Purchases – Page 24 – M&I / GBMINI

Toggle Switch Re-labeling kit

Posted on April 21, 2006February 7, 2017 by Ian C.

A few people have seen this Toggle Switch Re-labeling kit, which was shipped to early MINI owners as part of the owners welcome kit. The idea is to have some fun re-labeling the toggle switches in your car – but these labels are no longer available from MINI USA (I can’t even find them on eBay!)
But now, MINI Pirate, an aftermarket MINI company, has designed their own similar re-label kit and is planning to sell a batch:

MINI Toggle Switch Re-labeling kit

MINI Pirate labels

Visit this MINI2 thread to learn more …

New tires for GBMINI#3

Posted on April 14, 2006February 7, 2017 by Ian C.

I finally decided this week to order new tires – swimming against the tide, I chose 205/55WR-16 Avon Tech M550 A/S tires.
I was swayed by the excellent ratings on TireRack across the board – traction in wet, dry and snow conditions all rate well, as does comfort; the tire is not available in 205/50 so I chose the 205/55 in the belief that there won’t be an issue – I can’t imagine a tire diameter about 0.3″ bigger than stock being a significant difference, and opinions on the NAM tire forum confirmed this.

The tires arrived today, so I headed down to MINI of Peabody to get them installed (an extra benefit of having MoP do the work – as well as my confidence in them – is that GBMINI#3 is once again clean!)

Minolta DSC

I took some old and new tire comparison shots, to see if the wheels were significantly bigger – and I really don’t see any cause for concern! Remember also I was going from an undersized tire (205/50 is smaller diameter than the stock 195/55); the change going from a stock runflat 195/55 to the 205/55 would be even less significant:

Front wheel comparison

Rear wheel comparison

Rear wheel comparison close-up

If you want to compare different wheel/tire sizes, a great website is the Wheel & Tyre Bible which has masses of information including a calculator that shows the 205/55R16 being 5mm radius more than the 195/55R16 (the Indycar team partly owned by David Letterman! Good luck Bryan – though I’m sure you won’t need it 🙂

Dwell Magazine

Posted on April 8, 2006February 7, 2017 by Ian C.

I learned about the latest issue of Dwell Magazine from the NAM collectibles thread, and picked up a couple of copies. There’s a two page spread called “Let’s Visit Five Wonders”:

Following this, the next twenty pages have a “strip advert” on the right hand side designed like a “flick cartoon” showing an SUV failing and then a MINI succeeding in parking! I scanned every page and edited them into an animated GIF file: