The Independent American Magazine for all Mini Owners
Issue link: http://mc2.epubxp.com/i/33537
Y by Barry Brazier photos by Peter D, DuPre & Barry Brazier es, MC2’s Project Clubman is nearing the end. After two years of driving and customizing our 2008 Clubman S, we are ready to say that her days of being the main MC2 project car are coming to a close. (Yes, she’s a girl, but as of yet, a girl without a name.) When we took delivery of our project car, the Clubman had about 4,000 miles on the odometer: early life was tough on our girl being that she started life in the Clubman debut demonstration fleet, and then moved to the Los Angeles press fleet, where we collected her a few days before AMVIV5. Although her early life as a press demo may have been a little rough, we’ve only had a minor niggle or two in the way of problems, such as the adjustment to the Club Door that Seattle MINI showed us a trick for. As with some early production Clubmans, the inside chrome pull wasn’t actuating the door lock. The easy five-minute fix is the tiny spring inside the door alongside the little black latch that shows at the door’s bottom. Ask your dealer about it if you’ve had a few problems opening the Club Door, as it’s a free fix says Seattle MINI. Crankcase Crud There is, however, a major concern with every turbo MINI that’s no longer on the horizon. The fact is, it’s a nationwide worry that we’ve been watching for months, and all MINI dealers are paying attention to it. We know this as we’ve been talking with many service personnel. It’s a matter of the oil and fuel, water and mileage and fuel quality of which we speak. As we all know, the MINI turbocharger generates very high temperatures during operation. In some climates, such as like the southwest US, you can get a first-degree burn 36 MC2 Magazine www.mc2magazine.com on your hand if you rest it on the right side of the hood scoop during summer heat. It’s simple: the Castrol (we believe it’s Syntec) oil will not go the 10,000-15,000 miles that MINI wants it to. During this past summer we had information given us that MINI USA could likely reduce the oil/filter change intervals to below 10,000 miles with three changes during the 3/36 Maintenance Policy, as opposed to the two oil/filter change interval policy presently used by the factory. The other factor in the oil problem is a combination of the ethanol in our gasoline, and wet operating environments. It is paramount that we all use what the factory says in regard to high-quality gas and the octane. Using warehouse-quality gasoline, gas from tanks of an aged service station and other matters where fuel quality is suspect or could contain water at the bottom of the tank leads to oil contamination. Add to this, our talks with MINI dealers around the country have found that some testing of fuels has shown an ethanol content above 20 percent. Ethanol, water and long service intervals in wet or hot service leads to muck in your engine’s crankcase, deposits on your inlet valves, and a shorter life for your engine. Obviously, this is a serious issue that we’ll get more deeply into in re-launching our GoMotoring website and the next issue of MC2 that mails in February 2011. Meanwhile, back to our regular programming… Recent Installs While at the MITM/MTTS events this past summer, we had Mike from Aesthetic Creations (Phoenix, AZ) install our multi-national roof flag and one-off MC2 Project Clubman AC M l t ho ou e j 2 P r gh nt C eaarr, i c i nt i g t h ie l s s t enl o d or f f i t u s l i a f t o v e a i r s tN e M I h . e I Long Live Clubman!