GBMINI#3

Just back from British Invasion …
Responding to a request from Ivan, and recent weblog posts from Josh and Don. I decided to experiment with fuel economy. The drive to/from Stowe VT is mostly highway and once you are out past Manchester NH it is quiet too – so I drove the whole way there and back with cruise control locked in at 68mph; I figured with the speedometer optimism I am really doing the speed limit of 65.
At that speed you rarely need to brake/accelerate to deal with other traffic, and the few times I did stop/start I was very gentle with the pedals to minimize fuel guzzling acceleration.

The result:

GBMINI#2 gets 33mpg!

This is pretty accurate too – the OBC on GBMINI#3 is close to correct, other than it is brain dead; it hovered at 32.1 for ages, then jumped to 32.6, then to 33.1 – my guess is it really calculated (European) litres/100km to the nearest whole number, then just converts the result!

After driving up (about 220 miles) and “hauling ass” with Jason & Ricardo yesterday evening taking the “MINI scenic” route from Stowe to Burlington for dinner, I filled up at 420 miles (!) on the way home today – my calculated figure for that is 31.5mpg but the original OBC figure on the way up was drastically reduced by the spirited driving last night.

Driving home today, as well as the speed & (no)acceleration limits, I did not need the A/C; as a result even with the drive yesterday, I believe the 33mpg overall average.

Apparently if I drove continuously on the highway at about 65 with no traffic and no A/C, I could get about 500 miles from one tank!

BUT:
Driving the MINI like this is VERY boring – this was a one-off experiment …

Today I took GBMINI back to MINI Peabody to get the SES light solved; as suspected it was a return of the spurious fault P0136 and hopefully the software update will eliminate the issue.
While I was there I also had GBMINI properly “spa cleaned”; MINI Peabody charges a reasonable $129 and the results were stunning when I picked up the car this evening (shame it was raining so hard on the way home!)

GBMINI#3 spa

GBMINI#3 spa

GBMINI#3 spa

GBMINI#3 spa

GBMINI#3 spa

GBMINI#3 spa

GBMINI#3 spa

GBMINI#3 spa

GBMINI#3 spa inside too

GBMINI#3 spa inside too

GBMINI#3 spa inside too

GBMINI#3 spa inside too

I am so pleased with the results 🙂

I know I can do my own thing with Zaino but here I did nothing (except hand over a credit card) and got fabulous results – GBMINI looks brand new again! Actually it was particularly nice of MINI Peabody to park the car in the delivery area, keeping it out of the rain, because I never had a true delivery with pics, so now these pics can substitute!

One other thing that I had done today was to switch the tailights from the USA all-red version to the European red/yellow version:

Minolta DSC

Minolta DSC

Minolta DSC

Gabe recently switched his to clear/white but I don’t like that look too much; but when following the links to MikeyTheMINIs NewMINIstuff web site I found that he also sells the (European) stock ’05 taillights, which have a yellow flasher in place of the red one that USA cars have …
So I ordered some, they came quickly, and now they are installed … little differences that make each MINI unique 😉

Soon after I got GBMINI#3, it threw the Service Engine Soon light a couple of times – apparently a bug with the automatic transmission interacting with the fault detection software.
At my first service, I refused a software update, having read of some negative side-effects (like “limp home”!); also GBMINI had not thrown any more faults.

Until today, that is …

GBMINI#3 SES fault (again)

Everything seems to be running correctly, so this is probably another spurious fault code – but of course I can’t be sure. Hopefully it will clear itself tomorrow; if not a trip to MINI Peabody will be needed, and I will probably have to get the software update.