Pet Peeve #17

You’re on the motorway, an on-ramp looms, car coming along it wanting on the road with you. So you pull out into the second lane allowing the motorist to come out without having to worry about it. Next you’re alongside each other and the jerk stays level with you, you can’t come back into the lane so you either have to slow right down or speed right up. So much for trying to be nice.

Oh, pet peeve 17B: not moving out of the lane and having the other motorist floor it so they get there at the exact time as you and move out anyway expecting you to break or crash.

SRS and the Seat Covers

[Update] So I blogged too soon, go out for lunch today and and the SRS light never goes off. More than that the boot-open warning light is flashing every 10 seconds or so. I tinker with the boot and it doesn’t make any difference. Stays on a while, goes off for a while, blinks stupidly for a while. Argh, this stuff drove me mad with my previous one. Anyway, I took my seat cover off so now there are no covers on and we’ll see if the SRS light at least will now behave.
Three days without the passenger seat cover on and three days without the SRS warning light coming on. Hmmm…. no one else seems to have this problem with their seat covers so maybe it is to do with something under the seat being interfered with by the straps? I suppose I’ll do some more research and mucking about with it, because I’d really like the cover to go back on.

SRS Experimentation

Those of you paying attention may remember that I have had problems with the SRS warning light going on off all the time pretty much since I arrived home from the dealer. I hadn’t really thought that it was that big a deal but according to this article at MotoringFile it should be treated as an urgent problem. Well, I’ve lived with it for 6 months, I can live with it for the next two until my service is due.

In the meantime I’ve taken the seat cover off the passenger seat to see if that is somehow causing the problem. I can’t find anyone else complaining that their covers caused any faults but its worth a try before I take Carrie to the dealer.

The same article talks about the problem with the clock running fast, seems like it is a somewhat common problem with the 05/06’s and needs the centre cluster to be replaced. I’m happy to know it can be easily fixed. My clock is gaining about 10 minutes every month.

Should hit 10,000 miles next week!

What the MINI is all about – Motoring

What better way to celebrate new plates and a fresh bath than to go on a little road trip in the MINI. There’s nothing like a buffalo burger to celebrate a drive so we set out yesterday from our home in Brawley to the Rong Branch restaurant in Julian. Most of the route is State route 78 which blasts west through the desert, past the OHV area at Ocotillo Wells and then winds up and down through the mountains before Julian; perfect terrain for the MINI. The motoring gods were smiling on us – even though we caught up with many RVs and trailers we always had enough clear road ahead to go zooming by.

On the way back I decided on a scenic detour. Back down the steep twisties from Julian and then southbound on Imperial/San Diego County Route S2. I’d never done the whole of S2 before and its a great road, two lanes, lots of open road, some tight twisties and great great scenery. Cruising top down was a blast.

Round trip mileage was about 170 miles and to my amazement the trip computer was showing 29.4 mpg, probably the best I’ve ever seen it read on any road trip. A good day out.

What a sweep of vanity comes this way!

New Plate It took over 8 months but my plates finally arrived and I was able to assign them to Carrie today. It wasn’t without problems though. When it came to do the reassignment, the computer would not let it happen. At one point I was asked if this was a brand new truck – huh? Eventually a supervisor came out, took my plates away and didn’t come out for another 20 minutes.

New Plate Turns out that although the plate had been produced and was in our grubby little hands, it had not been entered into the DMV computer as a plate that could be assigned. So she had to reorder the plate to get it back into the system and then she was able to assign it to me. Clearly there were powers at work that did not want me to get this plate. But, finally Carrie has the moniker she was meant to have.

Games Console Controls For Cars

Driving back from San Diego today, thinking about my upcoming interview with Sony next week, and I found myself pondering why cars have steering wheels and pedals these days. Pretty much every kid and young adolscent plays a games console and that means either joystick or console control paddle. And these kids can do all the driving stuff with those controls, and are pretty damn good at it too. So why aren’t manufacturers proposing cars which are driven by using a couple of rocker switches and a few buttons? We need to get hip to the new generation, y’all.

A Post For Posting’s Sake

Yes its remiss of me, but Carrie got her first (almost full) Zaino treatment at the weekend and I have to say looked super smashing great for the few hours in between drying and moving again; the desert has a lot of dirt and sand [obvious statement of the day]. I’ve 303’d the top a few times and its looking pretty good, definitely slight wear on the hinge where everyone else gets it. But otherwise she is in great shape.

Its now been 7 months since I ordered my personal plates and I have hope that they will arrive some day soon. They were re-ordered at the end of November so we’ll see if “they never take more than 10 weeks” is really true (even though we already know that its not).

Rednecks

Sitting at the traffic light yesterday, behind a very old looking Trooper, top down in the sunshine. Light turns green and the Trooper floors it, the female passenger hangs out the window shouting something and making some gesture with her arm to us. Looks like I lost a race without knowing I was in one. My wife said that before the light turned green the girl shouted something to us but she couldn’t make it out.

Just what is it with these people who see the Cooper and want to race it? I’ve no interest in racing the car on downtown streets, or really ever for that matter. And against a battered old Trooper? Why do all these stupid rednecks in their SUVs and pickups want to take me on? I just let them go, catch them up at the next red light.

I do have to say, however, that the Trooper pulled away very impressively, not sure I could have kept up with it had I wanted to!

Christmas Presents

Carrie received a couple of items for Christmas: front and back licence plate holders, MINI licence plate holder screw covers, and a Union Jack magnetic decal. She did also receive a pair of chrome side indicator panel replacements but I realised too late that I already had them on the car as part of the chrome package, and when they arrived they weren’t what had been ordered so they got returned.

In other news, the mileometer turned 7,000 today, and I need to start calling Brecht to get the windscreen, air bag sensor and clock fixed.