New Battery for the Mini

The Mini is now 5 years old so I was expecting the battery to start going bad soon. Well it seems the cold weather has started to finally reveal its impending doom by borderline being unable to start in freezing temperatures so I wanted to get ahead of it and replace it before it truly dies. 

Original BMW is finally dying

Removing it is a bit fiddly with a few panels that need to get taken out for clearance but I'm glad it's not really as bad as some videos made it out to be where they even removed the intake. I'm not sure if it's because I have the Eventuri intake but after I removed the front panel, it was easy enough to slide up and out.

New Duralast Platinum AGM battery installed

I replaced it with an equal capacity Duralast Platinum AGM battery then used Bimmerlink to register the new battery with the system so it knows it's new. 

Maintenance Update:

Mileage: 78,416

- New Duralast Platinum H7-AGM 80Ah 850CCA

New Antigravity ATX-30-HD for Bumblestook

The battery in Bumblestook is about 5 years old now and while the battery still seems ok, I didn't really want to risk having it die on me at a track day so I picked up a new Antigravity ATX-30-HD battery to replace the existing ATX-30-HD.

Maintenance Update:

Mileage: 67,235

- New ATX-30-HD battery

Pre-Winter Cayman Maintenance

Weather is getting colder and starting to see salt on the roads to it's time think about packing up the cars for the winter. In preparation, time to get the old oil out of the Cayman and put in the fresh stuff.

Maintenance Update:

Mileage: 53,870

- 8.5 quarts Driven DT-40
- NAPA gold filter

Jeep Oil Change

Just noting maintenance done on the Jeep.

Maintenance Update:

Mileage: 80,982

- New mopar oil filter

- 6qt Castrol Edge 5W-20

Weird battery drain on the 911

For the past few months I noticed something odd, every now and then I'd have the 911 on my CTEK charger but it'd throw an error that the battery wasn't holding charge. I figured that my battery was just dying but it's really only been 3 years. Still after the battery just wouldn't charge anymore, I bought a brand new battery and noticed the same thing was happening. I decided to check for any draw on the battery while the car was off and key out of the ignition and it measured 370mA. That's way too high especially for an "old car" with barely any electronics.

370mA of draw

I unplugged every fuse and relay from the car and nothing changed. This was bizarre. I eventually gave up and took it to Lee's Autowerks so he could get to the bottom of it. He eventually found the source of the problem but it wasn't the usual suspects. For whatever reason, the ignition switch had become faulty and the contacts terminal 30 and terminal X was closed (on) all the time. You can see in this video comparing it to the a new ignition switch (later installed in the car) that those contacts should be normally open.

Faulty ignition switch (left) vs new normally working one (right)

With the new ignition switch install and key out of the car, you the draw is now only 35mA which is well within the 100mA max static draw noted in the service manual. Big thanks to Lee for getting this all sorted so I don't have to worry about the battery just dying on me if it's not on a tender all the time.

35mA static draw with the new ignition switch

Maintenance Update:

Mileage: 173,397

- New ignition switch

Oil Change for the Mini

It's been about a year now since the last oil change. We've only logged about 6K miles on the car since then. I'd normally change the oil at around the 5K mark but I think this is fine. Oil level has been rock solid. Haven't had to top it off or anything like that. 

Maintenance Update:

Mileage: 77,141

- 5L Liquimoly 0W-20
- New Mahle oil filter
- New oil filter housing (messed up the plastic drain screw last time so replaced the whole thing with a new housing this time)
- New oil drain copper washer
- New rubber oil drain gasket

Suspension Noise and Caster Fixes on the S2000

Once the S2000 starts to generate heat around the suspension, it started to having this clunking knocking sound at low speed like driving around a parking lot. It wouldn't do this at high speed (or at least I couldn't hear it) and it didn't seem to affect performance but it was really annoying me. I resolved to fix this. First, the rear lower control arm spherical bushing had to go. It had started to wear and had a mm or so of play in it causing that knocking sound. This bushing doesn't really need to be a spherical so I opted to have it replaced with Hardrace hard rubber bushings instead. This is still going to provide good feel while improving NVH.

Hardrace hard rubber rear lower control arm bushings

worn out sphericals

The second fix was to allow the springs to rotate more freely as the suspension compressed and unloaded. This is achived by adding Swift thrust sheets between the spring and the perches so that it can glide freely and not bind.

Swift thrust sheets

Finally, I wanted to fix the relatively low caster we were measuring on the car ever since I went with sphericals. S2000s should easily achieve over 5 degrees of caster and I was maxing out at around 3.4. The front control arms were removed and the spherical adjusted over to make the control arm sit at the appropriate angle and now over 5 degrees of caster is easily achievable. 

Control arm spherical adjusted

New alignment looking great

Car drives amazing again with no more clunking sounds in the rear at low speed.

Maintenance Update:

Mileage: 67,150

- New Hardrace hard rubber rear lower control arm bushing (part no 7423)

- Swift thrust sheets on rear coilovers

- Reposition front control arm spherical bushings

- New alignment