A few more things:
- The rear visibility certainly is poor but not nearly as bad as I expected. I have had to adjust my driving style a little to accommodate not being able to see over my shoulder but I have always been attentive to the traffic around me so it hasn’t been a big issue. Parallel parking on the other hand is more of a challenge as I just can’t tell how close I am to the car behind me.
- The windows seem to go down faster than before
- The fuel guage acts differently. Before, I would get about 100 miles at the first mark, 160 at the second mark, 300 miles near empty. Now I get 140 at the first mark, 220 at the second mark, and 320 near empty.
- Fuel consumption is bad, best I’ve done so far after three fillups is 23.5 mpg and that was with almost all highway driving. My ’02 typically got 26mpg without trying. I hope this will get better as the engine breaks-in.
- Radio reception is poor, craps out often even in San Diego. Don’t know if this is a fault or just common with the model. My XM Direct hasn’t arrived yet so am using the iPod for the time being which works great through the aux input.
- Haven’t been able to get the Universal Remote to work with my garage door opener yet, need to work that out as I hate fiddling with the regular remote
My fuel gauge is similar, giving me more miles at the top end – I assume this is due to the “secret gas tank” which allows me to put 14+ gallons in! My guess is the piping from nozzle to tank stores more than it used to.
Fuel consumption on the more recent engine software is worse than it used to be – even the “official” numbers have come down from ’03 to ’05.
The radio no longer has an amplifier and “diversity”; GBMINI#3 is much worse than #2 and no doubt all ’05 MINIs are worse.
BTW: Your windows might go down quicker just because they are new and less worn out 😉
Interesting, I had no idea they took out the wonderful dual-antenna system. One more reason why I’m glad I got an 04 🙂
Does the PDC make up for the reduced visibility when parallel parking?
I think the PDC will be a help but, and I should have put this in the main body, the PDC sound comes from the rear right no matter where the obstruction is. So when I hear the beeps the first thing I do is look over to the right because thats where the sound is coming from. I need to calibrate the beeps as right now I don’t know what distance is represented by what level of beeping insistency.
Interesting info about the “diversity”, Ian. I don’t know what it is but I certainly miss it.
I had a little trouble with the UGDO (Universal Garage Door Opener, aka: universal Remote) on Murray as well… It requires some dgree of patience, and you need to be in close proximity to the devices you want to remotely activate, when you are programming it.
Also, the range for the UGDO seems much smaller than the standalone remote I had been using (Radio Shack “Clicker”).
Good luck with it, if you haven’t got it working already, and I hope you’re enjoying Carrie as mush as Judy and I enjoy Murray.
_Dave_