Minitopia
August 1st, 2008, 01:16 AM
The year is 1984 I believe. Mini East meets West in Denver Colorado. Spent two days traveling from San Diego to Denver and the next day we made a trip as a group of Minis to the highest auto road in America, Mt Evans (over 14000 ft straight up). My mini has never had the best brakes being it was one of the first 20k that came off the line. No one wanted me to follow them up because I was having trouble stopping so I led the way of about 100 cars. Not the brightest idea in the world to go 14k feet up the side of a mountain with very limited braking power. It was warm at the base of the mountain but by the time we got close to the top snow covered it and the roads got real bad. The plows had piled up snow in the corners of the switchbacks and all was well for awhile. Getting a bit too confident I got going a little too fast in one of the switchbacks and thank the Lord for the pile of snow that caught me from driving off the side of the mountain. I stuffed my Mini up to the windshield in the snow bank. Poor guy that went up with me about put his feet through the floorboards thinking he was applying brakes and pulling up on the emergency brake which we had to fight for. Got to the top eventually and a couple guys tried to help bleed off whatever air was keeping my car from stopping. It really didnt help much, but after having to pull the car out of the snow a couple guys decided to go in front of me on the way down just in case I needed their car to help me stop, now that shows how good Mini owners really are lending their back bumper! On the way down, there were billy goats, lots of them that would come off the mountain above you, run across the road and down the side of the mountain, you could stop and look over the side and it was like a 70 degree angle, almost straight down, no guard rails. Mind you I had painted my car fire engine red with a light gold metal flake in the paint so it was bright and shiny, about a mile down the mountain my two lead cars got ahead of me a hundred yards or so and a full grown stag ram with a full rack got between us coming out of nowhere forcing me to stop, there was no driving around him the road is only one lane and he was standing sideways. I eased closer and he walked up between the mountain and my car, literally I could have reached out the window and touched him, he did not look impressed and looked like he wanted to clear the road, he actually put his head down like he was going to butt his head into the driver door, his power could have pushed me right off the road, of did I mention the guy that rode up with me was now in another car:) I put the car in gear and eliminated my new ram freinds desires to flick me off the mountain. After that we did make it off the mountain. That is just one of the several stories I have of that trip. David Vizard the author of How to Modify Your Mini and Tunning the A-Series Engine hardback gave me an autographed copy of his new book free because of all my Mini adventures in Denver.
NOTE: when you are driving a Mini at night with no windows in the doors and a blanket around your neck to keep warm at night, do not keep the blanket around your neck when you get out to check under the bonnet. I leaned over the engine with this cloth around my neck and it got caught in the fan and started wrapping itself around it pulling me in, I grabbed it with both arms around it and pulled upwards sharply. This freed me but pulled the fan back the opposite direction and snapped the fan belt, well it was overheating to start with and now it was just on the verge of total distruction. Same trip, differnet incident and day. Got my window channels at the meet and installed them, went to bed that night, woke up uncovered my Mini to find out that someone had taken a baseball bat to my windshield, glass everywhere! Unreal! A Mini owner in Denver had a new windscreen in his garage and sold it to me for the price of a new one, installed the new one, got most of the glass up out of the interior and proceeded to enjoy the rest of the meet. It was quite the trip!
NOTE: when you are driving a Mini at night with no windows in the doors and a blanket around your neck to keep warm at night, do not keep the blanket around your neck when you get out to check under the bonnet. I leaned over the engine with this cloth around my neck and it got caught in the fan and started wrapping itself around it pulling me in, I grabbed it with both arms around it and pulled upwards sharply. This freed me but pulled the fan back the opposite direction and snapped the fan belt, well it was overheating to start with and now it was just on the verge of total distruction. Same trip, differnet incident and day. Got my window channels at the meet and installed them, went to bed that night, woke up uncovered my Mini to find out that someone had taken a baseball bat to my windshield, glass everywhere! Unreal! A Mini owner in Denver had a new windscreen in his garage and sold it to me for the price of a new one, installed the new one, got most of the glass up out of the interior and proceeded to enjoy the rest of the meet. It was quite the trip!