I don't know the specific formula, but MPG seems like a simple way to figure it. The lower your MPG the harder you are on the engine, either because you're driving hard or stressing it with stop-and-go driving. I have a feeling only Mini knows for sure. (I've never gotten mine close to zero. Even when I went a year between oil changes there were still a couple thousand miles left to go on the countdown.)
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Way Motor Works New Member
The MINI ECU uses several things to calculate this. Including:
Cold starts
short trip drives
Fuel use
There are a couple others, I'll look it up in my training manual tomorrow. But obviously fuel use is the biggest factor. -
The easiest thing to do is ignore it and change the oil annually or every 7,000 miles. My service indicator is at something like -40,000
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BThayer23 Well-Known Member
Thanks Way.
Yeah, it's easy for me to change every 5-7k; convincing others to do that can be tougher. It seems like every 2-3 months somebody comes on the local forum and asks if they should really follow the service interval indicator and change their oil every 15,000 miles. Grrrr... -
As they say you can lead em' to water, or in this case oil, but you can't make em' drink
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Ernesto Club Coordinator
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lotsie Club Coordinator
When I was putting high daily mileage on my MC, the interval went way over the recommended miles to change the oil. On the first change, if I remember right was 10k miles, it ran up to 13k. I had changed it twice by then. I now change it every 4-5k miles, and have not bothered to reset the count down thing in years.
Mark