How To Install A Magnaflow Muffler On A Mini Cooper S
POSTED AT 05:01 PM

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Ever see The Italian Job? Well if you have, you may know that Mini Coopers pack a big punch in a little package.  Here’s some instructions and tips for installing a Magnaflow Exhaust System to increase your Mini’s sound and performance.


1.    Your Magnaflow exhaust package comes with three pieces—a resonator, center pipe, and muffler section.  The front resonator comes with a mounting flange that bolts right onto your stock catalytic converter. This part connects to a center pipe that is secured with exhaust clamps, which are supplied.  And the rear muffler section joins together, exiting the car in the center of the rear bumper.  Also, all the parts are stainless steel, which don’t rust or stain—nice job Magnaflow.

2.    Now to the installation.  You will only need a few common tools to remove your stock exhaust; no exhaust cutters are needed.  Make sure you have help installing the system, it is very heavy and you will not want to drop it.

3.    First, you will remove the factory skid plate/ heat shield from the chassis, which can be down with a socket wrench.  Important—Do Not lose this piece as it will be re-installed after you install your new exhaust system.

4.    Now follow the factory exhaust up towards the catalytic converter.  You will now need to remove the mid exhaust mounting bracket from the chassis as well using a socket.  Make sure you slip the exhaust hangers out of the rubber mounting brushings.  Set this piece aside with your head shield as you will be reusing it also.

5.    Now find the flange on the catalytic converter.  It will have two bolts that you will need to remove.  Be careful in this process because your whole exhaust system is only supported by two rear hangers on the muffler.  This is where it will be handy to have a helping hand.  Have your buddy hold up the front section of the system, otherwise it will crash to the ground.

6.    You can now go to the back of the car and free the factory exhaust by removing the hangers from the rubber bushings.  Congratulations, your factory exhaust has now been removed. You are one step closer to hearing your car’s new growl.

7.    If you have gotten the factory exhaust off, you are pretty much in the clear.  You will install your Magnaflow system in the reverse order of taking the old one off.  You can start by matching up the resonator section with the flange to the flange on the catalytic converter and bolting them together.  They slip the connecting pipe into the resonator pipe and clamp it down with the supplied clamp.  This piece also connects to the factory chassis mount you removed earlier.  Be sure to secure the hangers into the rubber bushings.

8.    One more step.  Connect the muffler section to the connecting pipe.  The best way to do this is to slip the exhaust hangers on the muffler into the hanging rubber bushing first, then swing the rear section up and fit it into the connecting pipe.  Then all that’s left to do is tighten down the supplied clamp.  I would recommend making sure all your connections are tight and you muffler tips exit your bumper straight.  Oh yea, and don’t forget to re-install that skid plate/heat shield.

9.    You have just installed your Magnaflow exhaust system.  Turn the car and make sure you don’t have any exhaust leaks.  If everything is good, then you’re golden.  Enjoy your Mini’s new throaty growl and boost in horsepower.  Keep working on your Mini folks!


Upgrading your Muffler to a Magnaflow exhaust is just one modification that can increase your car’s performance. There exists a plethora of parts that will pick up your car’s pace. Just remember, avoid those speeding tickets. –Mike Rosania

My Mom Took Me Bra Shopping!
POSTED AT 05:10 PM

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Ringing sleigh bells and fresh evergreen smells...and for most people, this means hell.  It's that time of year again and you know what that means- spending time with loved ones, drinking eggnog, and most importantly—shopping!  I can’t wait!



My family’s schedule during Christmas usually consists of sitting in traffic on the way to the mall, standing in lines, and fighting with mobs of disgruntled shoppers in efforts to purchase that “perfect” present.  I know, I love it too!  Unfortunately, my generation has been cursed with the gift of the internet and we do our shopping from a computer at home.  We always get the shaft.

It’s hard to explain, but I have this extraordinary talent for finding that perfect gift.  I guess it all started when I was born.  I was too young to remember, but my parents love telling the story.  They were in college—studying, learning, probably protesting something—when my mom went to the doctor and found out she was pregnant.  You wouldn’t believe how surprised my dad was when she told him!  She gave him such a great gift—me!  He responded with something like, “Oh perfect!”  and “This is just what we need right now.”  Anyway, I guess my talent comes from the fact that I was the perfect gift.

But enough about me, let’s get back to Christmas.  A new baseball hat and jersey for my younger brother—Timmy really loves those Yankees.  A year’s subscription to National Geographic for my sister Suzy—maybe she would find a boyfriend if her nose wasn’t always buried in a book.  A gift certificate for a massage for Mom—I think her back’s been hurting her from carrying all that laundry. And for my dad (drum roll please)—a bra!  Ok, ok, I know what you’re thinking – “He’s so crazy!” – But hear me out.

My dad likes cars. Actually, scratch that.  My dad LOVES cars.  My mom is always saying that his Corvette is his mistress and he would sleep with it too if the bed were big enough.  He takes it to car shows, rally meet-ups, and the track.  But last time I was driving with him, we turned onto a street that was under construction and he almost had a heart attack.  Now let me tell you, the second he started rolling down the street and those pebbles started splashing up onto his front end, he started letting out words that I hadn’t heard since that time I tried to see if his new laptop floated – it didn’t.

I shared the gift idea with my Mom and she thought it was swell.  And as much as I wanted to spend time in lines, traffic, and crowded stores, my mom thought we should check out car bras online first.  It turned out that we found an awesome automotive accessory site that had a huge selection of car bras, free shipping, and great customer service to answer all of our questions.  Man, this internet is taking all the fun out of holiday shopping.

 

In the end, bra shopping with my mom went pretty well. We ended up going with the LeBra, which my dad loved, but we also found an excellent assortment of other Covercraft car bras. - Mike Rosania

Avoid Negotiating With Car Salesman By Purchasing Aftermarket Dash Kits And Accessories
POSTED AT 06:24 PM

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Buying a new car should be a fun, exciting experience.  You shouldn’t feel pressured or confused.  But the reality is that you will most likely have a sleazy salesman breathing down your neck and bombarding you with questions.  I prefer buying accessories aftermarket so I don’t have to deal with car dealerships’ outrageous prices.



I recently bought a 2006 Honda Accord LX and I love it.  It’s a great car; 244 hp, 26.1 mpg, climate control.  The Accord is a lot of car for the money. I consider myself a car guy and I hated car shopping. I thought the process would be fun; test driving cars, searching for accessories, finding the perfect car.  It was hell. I detested dealing with deceitful salesmen.  It’s like they force you to play their game; bargaining back and forth until one of you gives in.  Also, the closest Honda dealership to me was horrible.  I ended up having to drive an extra 45 minutes to visit another dealership.  The first salesman tried to rip me off by inflating the prices of accessories, so I refused to give them my business.

When I went to the first dealership and I should have known right away that it wasn’t a kosher operation.  As I walked into the building, I overheard a girl and her mother arguing with a salesman about the car they recently purchased.  I don’t know exactly what happened, but from what I heard, the girl bought a certified pre-owned Civic and when she tried to insure it, the insurance company told her that the car had been in an accident; a fact that the dealership failed to mention.  Before I could catch the rest of the conversation, a salesman approached me and directed me to his desk, conveniently located across the showroom.  As we sat down, he started bombarding me with questions and before I know it, I was sitting in an Accord, cruising down the highway.  It drove great, better than the Toyota Camry and Nissan Sentra.  His tactic worked.  He got me in the car and I fell in love with it.  I knew I wanted it, so I should just buy it, right?  Wrong. He wouldn’t tell me how much the car was.  First we had to talk about different models, what options I wanted, and which colors they could get.  After I expressed my heart’s desires, he went to “talk” to his manager.  What?  Why wasn’t I just dealing with the manager then?  Anyway, he first came back with a ridiculously high price.  “I’m sorry, that’s way out of my price range,” I said and started to get up to leave, but he wouldn’t let me.  He kept asking me how much I wanted to spend.  But when I told him, he would say, “Let me see what I can do,” and never matched what I wanted to spend.  It turned out that every option I wanted would be cleverly embedded into a few extra dollars in my monthly payment, which would then turn into hundreds of dollars over time.  I eventually got fed up with their sale’s approach, stood up and left; with them chasing after me.  The following weekend I went to another dealership and found a much better experience.  They asked if I wanted help, but left me alone when I told them I just wanted to walk around.  They then sat down and showed me my options and the exact breakdown of every option I wanted.  They were honest and that is why they got my business.

 

 

I guess honesty is the best policy. Be careful when dealerships try to add in extra charges for accessories like Dash kits. You can always just buy Dash covers or other accessories after you purchase the car—and usually at a better price. This way you can avoid getting ripped off from creative pricing schemes.- Tim Saunier

When hoonage gets hairy, you’d better have a Warn Winch or a Ramsey Winch on hand
POSTED AT 09:04 PM

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If you’re practicing to become a bona fide amateur stunt hoon, you’d better bring the right equipment along. Before our maiden hooning trip, my crew and I thought that all our bases were covered with some batting helmets, plenty of duct tape, and an ice chest of tall boys. We learned the hard way that having a Warn Winch or a Ramsey Winch is also essential. Here’s what happened.


Me and the boys live down here in Wausau, Florida. Never heard of Wausau? It’s a drowsy little town of 400, famously known throughout the Panhandle as the Possum Capital of the World. As you may have guessed, living in an area whose claim to fame is its level of varmint infestation means that there’s not much to do. We’ve got a couple of arcade games down at the laundromat, but even Galaga loses its charm after two decades. So we have to be a little inventive in order to kill our time. For a while, we wanted to start up our own Jackass troupe, but that fell apart after Dwayne lost a couple of digits in a stunt we called “Midnight Alligator Cowboy.” That was a hard blow to our morale, and a bunch of the guys wanted to slink back to the laundromat where they felt safe and comfortable around the dull glow of Millipede. But that was before we discovered hooning.

One night, Jesse was surfing around on the internet trying to find some articles about the new Camaro. He stumbled across this hilarious blog called Jalopnik, which has a ton of video posts of hoons. If you’re not familiar with that term, a hoon is an amateur automotive daredevil driven to test the limits of his vehicle. A proper hoon is skilled in the arts of dirt-road donuts, windshield surfing, and, most importantly, jumping. After watching a ton of movies, the boys and I knew that we had found our true calling.

The first step on the road to hoonage fame and fortune was to get a car. Our means were limited, so we went down to Dale’s junk yard and drove home in a limping 1989 Merkur Scorpio. Aside from the missing passenger-side door, busted-out taillights, and a rust spot on the roof that looked like that smear on Gorbachev’s head, the engine ran strong enough for our needs. The only extra prep work we had to do was fill up the radiator a bit, smash out the glass to protect against cuts, and paint a big ZoSo logo onto the hood because Zeppelin rules.

Now, there are plenty of hoon-related videos floating around out there in the internet soup, so we wanted to pull a huge stunt that would really make a splash—something that would make us go down in the annals of hoon history. After racking our brains, we came up with something completely original: a 15-foot jump over a stretch of swamp…in reverse! It took a couple of days to build up the dirt ramp, but we all knew it was worth the work.

When the big hooning day arrived, we showed up with what we figured was all the equipment we’d need: some batting-cage helmets for the driver and passengers, a couple rolls of duct tape for any Merkur maintenance, and a cooler of liquid courage. Not wanting to blow our proverbial load too quickly, we started off filming with a couple of donuts and plowing into some newspaper stands that we found on the swamp bank. Once we were all warmed up, it was time for the grand finale. I was manning the camera, and Elrod was at the helm. Starting about 60 yards out, he must have been gotten that Scorpio up to 40 before hitting the ramp. Unfortunately, he didn’t make it much farther than 5 or 6 feet, and fell like a led zeppelin into the sludge. Maybe it was the divine hand of Robert Plant smiting us down for infringing upon his almighty copyrights, or maybe it was that all the weight of the motor was at the rear and threw off the balance. Either way, things did not end up as planned.

We would have had to abandon our hoonmobile right there, but a couple of the boys had winches bolted to their rigs. Jerry’s was a Warn Winch, and Ramsey, of course, had a Ramsey Winch. They rock-paper-scissored for the job, which took a while because both kept throwing up rocks. In the end, Jerry had to reel us back to shore, and we towed the Merkur back home for some repairs. We still can’t get that old dog to start up, but we’ll be back on the scene soon enough with our beater, our camera, and our boredom-induced, self-destructive hijinks…and a winch.

Not sure that I can recommend hooning but I can give a "thumbs-up" to the winches we used: Warn Winch and Ramsey Winch. I swear they could uproot a tree, I know they can un-stick a Merkur. - David S. Brooks

Stay Cool with Cold Air Intakes
POSTED AT 08:07 PM

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Wanna know the easy way to get to the top? You gotta stay cool. This goes for your demeanor, your attitude, your look and most importantly, your automobile’s engine. The best way to squeeze extra power from your engine and propel yourself to the head of the cool class is to install a performance cold air intake system.


It’s not as easy as it looks to stay as cool as I am. I mean, following the fashion trends alone is like running on a hamster’s wheel. You gotta know the right people, read the right magazines and have the right friends on your My Space account. Staying abreast of the coolest restaurants, nightspots and after-hours clubs can seem like full-time job. But, when staying cool is what you do, it’s worth the cost.

Luckily, I’ve found one way to stay cool that happens to be way off the hipster radar. I’m talking about a performance cold air intake kit for your vehicle. I mean these things make your engine cool, literally. Now, a cold air intake may not be a great fashion statement or get you across the velvet rope, but they are very cool.

By sucking in great gulps of cool, fresh air, a performance cold air intake system delivers a cool boost of power to your engine. The systems open up the passage to your throttle body which makes a cool sound when you romp on it. Plus, you’ll feel the extra power sucking you into your seat while burning rubber out of your night spot’s parking lot. The local movers and shakers will certainly take notice when you roll by, looking hip and sucking in all that cool air.

It may not be your scene, but gear heads and car guys love performance cold air intakes. In their world, popping your ride’s hood to reveal a polished or anodized intake tube is about as cool as it gets. You can roll down to your town’s Wal Mart parking lot, or wherever the local hot-rod haunt happens to be and get all kinds of accolades and thumbs up from these guys. Now, that’s not saying much as far as hipster clout goes, but motorheads are pretty cool, none the less.

The coolest thing about a performance cold air intake system is the fuel savings. Now, I know it may not be cool to talk about saving money, but it is cool, way cool—in a green sort of way—to save gas. You know, Al Gore and all those celebs yakking on and on about global warming. Since your engine will be running so much more efficiently with the cold air system, it uses less gas—simple. Now you can take that gas money you saved and drop it on some overpriced drinks for the Goth chick you’ve been eyeballing at the Danceteria.

There you are; a few cool tips from the coolest guy you know. The best way to keep your engine running top notch and looking cool is with a performance cold air intake system. As far as keeping yourself cool, log onto my My Space page and check out my entire list of “How to be Cool” tips. Stay cool, dudes.



Cool, cold air intake systems are made for most vehicles on the road, especially later model vehicles. The list of intake brands is a long one, but a good place to start is with K&N, Volant and the coolest brand of ‘em all, the Airaid intake system.