First oil change for Arturito

Ok well this isn't really the first oil change but it's the first oil change done by me. According to the records, the oil was changed before it was sold to me but since I have no idea what oil is in there, I really wanted to get this oil change so this was a bit overdue for me to get my hands oily.

New oil filter in

New oil

It's a bit more fiddly that my other cars since there's a separate drain for the oil filter housing. Other than that though it was pretty much a breeze. 

Noting torque settings for the future:

Oil drain bolt - 25Nm (17mm bolt)

Oil filter drain screw - 5Nm (T50 Torx) also, accidentally pushed too hard with my ratchet and stripped the plastic teeth in the new drain screw so I'll have to pull the whole housing out first next time I do this and extract it with something else.

Oil filter cover - 25Nm 

Maintenance Update:

Mileage: 71,479

- 5L Liquimoly 0W-20 (supposed to take 5.5 quarts. Will drive the car around to get warm so the computer can measure the actual level before I add more)

- New Hengst oil filter

- New oil filter drain screw

- New oil drain copper washer

- New rubber oil drain gasket

Changing Spark Plugs on the Mini

Anytime I get a "new to me" vehicle, I'll typically change the spark plugs no matter what the mileage is so I know exactly when it was last replaced. I'm fairly certain the plugs on the Mini were changed on schedule so I didn't feel the need to immediately do it but I still wanted to get it done so I know exactly what I'm starting with and what's in there.

E8 torx socket needed to remove the coils

You need an 8mm (E8) Torx socket. Unlike the GTi, getting the coils off was nice and easy and you didn't have to worry about having the rubber part get stuck in there if you didn't get the car a little warm before attempting to remove them. 

Coils removed

You also need a special 14mm thin wall 12-point spar plug socket to get the spark plugs out.

Old spark plugs look alright

The plugs need to be torqued it down to 23Nm +/- 3Nm and the bolt for the coils is 8Nm.  

Maintenance Update:

Mileage: 71,436

- 4 New Beru 12120040551 spark plugs

NYST Fail

I was super excited about running with S2K Takeover again at NYST. The weather was going to be perfect, sunny low 70s (though a bit chilly in the 40s in the morning) and we were going to run both the uptown and downtown configuration in open track. 

NYST 9/1/2023

I got about 3 laps in when the car suddenly went into limp mode. I'd seen this before when my oil pressure sensor failed but that wasn't the case this time as all the readings on the car were fine except AFR. I got the car back into paddock shut it off and it started up normally and I was able to drive around just fine. I double checked everything. I wasn't leaking any fluids, coil packs looked fine, I tapped the map sensor in case the plunger was stuck and decided to give it another session. I took a cautious first lap and the car was feeling fine so I gave it the beans one lap and it was running strong then I went to pass someone on the first straight and it happened again. 

I decided it wasn't worth pushing the car until I knew exactly what was wrong so I packed it up and drove home hoping I wouldn't have any issues enroute. It drove perfectly fine the whole way (around 130 miles) so I knew there wasn't anything catastrophically wrong with the car. After letting the car cool and giving her a wash, I got her on the lift since I was suspecting a clogged or broken cat might be the issue. I was looking at the cat and the honeycombs looked fine and shining a light through it indicated no clogging. 

Toasty connector

I then noticed that the connector for the wideband o2 sensor going to the Haltech looked burnt. The bracket holding the wire had become loose causing the connector to dangle closer to the cat. I suspected that under load when I'm cornering hard this extra play may have caused this connector to get too close to the cat causing it to heat excessively.

Possible root cause

To fix this issue, I relocated the bracket a little bit so that the natural angle of the connector would be flush up against the body. I then added some additional zip ties on the cables so that it wouldn't shift around too much. Now there's several inches between the connector and the cat.

Clearance to connector

I forgot to bring my laptop with the Haltech software to the track so I finally hooked it up to read any codes tripped. Turns out the limp mode was triggered by the oil pressure sender so I grabbed the data log from the racepak dash. 

I could see a momentary reading of 10psi at 7700rpm. It was 65psi just before and 70psi after so I'm suspecting these are transient bad values and not actual oil pressure issues especially since this triggered on a straight. My engine protection is set to go into limp when it reads below 172kPa (around 25psi) at 50% throttle above 3000rpm. I changed this now to only trigger at 60kPa (around 8psi) for the same conditions to avoid tripping this under transient readings.