Legro's car thread - Racing Mini and another thing with the letters IIMN on the bonnet

[Legro]

Between the last update and the last weekend, the engine has been finished and the car has even seen some action around the Ahvenisto Circuit, although with terrible success partially due to appalling suspension set up, partially due to engine producing less power than it should for various reasons, and partially due to partially due to clutch problem which ultimately prevented me from using the 1st and 3rd gear. Not a good thing in a car with 4-speed gearbox with ratios that require constant use of the 3rd gear.

Anyway, on last Thursday most of the mentioned was fixed, at least to a certain extend. The clutch worked, the engine was less underpowered, and the front suspension had been set up more properly. In the evening everything was ready, and on Friday morning at 05:00 we were already on our way to Motopark Raceway which is located near Virtasalmi.

Friday practise went well, but not necessarily well enough. Something with the suspension set up went terribly wrong, after I accidentally hopped over a curb in the last chicane of the track, and the engine sounded like there was something wrong with one of the pistons, and the performance wasn't exactly perfect, but when the head was taken off, nothing unusual showed up, so there really was no other options than keep going. Despite setting up the front suspension on Friday, the actual cause for the suspension problem was found after qualifying on Saturday, though, turned out that the left rear wheel had rubbed the wheel arch to an extend, and made the car harder to control. What that really caused, was that my qualifying result was pretty bad, and that I'd have to start from way further back than what I hoped for, especially as the car was still slower that what it should be on straights.

The first start didn't go great, but that was mostly due to me not having enough speed to overtake, I managed to improve my lap time though, so I did get a better start position for the next start.

On Sunday things started to look better. In warm up, to which the ignition timing was slightly changed the engine started to work considerably better, and the strange sound it had made earlier had also disappeared. And at the start of the second start, I managed to overtake a couple of other cars, and had gotten myself up to 16th from 20th at the end of the first lap. But then the car started to lose power, and according to people watching at the race from the pit area, had a massive cloud of blue smoke coming out of the exhaust. The oil-pressure gauge didn't drop, but eventually it got so bad that I had to stop on the side of a long straight, which effectively ended the race for my part.

The reliability really doesn't seem like one of the car's great qualities.

Spoiler

I don't know, maybe an estate Corolla doesn't sound like such a bad thing after all.

 

[Legro]

In-car video.

 

[Legro]

Just a short thread bump to remind everyone of its existence.

The race weekend the picture was taken however isn't something remind-worthy. If you happen to be a regular on the Infield and remember the post, which had a picture of it with the engine in quite a few pieces, you probably already know why, but for those of you who aren't or don't I'm just going to say it didn't last very long without breaking.

Anyway, there's a more current car related (this time it's a road car ) news I'm hoping to be able to share here soon...

 

[Legro]

Anyway, there's more current car related (this time it's a road car ) news I'm hoping to be able to share here soon...

Perhaps slightly late on this one but here's the car I was talking about.

And as you can see the theme hasn't changed too much. It's still an unreliable red British front-wheel-drive 4 cylinder car with the letters IIMN on the bonnet. However much newer larger and heavier at that.

I personally probably would have preferred the light blue colour on it. In fact if it wasn't previously owned by a family member I probably wouldn't have chosen one of the BMW made MINIs in the first place but it should get me from A to B nicely enough.

 

[Legro]

3 Months (or just about) in. The car has served the purpose of bus replacement relatively well for a MINI of this age up for most of this time. There was a couple of warning lights a while back, but according to a diagnosis computer, the issues weren't more serious than some sensor errors in the exhaust due to the 'sports' exhaust system, which was added by the
previous owner, and the lack of "steering-angle calibration".

It wouldn't really be an interesting post without a 'but' though, I guess. A couple of days ago I noticed that the brakes didn't feel exactly how they're supposed to, and after a short inspection it turned out that a considerable amount of brake fluid has disappeared. As I'm typing this I'm not exactly sure, which bit of the brake fluid system has a leak, but I'm quite sure there is one.