Category: My MINI

Its been 17 weeks since I ordered my vanity plates for the new MINI and still no sign of them. I went to the DMV yesterday to inquire and they were as mystified as I. They were able to confirm that they were registered in my name but could offer no reason why they hadn’t arrived. The manager came out and said they “never take more than 12 weeks”; well, clearly sometimes they do. They are going to investigate and probably order me a new set at no cost to me.

No protection from the elements: They’ve been resurfacing the local highway which of course means putting down ‘loose gravel’ on the road. Driving along at a reasonable speed, a car blazes by me, kicks up a stone and it hits me in the head. Ouchie!

Extra stinkification: The local feed lot smell has been overwhelming recently. You don’t realise how much stink protection the hard top gives until you’re faced with cow gases in your face. Yowie!

Essential equipment for open top motoring: sunglasses, full face helmet, nose clips ??

OBC is currently reading 28.3, was 29.0 when I left the house this morning – gotta love that!

Carrie went to the local vinyl installer on Friday and he did a great job. He asked what we paid for the stripes and said he would have made them and installed them for $60. So I have him designing me something for the side, I shall be interested to see what he (actually its his cute French assistant) comes up with….

Went to CostCo last night and paid $2.84, a whopping 22c less than last Friday’s fill-up at the Shell. I only just made it over $30 for a tank of gas. Whoo hoo!

Completed my final mod today, got the auto-up window circuit installed. I wasn’t able to do it using the ‘blind’ method but I did manage it without removing the downtubes, just moved them out of the way a little, so it took very little time at all. Its good to have my window circuit back.

Only mod left is the stripes and I’ll be getting a local professional installer to do those for me in the next week or two. In the meantime, here’s some pictures of the latest and greatest:

Wet Okole Seat Covers

 

XM Direct



Nodding Bulldog

   

2996 miles and ten fillups since getting Carrie and thought I’d post some stats, none of them real good really.

• Average Fuel Economy – 24.6 MPG
• Best Fuel Economy – 27.1 MPG
• Worst Fuel Economy – 22.88 MPG

• Average Gas Price – $3.126
• Most Expensive Gas – $3.249
• Cheapest Gas – $2.979

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Had some success with my projects at the weekend, got the XM Direct unit installed and I have to say I am very pleased with it. For some reason, the radio isn’t yet activated so I haven’t been able to actually tune in to any channels but the preview channel comes in nice and clear! Had one minor scare during installation – the top stopped working, it would not go past sunroof mode. After much panic and swearing I read the manual which said to check the position of the parcel shelf. I did and sure enough I had nudged it off its position and I guess some sensor picked that up. Phew!

I had tried the “blind install” method for the window circuit in the morning but to no success and so decided to do it the hard way. The screws holding the downtubes have changed and I didn’t have a T40 screwdriver so decided to leave it until Sunday. Sunday came and we had torrential rain with thunder and lightning all day so I didn’t get to do anything. Hopefully I’ll get to that next weekend.

Now that I’m back from the funeral its time to get on with the projects that seem to be hanging around, no more “its too hot” excuses:

• Bonnet Stripes: the new stripes came whilst I was away but I’m going to find a professional to do the installation this time
• Auto-Window Up circuit: been putting this off as it looks a lot trickier on the ’05 than on the ’02.
• XM Direct: couldn’t remove the cover that is hiding the CD changer port before but I know the trick now (and have large hacksaw!) so think this is doable. I still don’t know how I will get the cable from the boot to the antenna on the dashboard, might be for the local audio pro to do.
• Nodding Dog: Whilst in England my sister gave me a nodding British bulldog to sit on the dash (in lieu of the hula girl) but I fear it is too large to sit there

Well, plenty to keep me busy, hopefully I can knock these off pretty soon.

Looks like I may have a bunch of things for Brecht to do when I get back from my next trip home. Minorly, my clock seems to be a time machine. I noticed it was 4 minutes ahead of my cell phone time a couple of weeks ago and today it is 6 minutes ahead. No big deal, but a little annoying.

More majorly, I’ve noticed that my lights are staying on after the engine is switched off, it happened once at night and once during the day (when the lights were off, but I was parking in my garage). The dealer never did any of the key programming I asked for so I’m not sure if the lights are ‘staying’ on as a default feature or as a problem. I didn’t wait to see if they went off after a while but in order to turn them off I had to turn them ‘on’ again and then off. I looked again this morning when I got to work and they weren’t on this time.

I’ve now had Carrie for a month and spent 2000 happy miles together.

Got my new plates in the mail on Tuesday, I suppose now I have to put the front bracket on and install them. Looking back, I ordered ‘MNI AV8R’ on June 17th so I am hoping they will show up soon. Maybe I will hold off putting on the regular plates until the personalised ones come. Plod won’t know I have the originals and I think I can display the temp tag in the window for up to 6 months.