Hi all,

After owning a decripid but extremely fun 998cc Mini a few years ago and
since then a string of souless modern cars I'm thinking of checking out a
nice X reg (2000) Cooper Sport.

How are the late Minis for rust protection? Whats so special about the 500?
(Apart from looking lovely ;-P )

Cheers,

Damian

they rust, probably more so than early ones,

Steve.

"Damo" <damian-arstall@FORTHELOVEOFGODLOVENO!!clara.co.uk> wrote

Ahhh crap!

"Steve68s" <steve68(remove)@btinternet.com> wrote

Nothing a few days with waxoil cant sort out if you find a good one,

Steve.

"Damo" <damian-arstall@FORTHELOVEOFGODLOVENO!!clara.co.uk> wrote

On Sat, 1 Oct 2005 16:05:47 +0100, "Damo"
<damian-arstall@FORTHELOVEOFGODLOVENO!!clara.co.uk> wrote:

As someone who owns one of the later cars, my advice would be to avoid
them. The workforce were so demoralised by the running down of the
company by BMW that the cars are very poorly screwed together and the
rustproofing was patchy, to say the least. My '97 car has already had
the sills patched twice and now needs attention to the area below the
headlights - as do most of them. I've also had the usual batch of
build quality-related problems with the electrics..... including, most
recently, fuses blowing due to chafed wiring on poorly located parts
of the loom. I've also had to replace the throttle body to cure an air
leak which was causing an MoT emissions failure.

Tuning options are limited as well because of the injection, ecu and
cat. You are much better off with an earlier carburettor car in this
respect. On the other hand, the cars do cruise well on the motorways -
85 to 90 mph all day - which is great if you do long motorway
journeys. Avoid the sportspack cars, though. Apart from looking
ill-proportioned on their over-size wheels, they are also slower and
don't handle as well.

Seriously, if you have a few thousand pounds to spend on a decent
Mini, you're best bet is to get a specialist to build up a car for you
around a decent shell and a pre-cat identity. Then you can choose
you're perfect spec and have all the rust-proofing you want.

Regards, David Betts
davidb (AT) minilist (DOT) org
The Mini Gallery:
http://www.ofoto.com/I.jsp?m=64635537103&n=1366070334

only bad thing with minis is rust, look at this pic, rust from the inside
out on the roof, rust will always appear in the most unexpected places,


http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/2...icoxide1xw.jpg


Steve.


"David Betts" <davidb (AT) minilist (DOT) org> wrote