February 2008 – Page 3

My first stop for MINI news is still GoMotoring, which very clearly aggregates loads of MINI website feeds (including mine!); visiting just now I saw the following feeds for MotoringFile:

The interesting one for me is R56 MCS Engine’s Cold Start Issue Exposed, but clicking it takes you to a dead page of MotoringFile:

Presumably it just means the story has been written, but then date-edited to appear in a day or two … exciting 😉

It’ll be interesting to read about the issue – I did not have any “cold start” related issues while I owned GBMINI#5, but then I didn’t own it for long! GPMINI has always been fine starting at any temperature, but GBMINI#6 exhibits the same “cold start” issues that I’d previously experienced on my other MCS’s – and like those MINIs, switching to a lower octane gasoline apparently sorts the issue for me.
It’ll also be interesting to read the MotoringFile presentation of the issue – some people expect MotoringFile to be “good news only” regarding MINI …

While on the subject of the R56, I do have a couple of final positive thoughts about that car! In case I wasn’t clear previously, the R56 claimed MPG improvements are obviously true – GBMINI#5 got between 28 and 29 mpg (real, not OBC) while I owned it. Both GPMINI and GBMINI#6 are getting between 23 and 24 over the same drives, time of year, etc.
In the summer, when we don’t have winter formulation gasoline, and when I do longer drives for MINI events, I’ll get 30+ in GPMINI – so with the R56 I might expect to get as much as 35! Pretty good, I’d say.

The other thing is that the R56 automatic air-conditioning is improved over that in GBMINI#6 (the first auto-a/c MINI I’ve owned since my first, way back in 2002). The non-R56 auto-a/c in GBMINI#6 works much better than it did back in 2002, but the R56 system was quieter and a little smarter too … for example, on cold days I like to blow the air on my hands for a while to warm them up (gloves? me! no …) so in GBMINI#6 I’ll press the hands and feet buttons (using the hands button only is too noisy, so send to feet also to reduce the noise), then after a while press the buttons again to revert to auto.
But in the R56, I noticed that after a while, when the air is warm, it would automatically direct a subtle amount of warm air to my hands, while still blowing to windshield and feet (something the older systems can’t do!) … almost not enough air to notice, but enough to warm my fingers. Nice touch 🙂
(but no, it’s not enough to make me warm to the R56!)

Our second trip down to 8002, and we changed loads of things!
We had to rent a minivan – it was a last minute trip over a holiday weekend, and they restrict rentals to force the price up! But we used this minivan to transport loads of stuff, so that’s OK 🙂

One major change was to put a new king size bed in our master bedroom – and we moved the queen that was in there to bedroom #3 (instead of the two singles that were there before):

Also, in bedroom #4, we replaced the double bed with a single – the plan is to make this room into a study (it already has internet and a printer, it just needs a computer and a desk!):