As I mentioned in a post elsewhere, just days after purchase, the Dreaded Noise started. At first I thought it was the left front wheel bearing, but the mechanic I took it to said it was the transmission. Doom!
But no, after lots of round and round with the VERY patient seller at Cosner Brothers, I heard the noise at idle and could lift the hood to tell it was actually some sort of suction noise. Power steering fluid was low!
While Cosner's was checking for the noise, they noticed that the AC (which they had charged up when the mechanic noted it didn't work) was low again. They graciously offered to replace the compressor at no charge to me. Keep in mind this is on an 11 year old car bought for $3850 with NO WARRANTY.
Still unsure if they just topped off the power steering or found a problem. Gotta call about that this morning as well as to find out if it really hasn't had an oil change in -8700 miles, as the service indicator on the dash says. More likely, they didn't know how to reset that.
I use Automatic in my MINI. I like it a LOT and after a very short break in period it has proven very reliable.
This morning I had a fair amount of traffic in front of me that moved at a slightly slower rate than I usually drive, but not much slower. (I know exactly how much slower because Automatic records almost every metric of every drive and IFTTT.com grabs that data and puts it in a Google Docs spreadsheet for me auto-magically.
I mention all this because for the past month, I've consistently gotten 38-41 MPG with the variation easily related to whether I was averaging 71 or 77ish MPH.
Why am I bringing this up? Today, on a cool misty morning, I was above 70 MPH about 20% less than normal. And all of a sudden Automatic reports that I got 53 MPG. Now, it's not a new tank of gas, no other changes to the car. I did drive most of the way with all the windows closed & it was cool enough to not use the AC.
Check it out, here are my 4 most recent comparable trips, with the weird one last. "sec >70" means seconds over 70 MPH.
