Racing Green 89 Mini

[MiniDave]

Long day today.....spent most of it working on Dave Long's Sprite racecar.....but before we could do that I had to move the Innocenti off the rack, and before I could do that I had to move the hot rod out from in front of the garage door, and before I could do THAT I had to jump start my blue Mini that had sat all week with the code reader plugged in and killed the battery.

Plus the battery on the Inno was dead too!

So we jockeyed cars all around and got the race car on the rack at last.....we got a ton of work done on it including rebuilding the exhaust, fixing a bad lever shock, lubing the suspension bushings (you have to take them out and schmear some silicone lube on them), fixing some electrical connections, drilling a new bonnet for pin latches, setting the front toe in and a bunch of other small stuff.

After having both the Inno and my blue MINI on battery chargers most of the day, the good news - both cars started like normal! Yay!

So all my cars now start and run (except the hot rod of course, and it sorta does  ) the race car started and drove well too and he's pretty confident that it will be ready for his first race of the season at Eagles Canyon, TX in late April.

Long day, and my back is done!

Tomorrow I'm going to drive the green car to breakfast with the Age and Treachery Racing boys, then Sunday Don and I are doing a pretty good run out into the country to see if our cars are ready for the 300 mile trip next Sunday.

Spring driving season is here at last!

[MiniDave]

I can confirm the EL12 flasher unit works with the later style turn signals when using LED bulbs, it flashes slower than the regular unit does, but not so slow as to not be functional.

So, I now have all LED lights - head, brake, reverse and turn signals. I need to see if I can find some LED dash bulbs that fit these later style sockets, that would help a bunch I bet. Again, it's not that big of a deal as I don't drive at night that much.

It's going to rain tomorrow and Monday, so we cancelled our country drive on sunday.....might try and do it on Tues if it dries out enough

[MiniDave]

Our weather cleared up so I took the green Mini for about a 40 mile run to make sure it's ready for this weekend's 300 mile run to Springfield and home. Before I took off I added a bottle of Heet and filled the tank with fresh non-alcohol premium gas. It ran well so I'm looking forward to our run Sunday.....

[MiniDave]

Yesterday was our semi-whenever Tour de donut", where we drive all over the state hitting various mom and pop owned donut shops and tour the back roads, usually in Missouri cause the roads aren't a grid pattern like Kansas! The weather was sunny and high 60's to low 70's - perfect for a classic. There were three of us , Seth in his Mini-Sport themed '91, Don in his "69" Pup and me in my Racing Green, plus about 20-23 new MINIs. The only negative to the weather was it was fucking windy! I don't know what the numbers were but it was blowing us little cars all over the roads, both on the trip down and back! I was exhausted - the combination of having to wrestle the steering wheel constantly, the wind noise (windows were down, as it was warm) and the roar from the engine was tiring, even with good ear plugs in. Plus being on the throttle all the way killed my knee.

Our final destination was the new Buc-EEs in Springfield.....I had never been to one of these and it def lived up to it's reputation - not only is it huge and crammed full of all sorts of ....well, crap!....and it was super busy - think of Costco on opening day or something. Since there are about 150 pumps it wasn't too hard to get to one to fill up, and bonus! they had a couple of pumps that sold ethanol free gas. One of the local Springfield Mini members (you can just see his silver MPI in some of the pics) said it's interesting how they price their gas.....during the day when the local Costco and Sams are open they match their price, when those stores close at 8 pm, they raise the prices!

My trip was close to 400 miles total and the Racing Green ran perfectly as did Don's pup. Seth's car was not quite so lucky - it would cut out suddenly and he'd pull over only to have it fire back up. He decided it was loose connections at the coil so we cleaned and tightened the wire connectors, after that he said it only quit one more time before he made it home. I'm thinking a new coil might be a good spare for him to carry on long trips. His engine is like mine in that it runs a points-less distributor.

Some pics from along the way, the mouse is the mascot for the Osceola Cheese factory shops.

[94touring]

I remember his car ran like crap when he had it here.  A timing issue or something back then.

[MPlayle]

I thought MPIs used a coil-pack arrangement and no distributor of any kind.  I know the SPI used the "pointless" distributor.

One of my more recent SPI Minis had an issue of dying occasionally and it turned out to be the vacuum elbow at the ECU was split - causing the ECU to misread and stall out.  I replaced all the elbows and the car ran fine thereafter.

[MiniDave]

Yes, you have it right - Seth's car is '91, carbureted.

[BruceK]

Wait. You visited a Buc-ees and you didn't mention the gigantic clean restrooms? Or the barbecue station? Or the 75 linear feet of soda fountains?  :)

You do get some points for acknowledging the 100+ gas pumps though...  :)

I had no idea the pump prices changed throughout the day. The thing that frustrates me is there are no squeegees at the gas pumps to clean your windshield. I guess they want you to not waste that time on your windshield when you could be in the store buying merchandise!

[MiniDave]

I was overwhelmed!

The place was newly opened and absolutely crammed with people dying to spend their money in there. Don tried the BBQ sandwich and pronounced it "cafeteria" quality. I didn't get into the bathrooms to see how many stalls I could hit.

I did gas up (ethanol free!) but I had stuff to clean my own windshield, so I didn't look for the squeegee.

No question.......it was an "experience"!