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Meet "Graham" - early Mini R56 Cooper 5 years 1 month ago #54089

One of my 2nd cousins visited after Xmas, this is their 2001 Cooper, one of the last ones built. It's been a daily driver since new & TBH I don't know how much more life it's got left in it - maybe a couple of years of increasing patching, but it's really got to the point it needs a full restoration, which will be completely uneconomic :(

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Meet "Graham" - early Mini R56 Cooper 4 years 9 months ago #55530

My first attempt at vinyl wrapping - satin birdseye maple on the two hard dash trim parts:

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Last edit: by Jonny Retro.

Meet "Graham" - early Mini R56 Cooper 4 years 9 months ago #55531

Also had a go at the mirror caps - after the passenger side took a bit of a knock I wanted to make it a bit more visible ... I got a used pair off eBay, and hoping that BMW's use of water based paint extended to the mirror caps, I gave them a light rubbing down, primed with Hycote White Plastic Primer, then rubbed down again..

The first colour coat (Hycote Fiat Golden Yellow) went on fine, but near the end of the 2nd coat, one of the caps got hit by what I thought was a kamikaze greenfly. After leaving it 48hrs turned out to be a very small flower petal held on by the merest touch, so came off really easily.

Colour coat 3 went on, then a couple of coats of clear. I went a bit too far on one & got a large sag :( I left it for a week before rubbing out. TBH I'm happy with the standard I achieved, but I'm unconvinced by the overall look now.







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Meet "Graham" - early Mini R56 Cooper 4 years 9 months ago #55532

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Meet "Graham" - early Mini R56 Cooper 4 years 9 months ago #55533

Amazing work on your cooper Jonny. Congrats.

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Meet "Graham" - early Mini R56 Cooper 2 years 9 months ago #66923

The R50 is no more, fixing problems early / doing basic fluid checks are not "a thing" on that side of the family :(


My R56 (despite having the "chocolate" N12 engine :whistle:) continues to be fine, although it had been overdue a clean for a while ... those silly wheels get dirty really quickly, but  the amount of cobwebs, dust & leaves accumulating were beginning to get embarrassing.

I did the wheels this morning & had planned to do the rest properly - but piecemeal - over the next few days. It went from overcast to quite bright sunshine between starting to get stuff out & starting work, so TBH I did a pretty half-assed job - chucked some Mer polish in the bucket along with the shampoo, wash, rinse, (artificial chamois) leather off. 

I think I got away with it due to there still being a lot of wax/coating on it from doing it properly the time. It must have been a while, apparently from before the false Spring this year, if the squash ball sized abandoned wasp nest in my stack of buckets was anything to go by :blink:

I put it on the bird table - something must have thought it had some nutritional or nest building value as it went quickly :)  






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