Back in the MINI

It’s been a couple of weeks but I am finally able to drive the MINI again, for the last couple of weeks I’ve been in the wife’s Camry. Driving home in traffic last night it was good to be able to put my foot down and get through the holdups, take the curves at ‘appropriate’ speeds, and most of all just feel the responsiveness of the engine. Not that there’s anything wrong with the Camry, and it was nice of Teri to make the ‘sacrifice’ of driving the MINI for a couple of weeks: I know she suffered terribly 🙂

Just over 48,000 miles on the clock, time for one more stop at Brecht to see if they can find the rattle without me having to pay them to do so. Not going to make the oil change before 50k, alas.

Does My A/C Need Fixing?

Inside the last 3,000 miles of the warranty, trying to make sure everything is in top shape before I am on my own for the cost of repairs. I need to take Carrie back for the clanking noise which is as present as ever but now I am thinking about my a/c.

I think when I first got the car I blogged that the a/c seemed under-powered compared to that of the ’02 MCS. That is still very much the case. There are times when I need to put the strength on level 3 or 4 to feel any air coming out of the vents (top down of course) and even then it is not always chilled. The 15 minute drive to El Centro on a Saturday afternoon in the summer heat is almost always unpleasant, last weekend in 90F I didn’t once feel any cold air even after an hour of stop/start driving. Other times, it will start out strong and then after a while it feels like it shuts itself off. I don’t feel any cool air any more.

So, dear reader – do you think this is something I should bring to Brecht’s attention? Is this normal behaviour for the ’05 cabrio ?