What did you do to your MINI today?

Want to make the chrome waist trim line black. Was thinking of Plasti Dip Glossy. Any other suggestions? Not forking out 900 dollars for a new Mini trim. Yes, that's what it costs in India.

 

I think we will do this on the car. The chrome is driving my wife nuts

 

I did the vinyl tape. It's still on after almost 2 years. My plastidip on the grill and light rings is starting to wear through, though.

 

I heard that it's not easy to apply? I'm not a particularly patient person.

 

My good friend owns a custom paint shop and I gave him some creative freedom and this is what came back..
Gold carbon fiber hydrographic that fades to black toward the back. Then gold leaf on the Mini and plug logo followed by some gold metal flake and clear coated, hand sanded and polished.
Shame it’s under the hood but it will stand out when I do open it..

 

I forgot which vendor I bought from, but I might have screwed it up in the beginning, cut some more and started again. Finished w/o redoing any other portions. One thing I remember is that you have to cut the tape at a diagonal to match some of the starting/ending trim sections. Also, better to ensure that the tape is covering the top of the beltline vs. the bottom (if you veer up/down too much), b/c the chrome will be more visible at the top vs. the bottom. Mine isn't perfect, but I'm not OCD, so I don't notice.

 

I don’t know what part of USA you are living but in NY.last summer I was taking that cover of in August/ September bc 100’ F .temperature and once i measure temperature under that cover I have readings 123’ F .during slow stop and go driving .I’m sure people from NV. AZ.or TX. CA .experience much higher temperatures than 100’F. With beautiful job your friend did will be not so good if this start curling and piling of.and your hood is black too.

 

Not mine, but my wifes. Got the mirror caps painted yellow. Yet to get the stubby antenna and the yellow valve caps.

 

I looked at it wistfully wishing that the weather was warmer so I could drive it.

 

Our latest video is up!

 

I've never seen anything like that Couche-Tard 200 kW Freewire Boost Charger. The 160 kWh internal battery pack provides DCFC without requiring a huge connection to the grid. Very interesting--thanks for showing that in your video, even though you didn't need to top-up at that point.

The Freewire website specifies their Boost Charger pulls up to 27 kW of 3-phase 208/400 V, or split-phase 240 V, to charge the internal battery pack. Of course, that internal battery pack can provide the advertised 200 kW for only a limited period of time. I wonder how many kW can it dispense after the battery is exhausted and how long it takes to recharge the internal battery when the charger is idle?

Battery-supplemented EVSEs are what I expect well-heeled EV owners will someday install to provide DCFC at home. It would make sense to use the same battery for both DCFC and emergency home-power back-up.

 

When the Freewire battery is exhausted, the charge rate is reduced to about 17kW. This can happen quite frequently along high traffic corridors. As for battery recharging, it would take roughly 11 hours to fully recharge 0-100% SoC.

 

A couple of Holiday Stationstores near me are putting in chargers, and Holiday is now owned by Alimentation Couche-Tard so I wonder if they'll be similar. I never go to convenience stores anymore but I'll have to swing by one to see if the chargers are in yet.

 

Seems Couche Tard is ABB Terra 184 as the back bone of the network followed by the Freewire and they are testing Alpitronic

 

I got to drive my SE, that's what I did to (with) it today.

(40 miles on the interstate at 70 mph in 45 deg weather and still got 3.9 mi/kWh.)

 

I recently used an ABB DCFC charger and it seems okay, but it rebooted on me during charging. Didn't interrupt the charging but messed up the backend accounting, which lost track of my charge session.

 

I actually did this a couple weeks ago to see how it works, but I charged my SE with my F-150 Lightning as a power source. EVSE in use is a J+ Booster 2. It worked great, with the Lighting power output of 5.8 kW: 240 V/24 A (30 A outlet).