Month: October 2010

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.