Rage Against The Mac

I’ve been meaning to post an update for nearly a week, now. I’m back on the road and very happy. The problem seems to have been solved and I’ve gone the last week without a hiccup. The folks at Dreyer & Reinbold did a great job making me happy, and once again, Rhonda went above and beyond. I’ll get a little verbose as soon as I get a chance.

I could not be more crushed this morning. About an hour ago, as I was heading out of town for the driving school, my MINI started acting up again. Just like last time, as soon as I hit 4000 RPM (which is just short of my typical shift point), the engine cut out and wouldn’t run any faster than 2000 RPM, even in neutral and with the pedal to the floor. Today, instead of just the SES light, the EML and DSC lights came on. EML I can understand, but DSC?!

I’m gutted, and not just because I’m missing the school today and have no expectation that my fee will be refunded (hey, it’s not their fault my car won’t run). My experience with the service department was less than favorable this week, and I already know that they’re depending on MINI (USA? Some engineer in das Fatherland? Dunno.) to tell them what to try next. The escalation process with MINI doesn’t exist, as far as I’m concerned. They seem to have a 24 hour SLA on requests from this dealer, anyway, so I’m guaranteed at least a two-day visit to the shop.

Of course, the service department’s closed today.

I’ll update here as I learn more, or feel like Nicole needs a break from my venting. My readership’s up to four (via aggregators, anyway); don’t wanna leave y’all hanging!

Heh. I just noticed the title of the previous post. That pretty much captures how I felt as I saw today’s school slipping away.

I’m going to be updating this post with additional information on the power-loss problem I ran into yesterday.

I’ve started a thread over on NAM, as well.

updates

12:52pm
left message for SA, as I haven’t heard anything so far today

2:23pm
still hadn’t heard anything. I finally talked to my SA who told me they’re waiting to hear from MINI, but he confirmed my problem exists. Shit. A blind man in the dark could have told that. Possible suspects are throttle body or wiring harness. I get the Sable for another day. Yay.

12:15pm, 10 June
Another voicemail left with the SA. No response.

1:15pm
A voicemail left with the service manager. No response.

1:45pm
Called my MA, Rhonda, who elicited a call back from the SA before she got back to her desk. The SA said he hadn’t yet talked to his tech, and would call me back, which he did 10 minutes later.

At this point, I need a good joke. And a beer. But we’ll start off with a joke:

A Software Engineer, a Hardware Engineer and a Departmental Manager were on their way to a meeting in Switzerland. They were driving down a steep mountain road when suddenly the brakes on their car failed.

The car careered almost out of control down the road, bouncing off the crash barriers, until it miraculously ground to a halt scraping along the mountainside. The car’s occupants, shaken but unhurt, now had a problem: they were stuck halfway down a mountain in a car with no brakes. What were they to do?

“I know”, said the Departmental Manager, “Let’s have a meeting, propose a Vision, formulate a Mission Statement, define some Goals, and by a process of Continuous Improvement find a solution to the Critical Problems, and we can be on our way.”

“No, no”, said the Hardware Engineer, “That will take far too long, and besides, that method has never worked before. I’ve got my Swiss Army knife with me, and in no time at all I can strip down the car’s braking system, isolate the fault, fix it, and we can be on our way.”

“Well”, said the Software Engineer, “Before we do anything, I think we should push the car back up the road and see if it happens again.”

So, apparently MINI told ‘em to check a bunch of things, including plugging and unplugging odds and ends all over the place. Now the car operates normally, according to them. We’re both a little skeptical, but I’m going to take it home tonight and hope for the best.

I love the car, but between the problem they had getting it checked out before delivery, and this, I’ve got this uncomfortable feeling in my stomach…

Ah, hell. Let’s motor!

I’ve been meaning to write this up for, oh, about 18 days, now. I’ve packed a decent amount of motoring in (tho certainly less than some, and less than what some would consider “proper”, but that’s ok) and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the car. Had my first (well, maybe second…) issue today, however. This seems like a good a time as any to flush the buffer.

After working on my lovely wife for quite some time, I finally convinced her to “let me” buy a new MINI Cooper S. I had to sell our F-150 (drastic changes? Who, me?) first, then we had to find a new car for her (‘01 Santa Fe), and then I was able to put down a deposit on the perfect MINI. I’d like to think I really sold her on the merits of a fun, sporty little car that’s a joy to drive and at least as fuel efficient as her ‘02 Jetta 1.8T, but I think in the end she may have relented, just to get me to shut up about it already.

Anyway, in March I finally placed my order [link to MINI spec here], and configured my MINI exactly how I wanted it (although Nicole voted against the white roof, and I still vascillate about that from time to time). It’s a 2005 MINI Cooper S in Chili Red with (most of) the Premium package, Sport package, limited slip differential (aka “LSD”; it’s a hallucinogenic MINI!), and a couple of other bits and bobs, black roof and black bonnet stripes, and body-color dashboard. I went a little overboard on the red-and-black by getting the red cloth/black leather seats, but I’m really happy with the result. There’s nothing bland about this car!

Just getting Nicole to consent to buying the car wasn’t enough, of course. We’d compromised on a June 1 delivery date, but as I saw the car was going to be at the VDC in South Carolina nearly a month before my actual pickup date, I started “inquiring” about moving up the date. It didn’t hurt that she found a beautiful set of rings she wanted at the local jeweler’s store while getting her wedding and engagement rings cleaned up… The compromise shifted further to my favor, and on May 7th I gave my MA the word that I was ready for it. Getting it shipped up from SC to Indy took far longer than anyone really seemed to think it would, and it didn’t arrive in town until the 18th. There were further complications when the car didn’t pass the final inspection at the dealership, and it took another day and a half to get some kind of a response from MINIUSA. Turns out it was something to do with the computer, a glitch that gave me a little bit of worry in the back of my mind, and apparently not an entirely unjustified bit, at that. Finally, after stashing my motorcycle in a service bay at the dealership, I was able to drive it home Friday evening. I took it through the incredibly busy Friday evening rush-hour traffic on Keystone 6.something miles to our house, pulled it in the garage, and pulled apart the dashboard to install my birthday gift, a Dension ice>Link: Plus, and one of Ian Cull’s auto-up window circuits. 12 miles on the clock. Dad’s so proud.

My first weekend with the car, I was able to get down near Bloomington, IN and tear up some great roads that I’d toured on my motorcycle the last couple of years. This is my first “performance”, or even “sporty”, car, and the handling is everything I’d heard about, and more. To steal some superlatives I’ve seen recently, it corners like it coined the term “on rails”, and I run out of nerve long before it runs out of grip. Even with the nearly universally-panned 17” all-season Goodyear runflat tires. I could not be happier with the handling! The power’s nothing to sneeze at, either, of course. The supercharger makes its presence known at around 3k, and provides a great rush that’s way more controllable than the turbo in the Jetta. I managed to put on about 200 miles in the first 36 hours of ownership, and would probably have managed more if it weren’t for this nagging responsibility I feel to actually spend time with my wife and dogs…

On Day Three of official ownership (May 22nd), I took part in the “MINI Pieces” rally put on by Dreyer & Reinbold and the local MINI club, MINICCI. Over 60 New MINIs met up at the dealership and raced around Northern Indianapolis on a circuit of about 50 miles of surprisingly curvy and scenic roads. Not having any idea what to expect from this so-called Rally, I wasn’t able to talk Nicole into going with me; I really thought it was just going to be a follow-the-leader kind of thing, and she figured she’d get bored as we puttered around in a 3-mile long line of cars. Not that I blame her. It turns out it was far more involved than that; we had a route sheet of 30 some turns and had to pick up on clues from roadsigns along the way to answer a set of pre-determined questions. There were also four checkpoints along the way that you had to make in order to officially complete the course (no shortcuts allowed!). I was one of few people without a navigator, and my ever-chipper Motoring Advisor, Rhonda, volunteered to ride shotgun and help tell me where to go. I’m still not sure she would voluntarily choose to do that again with me behind the wheel; I definitely put the MINI through its paces… I ended up enjoying the rally way more than I thought I would; hopefully Dreyer stays true to their word and really does one of these every Spring and Fall!

After the first weekend, I settled into more of a routine with my new go-kart. I saw pretty respectable gas mileage during the first tank of spirited driving (in the neighborhood of 25 MPG), but there was a noticable drop-off as I started commuting; I got around 22 MPG on the next tank. The MINI’s much happier at speed and without all that fussy stop’n’go traffic.

[please pardon this brief interruption while we go walk the dogs]
✈
[ok, we’re back]

The following two weeks and one weekend passed without much motoring, save between work and home, with some brief lunchtime escapes from the office “just because”. I did manage to rack up about a dozen trips to the airport; I’ve been down that stretch of Meridian → I-65 → I-70 → Airport Expressway and return more times in the last week than in the two-plus years I’ve lived here combined. But anyway.

Finally, this past weekend, I was able to take an extended trip down to Southern Indiana to explore some new roads (that are, on the whole, too far away for me to comfortably reach on the bike in a day). I’ll try to write that up in the not too distant future. I’m still trying to figure out how to include a map and tracklog (using Google Maps, of course) in a post; drop me a line with any ideas! Part of my goal was to finish up my break-in, which I almost accomplished. Save for some long drones on IN-37, which just can’t be avoided, I found some great back roads and a whole bunch of 90º turns through small towns that the MINI just ate up.

I hit the 1250 mile market last night, on my way back from picking Nic up from the airport, and finally “officially” ran it up to about 6k this morning on the way to work. 70 comes atcha mighty quick at those kinds of revs!

... and I’m thinking maybe the MINI wasn’t ready to have the cobwebs blown out like that. As I was leaving work today, the car went into some kind of limp-home mode. I don’t think it would have even limped home, but whatever. As I was accelerating through 4000 RPM, the engine completely lost power and the “Service Engine Soon” light came on, forcing me to pull off to the side of the road and try to figure out what the hell was going on. With the pedal to the floor, the engine barely responded. I shut down the car and let it recover for a minute, then tried to set off again. The SES light stayed on, but the next time I tried to accelerate past 4k, the same thing happened. This time I just restarted the engine while still rolling; I did this a couple more times on the way to the dealership. So right now, I’m driving a Mercury Sable from Enterprise with 25,000 miles on it. It’s amazing how quickly rental cars age…

Anyway, that’s my story so far. Posts will be forthcoming on some of the small mods I’ve made and the trips I’ve made, and of course how I make out with little “issue”. Wish me luck…

Mini’s Motormate Promotion : Jalopnik

Jalopnik has finally picked up on MINI’s new ad campaign, Motormate, merely weeks after MotoringFile did. Ah, well.