3000 Mile diagnosis!

So I think it's safe to say that I've been out of the game for a while- "lying dormant" if you will. While this may be the case, fear not as the mass of MINI related knowledge I obsessivly crammed into my head between 2002 and 2004 has not gone stale. As a matter of fact it proved quite useful just the other day...*wavy flashback transition*

Last Sunday afternoon my brother called me from Washington DC where his car was stuck half way between being parallel parked and half way jutting out into oncoming traffic. He told me that he was in the middle of parking his 2002 MINI Cooper S when his shifter went limp (how embarrassing!) I told him that he probably fell victim to a fairly well documented problem that plagued the early model coopers- where the shift cables had a habit of popping off mid shift- thus leaving the car stranded in the last gear selected (in this case 3rd).

Here is a picture of the cables in question (from when I installed my short shift)



He said he was going to have the car towed to the nearest gas station. I told him that he might be better off going the extra mile and getting it towed to the nearest dealer- because I thought the issue was a recall issue and if the previous owner didn't get it taken care of he might be covered by default.

He found a dealer 20 miles away, which fell within his free tow range, dropped the car off with a detailed note (it was Sunday so they were closed) and waited for the phone to ring the next day.

When they called on Monday they informed him that "his" hunch was correct and the cables had popped off. They also informed him that the recall had been completed earlier but the retaining clip that was installed looked a bit worn. They re-attached the cables and said the only sure fix was to replace them (for about $350) but that he could drive the car home that day and think about it as it wasn't really an urgent fix. They charged him $120 for labor and also informed him that one of his exhaust hangars was broken. He bought a replacement hangar for $53 bucks and plans to install it himself.

He thanked me for the diagnosis as well as the suggestion to go to the dealer instead of the local mechanic.

So that's that- diagnostic prowess still intact after all these years.

BTW- my MINI is running like a top and will be all paid for by the beginning of the summer.

My new focus, since I just bought my first house is setting up a killer garage- it will be organized, neat, carpeted and not full of gardening crap and bicycles like my neighbors. So far so good- I setup my workbench and tools last weekend and installed trick overhead lighting. I also hung some mini related swag that I gathered over the years including my race photos and 1st place autocross trophy :). My wife calls it the "man cave" - I can live with that.