I was lucky to have a father who believed that his daughters should know how to work on their own cars. The first thing he taught me after I got my license was how to change my oil. Then my distributor cap, then my air filter, my CV joint, my radiator, alternator, etc, etc. It was this tutelage that gave me the confidence to change my own radiator (on a different car) in the parking lot of Advanced Auto on Western in a skirt and high heels. Wish I had a photo of that, it must have been comical.
Unlucky for me, my MINI has recently gone out of warranty so all my maintenance and repairs will either cost me an arm and a leg or will be done by myself. About a month ago, I had my final appointment with the MINI dealership whilst under warranty. They gave me a clean bill of health and told me my brakes needed to be flushed and the cabin air filter needed to be changed and that it would cost almost $400 to do both of those things. I decided it was time I learned how to flush brakes.
This is probably the least helpful owners manual ever. For instance, if you were by chance changing your own oil and you wanted to see how many quarts of oil to put back in your car. If you go to the owners manual, instead of telling you how many quarts the car needs, it says "We recommend servicing your MINI at a MINI dealership" or some crap like that. Ridiculous. Thank god for Google and our societies obsession for sharing information online (yes that was meant to be hypocritical).
Brake bleeding is pretty simple. You match the fluid type, dump a bunch in the reservoir, have one person at the caliper loosening the bolt and one person in the car stomping the brakes. You're essentially using the brake system to flush the old fluid out. It takes a while, but it's simple. We did discover when taking my wheels off that the MINI dealership had severely stripped one of my lugs. We'll be taking it back to MINI for them to fix that this week.
Yay, me bleeding the fluid. All gross looking and what not.
We decided to go ahead and do an oil change while we were at it. This vehicles oil change interval is 20k miles. The engineers at MINI were on something when they decided on that. We choose to ignore it and change my oil every 6-8k miles.
They were also on crack when they decided how to design the oil filter. It's in the most inconvenient spot. You have to remove the radiator reservoir just to get to it. Then it's all at some weird angle that you need this massive breaker bar to remove it. Oh and the cap is plastic so if you're really good, you'll strip the damn thing.
Lastly was the cabin air filter. That was the easiest to change but also the most uncomfortable.
This is great for the back. I felt awesome after this.
Regardless of all my complaining, I'm damn glad I can work on my car. It allows me to have a giggle when a guy tells me he doesn't know how to change his oil or tires or add radiator fluid. Maybe that's mean of me but if they can laugh at me for my shortcomings of the woman stereotype I can laugh at them for their lack of the male stereotype. But in the end, taking care of ones own vehicles is very domesticated...
Awesomely domesticated.
Liz DiNatale
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