January 4, 2007:

GPMINI ready for winter

(if it ever comes!)

It seemed a bit silly having heated washer jets and snow tires installed on GPMINI today, with sun and 55 degrees! But supposedly it’s winter in New England so …

The heated washer jet retrofit (p/n 61 66 0 029 716) for some reason isn’t available from MINI USA - so I got it from MikeyTheMINI. Installation is quite easy - the jets are replaced, a wiring harness is added under the hood and wired back through the firewall to the fusebox in the driver footwell …

The more important job was fitting snow tires to GPMINI - there’s no 18″ snow tires available, so I needed new wheels too. Initially I was going to use the 17″ S-lites but I just don’t like their look! So I paid extra to get 17″ bullet-spoke wheels … a much nicer look for GPMINI :)

(the tires are Pirelli Winter 240 SnowSport 205/45R17 84V)

I bought MINI tire totes to keep the original wheels / tires nice:

The four of them only just fit in the back of the GP:

So now we’ll see if it ever gets cold / snowy … but really I won’t mind too much if these snow tires get no use ;)

(more pics in the Gallery)

Posted by GBMINI at 08:29 pm | GBMINI#4 (GPMINI), Purchases
Comments: 7 (post new comment)

  1. George (2007/01/04 @ 8:35 pm)

    Ian, wheels look great. nice to know all four tires fit in the back of the GP.

  2. lavardera (2007/01/04 @ 11:09 pm)

    those are my favorite factory 17s

  3. Joe (2007/01/05 @ 5:33 am)

    I see you got Gary to work on your car….

  4. Tim (2007/01/05 @ 5:43 am)

    Great choice in 17’s! The car does look strange with such “bright” wheels. Miles better than S-Lites, though.

  5. blalor (2007/01/05 @ 8:29 am)

    Yeah, I really like those wheels. Did you buy them new or used from MoP? New brakes this spring (hopefully) are going to dictate new wheels on Scrat.

  6. GBMINI (2007/01/05 @ 8:43 am)

    Joe,
    Both Gary & Bob were injured - so they worked together!

    Brian,
    I bought them new. the 17″ S-lites I debated were “take-offs” and much less pricey - but I paid extra for the looks :)

  7. Josh Wardell (2007/01/05 @ 11:59 pm)

    I agree…the bullets look much better than S-lites. But they still look huge to me!

    I have tire totes as well and love them…but I didn’t know there was a mini branded version!

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