UKPylot’s MINI Blog

This morning I came out to the car and it wouldn’t start. I had known something was wrong over the last week or so because the car would start but there would be a noticeable delay between the engine turning over and the oil/fuel guages coming alive. I called AAA and they were here within 15 minutes, diagnosed the battery as completely flat and gave me a jump start. I had called San Diego Independent Mini ahead of time to check that they were open and drove over there right away.

Another test showed the battery was bad but the alternator was still good so they did the battery swap. I pointed out my twisted seat belt and they were able to straighten that, its been twisted for over a year but I couldn’t work out how to do it. Then, as part of simply driving in, they topped up my fluids and gave the car a pretty thorough wash and interior clean. And they gave me some free advice to pass on to a fellow MINI driver on twitter who is having problems with his OBC.

All in all, I think it’s a pretty good place to take the MINI. Cooper was there again but he was a bit feisty today, running around and kept jumping up on me, maybe he likes my shower gel smell?

I’m in stop/go traffic, gaps between cars are nil to a few inches but no matter what the gap between me and the car in front I am always chosen as the vehicle that is going to be inconvenienced by someone just pulling over and assuming I will get out of the way.

Is it something about my style of driving? I do tend to keep a bigger gap than most which might be inviting but even when, like tonight, I’m keeping it real tight people still just pull out right in front and force me to stop for them.

Is it the car? I know they see it (well many of them anyway). Do they think I won’t possibly risk my precious baby getting scratched? Or do they perhaps think I’m driving a worthless pile of junk so they don’t care about hitting it?

Whatever it is, it’s so predictable that it isn’t funny anymore.

Recently I’ve noticed the oil warning light coming on when I go fast around tight corners. More recently I’ve noticed the light coming on when I go at medium speeds round average corners. So tonight I took a look under the bonnet, dip stick didn’t seem to reveal any oil patches on it, but the engine was cold. So I opened the reservoir and it was bone dry in there.

Pretty sure there should be oil in there somewhere! So a dash to the local AutoZone and a quart of oil later the warning light seems permanently extinguished. I’m pretty sure it needs more than a quart to meet the minimum so will check it again tomorrow. In the meantime I’m getting the next oil change scheduled.

These days my MINI is relegated to the 130 mile each way trip between home and work on a Monday and Friday, and the short (but tedious) commute within San Diego on the other days. So it was nice last week to get to open her up on a long drive, a real long drive.

The plan had been to fly myself to Monterey for a few nights stay with Teri who was already there for a conference. A big winter storm was slowly moving out of California and had almost cleared in time but on the day it was obvious that conditions in the air would make a flight in a small plane both miserable and quite likely on arrival a real difficult instrument approach. So I decided to make the drive.

Up to LA and once beyond, the drive up I-5 may have been long but it was truly a joy to get my foot down and enjoy the open road. My Droid Incredible provided nav and the occasional Twitter relief, BBC Radio 1 provided the soundtrack. Good times.

Passed 115K miles on the way back to Brawley, next inspection is due in around 700.

To me, tyres are a necessary evil which I know does them an disservice. They are as integral a part of the experience as the supercharger and yet I pay more attention to the metal Union Jack badge on the side of the car then I do my choice of tyre.

Last few week the tyres have been screeching round corners when they never used to so I went for a rotate and balance. After a bit the boy came and showed me how the metal was wearing through the front driver tyre (and it had a leak) and two other tyres weren’t far off. Now I don’t know if the kid had spent 10 minutes with a knife making cuts but it seemed like I would have to buy new tyres.

Since I do about 22k a year I like to buy tyres that will last. These had lasted 21k, less than I had hoped. But I had also not liked them from the moment I drove them of the lot. So I have new ones, I listened to a bunch of choice and ended up with the most expensive of the options presented to me: Bridgestone Pole Positions. It was claimed they are a sport tyre but they also have a “40k lifetime” so we’ll see. I certainly liked how they handled on day one. And in the meantime I need an alignment to ensure they last as long as they can.

Today is the fifth anniversary of owning my MCS cabrio, having enjoyed around 110,500 miles in her. She’s holding up surprisingly well, really just the speedometer being an issue at this point and it is real intermittent (just got to keep a watch for it lest I am doing 90 when indicating 75). A lot of creaks in the joints but doesn’t that happen to all of us as we get old? It surely can’t be long before I get some major component failure but I’m keeping fingers crossed on that.

Sometimes the titles write themselves!

My intermittent speedometer problem continues but yesterday I caught it failing. As I was accelerating I noticed the needle rising and then it got stuck for an instant. I could see the needle trying to rise but instead it just shivered before finally breaking free of whatever was keeping it there. After that and for the rest of the trip the needle was consistently 6-9 mph under the actual speed (which was being accurately shown on the OBC). This morning the needle was fine.

I’d love to know how the speedo gets the speed information – I assume it’s not off the wheels. So does it get an absolute speed signal, or is it analogue?