were offered the choice of the Audio package for $1,500 which would upgrade the system to 10 speakers as well as a lifetime Sirius subscription. While the Sirius was tempting, the additional speakers weren't so we decided to pass on the Audio Package. However, we did want to upgrade the audio and since Sean used to be into working on car audio stuff, he wanted to do it himself. After visiting Car Audio Connection, one of the local car audio stores a friend of ours owns, we decided to go with the Diamond Audio line products based on cost, features, quality, warranty, etc. Here's what we ended up going with: Diamond Audio D3 500.4 - 500 watt four-channel amplifier Diamond Audio D3 series 6 1/2 inch separates Diamond Audio D3 series 6 inch co-axials Diamond Audio D3 series 10 inch subwoofer There's a perfect spot for the amp under the front passenger seat because I don't have DSC (otherwise the DSC would go in that spot). With the styrofoam insert (used to fill the hole where the DSC goes) removed there was ample room for the 4 channel amp with all connections. The 6 1/2" midrange was an easy fit to the OEM 5 1/4" location. As for the tweeter, Sean made a mounting plate out of 1/4" black expanded PVC that was identical to the shape of the OEM 3 1/2" midrange so that the tweeter assembly fit perfectly in place of the original midrange. Since we didn't get the Audio Package upgrade, I had 6 speakers in my car. For the rear OEM 6"x9" locations, Sean made another mounting plate out of the PVC sheet that he then mounted the 6" co-axials to. It worked out perfectly! I'm sure someone is wondering what the deal was with Sean using a 4 channel amp to power a front stage, rear fill and subwoofer. Well that was another part of the decision for the Diamond Audio products. The crossovers that come with the Diamond D3 separate set have "RAF" or "rear acoustical fill" outputs on them. So you have your amp powering the crossovers as a front channel but the crossovers actually supply signal to the front and rear speakers, limiting the rear speakers just right so that the front stage sound is correct and is not overpowered by the rear stage. This uses just 2 channels or the "Front" channels on the 4 channel amp. The subwoofer is powered by bridging the "Rear" channels of the amp giving sound to 5 "channels" while only requiring four. Best of all... no need for a separate bass remote to turn the subwoofer up or down because the head unit acts as this remote. Need less bass? Use the OEM radio and dial the fader to the "front" of the car! Need more bass? Dial towards the rear. He set the perfectly center fader for the best sound and if it needs adjusting it can be done from the factory head unit. And that took care of the speakers! To Be Continued... 11/5/07 - Alta Catback Exhaust We had ordered the Alta Catback Exhaust from Alta Mini Performance and were waiting for it to come in. It finally did over the weekend and we had a few spare hours today so we decided to go ahead and install it! This was not a hard installation but did take a couple of hours. It was tough to get under the car but Alta's instructions were great and very easy to follow! Afterwards, we washed the car and drove out by the lake front for a couple of photos at dusk. 11/7/07 - A New Wing, Clean Boot, and MORE Blue! I got my JCW Carbon Fiber wing today - YEA! I had been waiting for this one for a while! This was a no brainer installation that just utilized the same screws and holes that the original factory wing used - no drilling, gluing or anything like that! I'm thinking of customizing the wing. I may have the silver parts painted. I was thinking of possible having the two silver areas in the middle of the wing painted black and the two silver wing tips painted Laser Blue to match the body color of the car. I also decided to debadge the boot. I had read a thread on NAM about this and liked it so I decided to do the same! It wasn't hard to do but I wouldn't say it was easy either because I had to use up quite a bit of floss removing the badging (my floss kept breaking). After some coaxing though, they all came off and I used some Goo-Gone to clean up the area and TA-DA - a clean and shiny boot! Lastly, my blue LED interior replacement bulbs that I ordered from FastMini.net finally came. That was also a very simple swap. Now my inside is super cool blue and it REALLY shows up at night! We changed out all the bulbs except for the two maplights up front. We decided to leave those with regular lighting so that if we needed to really see something in the dark, we could. I only have one very poor photo of the blue LEDs but I'll try to take some more later. 11/15/07 to 11/16/07 - Finishing up the Audio: The Sub Today, Sean picked back up on the audio upgrade to finally finish it. He started working on the sub box using MDF and fiberglass to build it. It sits in the boot and ends flush to the lip edge inside the boot. When the back seats are folded down, it's not completely flat, but it's close! Sean got the idea to do something kind of unique on the top of the sub box. Since the sub speaker is round (of course), he made a template in the shape of the MINI symbol and attached it to the top of the box with the speaker being the center circle. Then he took a piece of metal mesh, spray painted it black and then spray painted "MINI" in white on the center of it. This went over the speaker to protect it and once the felt was laid on top of everything, it made a subtle but very cool Mini emblem embossed on the top of the box covered by black trunk liner! There's even room on the side of the sub box for two storage units (one for my tool kit and the other for the boot cargo nets) and my Slime tucks perfectly against one of the sides. The Mini emblem doesn't show up very well in the photos. It's much more visible in person and I'll try to take some better pictures later on. But best of all is that now everything sounds GREAT! I also ordered a carbon fiber vinyl decal from Aesthetic Creations for the center consule. I really like the way this decal looks and it really is a very high quality piece. For anyone looking to have something different in the interior of their Mini, definitely check these out. They come in all sorts of different patterns/colors too! 11/20/07 - A Little More CF: Side Markers My side markers arrived from CooperGear.com today. I had ordered a set of regular Cooper side markers (since they look different than the S side markers) and had them sent to Blake at CooperGear. Blake applied his carbon fiber process to them to give them that carbon fiber look. He did a great job on them too! I had also ordered a set of door handles to be done but when I ordered them (this was before my car had been built), I had forgotten that I had gotten the comfort access package and therefore had the comfort access door handles. This meant that my door handles were different and I wouldn't be able to replace them with the regular handles. It was a shame too because the handles that Blake did for me came out looking great too. So, now I have an extra set of handles available for sale if anyone is interested! They'll look great on your car! 11/23/07 - Stop it GOOD! I've mulled this over for a while and finally convinced Sean to let me get a Big Brake Kit (BBK)! YEA! I don't race at all so this was mainly for aesthetic reasons (I can't think of a better reason anyways!). After looking around and doing some reading, we decided to go with a Wilwood kit. We contacted Todd at TCE Performance Products and asked him a few questions about the various different kits he offers. Todd is a super nice guy and was very helpful. We decided to go with his Plus 3 Kit for the front which included the following: Wilwood FSL calipers w/stainless steel pistons Steel mounting brackets TCE billet aluminum rotor hats 13.0" x .81" directional cast rotors Gas slotted and zinc plated BP-10 pads TCE spec stainless steel hose I definitely wanted the optional cross drilled rotor finish so I added that as well. For the rear, I went with the Rear Plus 1 Kit which included the following: Billet aluminum rotor hats (TCE style to match my front ones) 11.75" x .375" solid rotors Gas slotted and zinc plated TCE spec stainless steel hose kit All required hardward Since I had the fronts cross drilled, I had to get the rears cross drilled to match! What's great about this is that down the road, if I decide I want to upgrade the back with matching calipers, I can just get the Caliper Kit since I already have the rotors! The biggest dilemma for me was deciding what caliper color to go with. Todd offers a powder coat finish on the calipers in whatever color you want. At first, I was thinking of doing either red or black. Red because that's what traditional BBK's are but the problem with red is that it really didn't go with anything on Linus. The other option I was thinking of was, black to go with my color scheme but the problem with black is that my wheels are black and I was afraid they would just blend right into the wheel and wouldn't be noticeable which was what I didn't want. Some others suggested blue which I think would have been cool but I wasn't sure how much they would stand out. I had something with a bit more "pop" in mind and someone else suggested orange which I really liked the idea of! Orange wasn't traditional like red so not only would it be unique but it would really stand out against the black wheels and the blue body color. Plus blue and orange go pretty well together! After a lot of discussion (on NAM) and looking at the paint chip samples that Todd sent me, I decided to go with a metallic orange called Sparkle Orange. I was worried that I wouldn't like the way the orange looked but when they finally arrived, I LOVED them! Sean and I spent all day on the Friday after Thanksgiving upgrading the brakes (it was either that or going shopping and he picked brakes which was fine by me :-) We had never upgraded a brake system so it was definitely a new experience. After we finally got the new rotors and calipers on we had to bleed the brakes (which was easy) and then Sean took the car to bed the brakes in. They bedded in with no problems and feel GREAT now! Talk about stopping power! These brakes stop on a DIME and I absolutely LOVE the way they look on the car. I really couldn't be happier with everything! 12/6/07 - Custom Emblems Lyle has done it AGAIN! Today, my custom emblems arrived from Vinyl Styles. I can NOT say enough good things about this guy and the quality of his products! Lyle showed me some custom Mini emblems he had made for another customer and I wanted the same thing for Linus. He sent me some various vinyl samples of different shades of blue so that I could match it exactly to the Laser Blue color. There were a couple of very close options and after some consideration, we picked the one that we thought matched Laser Blue the closest and mailed the samples back to Lyle Let me just say, this Laser Blue vinyl matches the body color pretty much RIGHT ON! The emblems that Lyle did for me are just SICK looking and I absolutely LOVE them! THANKS AGAIN LYLE! P.S. As you can see in the photos, I'm waiting for the lower piece of my grill surround to come in from Lyle. The Hypersport body kit has a different bottom grill surround than the regular Minis and the JCW Aero kit so I had to mail mine in to Lyle to be wrapped. However, we've since then figured out the part number for that bottom piece so for any of you out there with the Hypersport body kit that want black or body colored grill surrounds, Lyle can do it for you! 12/7/07 - New Sub Box Photos I took some updated photos of the sub box today in direct sunglight so that you can really see the detail on the Mini emblem. Since the felt is black, it's really hard to capture the detail in photos unless the sun is shining directly on it and really lights it up. These photos came out pretty well! Notice that the sub box sits flush with the boot lip and when we fold the back seats down, it almost makes a completely flat surface. 12/13/07 - A Little MORE Blue: Painted Fenders (finally!) and Tinted Headlights My painted fenders FINALLY arrived today!! WOOHOO! I've been waiting on these since BEFORE I picked up Linus from the dealership! I came across a thread on NAM with some photos of a Mini with painted fenders with the Hypersport body kit and knew that I just HAD to get my fenders painted. I didn't know of any good body shops in the area that I specifically wanted to bring Linus to so I started asking around. However, one day, I saw another thread on NAM with a Mini that just got their painted fenders in from Way Motor Works. I decided to go ahead and preorder a set of fenders from Waylen in Laser Blue. I'm sure Waylen was overloaded with orders as painted fenders really do look HOT on a Mini! I am extremely happy with the quality of the paint job on these fenders. The color matches Linus' Laser Blue pretty much dead on. The fenders were sanded smooth and then primed, painted and clear coated. I think the painted fenders really complete the look I am going for. I love how the whole body just flows now! Also, I think it helps the wheels really stand out. In my opinion, Linus looks like a totally different Mini with his painted fenders! I also purchased a set of blue tint for my headlights. A NAMer pm'ed me about these blue tints for the headlights. I hadn't seen the blue ones before and really liked the look for them so I decided to go for it! These headlight tints originally came from Lamin-x. Now I've gotta get something for the fog lights too! Please excuse the dirt on Linus. I need to give him a bath but they're predicting rain today so I wanted to wait until that passed. 1/14/08 - The De-Chroming Process is COMPLETE: Carbon Fiber Door Handles, Side Markers, and Gas Cap Well, my carbon fiber door handles, gas cap, and side markers arrived from Aesthetic Creations and the de-chroming process on my Mini is finally complete! I absolutely love the new pieces that I got from Mike at AC! They are very high quality and match my JCW carbon fiber pieces EXACTLY! These are real carbon fiber pieces - the gas cap is a complete replacement, the chrome parts of the side markers just pop out and you replace them with the CF pieces, and the door handles are covers. I love that the door handle covers are easy to install (because I read that it's a real pain to change out the door handles), plus, I've got the comfort access door handles too so that would have been extra difficult if not impossible! Anyways, I'm still waiting on the bottom piece of my hypersport grill surround but that's in the mail now and my new wing which should also be arriving soon. 1/28/08 - The INFAMOUS Joey Mod : Painting the Headlights Well, we decided to give it a whirl and continue the black-out process into the headlights (Thanks to the push to go for it from Ghosthound on the NAM forum!)! This meant doing the "Joey Mod". I had read a few threads by other Mini owners who had done this mod and the results always looked awesome. I wanted to do it but Sean was weary of cracking open the set of $2,000 (or whatever they cost) headlights. After a bit more research and persuasion, I won out and he agreed to help me do it! While I was searching on NAM, I found a thread by another member who had an Electric Blue Mini and he painted his headlights black and EB. I wanted to do the same with mine so I ordered a can of Laser Blue spray paint from MinSpeed and got some semi-gloss black for the rest of the headlight unit. I must say that this mod is definitely very intimidating but that's really all it is! It's actually pretty easy to do and didn't take all that long! It only took us about a total of three hours to do both headlights including the time it took for the paint to dry between coats! I didn't want to put the headlights in the oven so we actually used a heat gun and a hair dryer at the same time to heat up the sealant. After only a couple of minutes of both of us heating it up, the two halves opened up very easily. We discovered that we did need some precision torx screwdrivers to remove one of the plastic parts from one of the chrome pieces and unfortunately, we didn't have the right tools. So my husband had to run off to the hardware store to get them. While he was gone, I started the disassembly of the second headlight myself and had the whole thing apart in only about 15 minutes! We took all the chrome pieces and really scuffed them up with steel wool so that the paint would adhere. We did about four coats of paint on the various pieces and then put everything back together. It all went back together with no problems at all and we just reheated the sealant to reattach the two halves. The sealant is extremely gummy and strong. I didn't get the chance to take any pictures of the process but I did take a few today of the results! I really love the look of them. It's kind of hard to see in the photos because of the reflectiveness of the plastic. I think they look a lot better in person. 2/3/08 UPDATE : It has been raining on and off here ever since we completed the Joey mod. In fact, last Thursday, it rained HARD, non-stop from about 2:30pm until about 6:30pm. I was at work during that time so the Mini was parked outside. It rained so hard that there was quite a bit of flooding all around. I've also driven my Mini through rain since the mod was done. I am very happy to report that there have been absolutely NO problems with the seal leaking and/or moisture getting inside the headlights! I think it's safe to say that they sealed up pretty well after the mod! 2/4/08 - The "Uber" Experience : A New Rear Spoiler I got my new wing a few days ago and since it was so nice today, I took the opportunity to give my Mini the wash he's been deserving! I know this wing style isn't everyone's cup of tea but I actually really dig it! The more I've been looking at it, the more I like it. I like the way it goes with the car giving it that little bit more aggressive look since it stands out more than the regular S wing. The wing is made by Palo Uber. I know there are a lot of people that don't like them and/or have problems/issues with their products but I took a chance and ordered from them after several email correspondences back and forth. I probably exchanged 8 to 10 emails with Geoffrey before I finally placed my order. He always emailed me back in a very timely manner (within 24 hours of my email) and thoroughly. He even helped me get the dealership where I got my JCW wing to accept the return (more about that later). The shipping was really fast, especially considering I placed my order around the holidays and communication was still great after the fact. I do have a slight problem with the wing though. The fiberglass corner on the boot roof section broke off during installation. I emailed them about this right away, not asking for anything but just expressing my disappointment and frustration about how easily the piece broke when we tried to install the rubber weatherstrip. They emailed me back right away and informed me that that should not have happened and it might be related to some sort of production defect so they are remaking that section and air freighting the replacement to me ASAP. SO, that's what I'm waiting for now. So far, I would have to honestly say that I am impressed with their customer service. Also, the quality of the carbon fiber wing blade is superb. I know there is quite a bit of anti-Palo Uber sentiments on various Mini forums and really don't want to get into any of those arguments/discussions. However, I just wanted to honestly record and relay/share my current experience with them. As for the JCW wing - I loved this wing...*sigh*. I really liked the design of the wing and the way it looked on the car and I was planning on having the silver tips painted either black or possibly Laser Blue. HOWEVER, the freakin' thing WHISTLED! The wing would emit a high-pitched whistling noise at any speed over about 50 mph! This car is my daily driver and I do a lot of interstate/highway driving at over 50 mph. The whistling noise was at such a high pitch that even the radio couldn't drown it out. We checked to make sure the noise was coming from the wing by test driving the car with the wing removed and sure enough - there was no whistling when there was no wing. I even emailed another NAM member with the JCW wing to ask if he noticed the same thing and he concurred. We thought about coming up with a mod to fix this and so we took black electrical tape and taped up all the grooves. There are these grooves where the seams meet and taping up all the grooves actually worked! I think, because of the shape of the wing, air was being pushed through these grooves when driving to cause the whistling noise. Taping up the grooves took care of the noise and you would only hear a slight whistling at speeds over 75 or 80 mph. I could have left it like that but I just felt that I shouldn't have to modify something that I spent $600 on! It just really irked me so I started looking for a replacement wing. I decided to go with the Palo Uber one instead and after a lot of emails back and forth with the dealership I got the JCW wing from (not the same dealership I purchased my Mini from BTW), they finally let me return it. I don't know if every single JCW wing does this but I know for sure that mine and one other NAM member's wing did. Anyways, I really like my new wing. I think it looks hot...silent and sexy :-) 2/18/08 - The BESTEST MA In All of Mini(!) : Orange Side Marker Lenses (FINALLY!) A NAM member had suggested a couple of months ago that I tint the side marker lens on my Mini because they're clear lenses that really stand out on the car since I blacked everything else out. That suggestion gave me the idea that maybe I could swap out the clear lenses for a set of orange ones to match the other couple of little bits of orange I have accenting the car (the brake calipers and front fender reflectors). SO, I looked online but couldn't find any retailer with orange side marker lenses for sale. I could buy clear ones but no one offered orange ones. I figured this was because no one really wanted the orange ones. So then I figured that if no one wants the orange ones, there must be a regular Cooper out there that wants a set of clear lenses that would be willing to trade me! That way, I could get my orange ones and the regular Cooper owner could save the $36 a new set cost online. It would be a win/win situation! After a few weeks of running a "want to trade" ad on NAM, I had NO interest at all in a swap! I couldn't believe it! I had about given up and was going to try purchasing a set of orange lenses through the dealership when I told my MA, Matt Lindsey, about the problem I was having. Matt said "Well, there's a regular Cooper right there. We could do that swap!" That was the last thing I expected to be offered from a dealership! Matt said he would check with the manager and make sure a swap was okay and to give him a call next week. When I called him, sure enough, everything was all set for us to make the trade! When we went to the dealership, Matt had a Pure Silver regular Cooper sitting there with nice, shiny ORANGE side marker lenses and we did the swap right then and there! It only took about five minutes to do and I love the results! So, if you ask me who the BEST MA is in all of Mini, my vote goes to Matt Lindsey! Thanks again Matt! Also, there's a smokin' Pure Silver Cooper for sale at Brian Harris MINI with a set of AWESOME clear side marker lenses already installed! 2/28/08 - Let's Go Inside : Carbon Fiber Dash and Custom Door Sills I'm running out of exterior mods to do so I figured the next best thing was to get started on the interior! I've got a few really cool things planned for the interior and here are just a couple of them. We purposely didn't get a special dash from MINI because I knew I wanted to customize it somehow. I like the Carbon Fiber look and wanted to go that route but had a hard time swallowing the high price of a OEM carbon fiber dash. One of my FAVORITE custom mod guys, Lyle from Vinyl Styles showed me a picture of a dash that he covered in carbon fiber. The material matched the CF center stack decal that I had previously purchased from Aesthetic Creations so I had to have it! I got the dash which is two pieces on the R56 (the piece behind the steering wheel and the piece where the secret compartment is) as well as the door pulls. It was a pretty easy install that didn't take very long at all and looks great for a fraction of the cost for the real CF dash. I'm very happy with the results! I also looked into ordering some custom door sills from Mike at Aesthetic Creations. After emailing back and forth with Mike, we were able to nail down exactly what I wanted for the door sills which was "COOPER" in metallic blue with "S" in orange all on a CF background. Mike hit the nail on the head with this one! I absolutely LOVE the way this looks and it fits in perfectly with the rest of the faux CF pieces on the interior. I think this is a very nice, high quality imitation carbon fiber decal that looks fantastic. It's actually a metallic decal so there is quite a bit of depth in it. Once again, BOTH these guys came through for me (like I ever had any doubt!). They are definitely two great guys in the industry! Thanks again Lyle and Mike! I also gave my Mini a well deserved bath today. It's been raining on and off so much here that it's been hard to find the opportunity for a good wash! 3/1/08 - More Performance Mods : Alta Stealth Front Mount Intercooler I was looking forward to getting this baby and now it's on! I've been eyeing Alta's FMIC for a while now but never pulled the trigger because I was waiting for the stealth one. When the stealth version became available, I didn't have any more excuses so we went ahead and got it! I LOVE it and can't wait to get my ECU so that I can fully take advantage of it along with my other performance mods! In the meantime, I'm really enjoying the new look. We did the install ourselves and it took about 3 to 3 1/2 hours. We decided to cut the grill and reattach the two side pieces so you can't see any of the metal around the IC. I didn't want to put the whole grill back on because then I wouldn't be able to see anything. Some members on the forum expressed concern for the FMIC without the grill for possible damage due to road debris. However, the FMIC from Alta is WAY more solid than the OEM intercooler. In fact, we accidently bent the OEM intercooler while we were removing it. That was how weak the OEM one is. This Alta FMIC is made from a bar and plate core. It is more efficient per square inch as well as more resistant to damage so in my opinion, if the FMIC was to get damaged, there would be some pretty nasty overall damage to my entire front end. 5/18/08 UPDATE : I've been running the car with the FMIC open like this for the past 2 1/2 months and have had absolutely no incidents at all! 3/2/08 - Back to the Interior : Carbon Fiber Gauge Faces We finally got the chance to put these on! I ordered a set of the custom carbon fiber gauge faces from Lyle at Vinyl Styles. I had him put Laser Blue around the numbers and I think it looks SWEET with the carbon fiber dash! The blue goes perfectly with the rest of the car and really helps the numbers stand out so you can easily read them. It was also pretty easy to do. Of course it helped that Sean had taken the entire dash apart before. He was actually able to install these without removing the entire housing from the dash. He was able to remove the clear fronts, install the gauge faces and replace the covers. I've still got more planned to be done so keep checking back for updates! NEXT UP: Interior Mods!