The weather that is! After snow last Friday, we had clear skies and sun, with no nasty winds – nice enough even at 45 degrees to drop the top yesterday (although I wouldn’t do it for a long drive at highway speeds!):
Now today, we’ve had snow again which recently switched over to heavy rain … the top is closed once more 😉
Another 10″-12″ of snow yesterday – driving home was a careful experience, especially after someone I know had an accident on nearby roads … but home safe, and this morning was one of those really nice after-storm days, with clear skies and sun, and no nasty north wind!
The snow was light and easy to clear – and a very nice neighbour had plowed the front of our driveway, making the job much easier … and it turns out that clearing the Convertible is easy too! The cloth roof means no need to be super careful about not scratching the paint!
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!)
M&I / GBMINI 