Josh Wardell’s MINI Cooper S

Today was the annual MAMA’s Blueberries and BBQ where we meet in Keene, NH to pick blueberries and hang out with all our MINI friends. Sadly we had drenching rain in the morning on the way there and more rain throughout the afternoon. However that didn’t seem to deter anyone as we still had a large turnout. We also had a few dry hours to pick plenty of blueberries, and like last year I look forward to the excellent desserts that will come from them.

My MINI also turned 50,000 miles right in the Monadnock Berries parking lot. Now begins its post-warranty “middle aged” life–hopefully just as reliable and fun as the first three years!

I need your help to find a good roadside assistance program! I’m only a few hundred miles away from 50,000. Not only will my MINI’s warranty expire, but so will coverage by MINI’s excellent roadside assistance program. I’ve called them and begged to extend the roadside benefits but they have no way to do so.

With MINI dealerships being sparsely located, it is very important to have long-distance towing coverage. I only proved this a year ago when I had to ride all the way home from MINIsOnTop in a tow truck–about 350 mi round trip. AAA only covers three miles of towing, charging you $3 per additional mile–that would cost over $1000!

I’ve found a few options but not sure how trustworthy each are, especially since they do not have their fine print on their website, and probably not until you sign up do you find out they won’t tow to the dealer of your choosing etc. AAA has a “plus” membership for $75/year that includes 100mi of towing, but they will not allow you to join that program until you’ve been a member of their three-mile program for a year. GM Motor Club seems to be a good deal at $59 and unlimited towing. And The Auto Club has unlimited towing too at $69, but for $89 they also include tire and wheel road hazard coverage–something I’ve been considering as I’m about to buy new tires as well.

Please let me know in the comments below what experiences you’ve had with third party roadside assistance programs, and feel free to recommend some more. Meanwhile I can only hope MINI smartens up and offers extended roadside assistance coverage.

With less than a thousand miles remaining on my warranty, I will soon be on my own troubleshooting issues with my MINI. For a long time I’ve wanted an OBD code reader to read and reset check engine light issues, but I’ve also wanted the ability to view live data. So it was the right time to purchase the ScanGauge II, which does all of this and more.

It installs in seconds, plugging into the OBDII diagnostic port under the steering column (and will work just as easily in any modern car). I mounted it to the corner of my dash for easy viewing, especially of real speed. While running my GPS, I’ve noticed my MINI’s speedometers read as much as 5mph fast. The ScanGauage shows real speed and can be further corrected by percentage…I used the GPS to get it as accurate as possible. (Even without a correction factor, it still showed lower speeds, which means MINI is intentionally displaying a higher speed than it is calculating..interesting!)

It has many of the MINI’s OBC functions like live miles per gallon, overall MPG and miles till empty, and also adds gallons per hour, time remaining, and gallons remaining. It tracks all of these by day and trip as well. Most importantly, these OBC values can be calibrated by indicating the fuel pumped in your first few fillups. My MINI’s OBC was mostly useless because it would always read extremely high..sometimes 34mpg for a tank that was really just 28.

Of course there are plenty of nerdy diagnostic gauges to display live as well. Displayed above is MAP pressure (essentially a vacuum and boost guage–values over 14psi are boost) and intake temperature (see how close the intercooler gets the pressurized air down to the outside temp). It can also show RPM, voltage, spark timing, throttle percentage, engine load, loop status, and coolant temperature. It’s fun just to watch, but I’m also hoping the added data might give insight to problems such as the cold start issues with ethanol gas.

No doubt I will mostly be using the SPeedGauge as a more accurate speedometer and toy. But it will prove invaluable when I get a CEL (or for that matter, anyone I know no matter what car they drive). It is even more valuable if you have a MINI without an OBC, or navigation with no temperature gauge.

I first noticed the ScanGauge at one of my favorite stores ThinkGeek, but it is also available at at Amazon. More information is available on their website.