Fluid Leak/Air Bag Light

I had a couple issues pop up recently that warranted a quick trip to the service department. The first was a reoccurring issue with the air bag light going on when I had a passenger in the car. The second and more troubling was a fluid leak. I noticed spot on my garage floor earlier last week so I did a little investigating but I could not tell where the leak was coming from. I snapped a couple of picts of the leak under the car

So I dropped off the car on Thursday night and let them take a peek. They found the leak was due to a faulty gasket at the temperature sensor of the coolant. Turns out that the thick fluid that I initially thought was oil was actually coolant. They quickly replaced the entire sensor with the gasket. As for the airbag light, they ended up replacing the seat sensor which essentially requires to replace the entire bottom of the seat including the cushion.

So now my MINI is back in my garage and running great. I am glad I was still under warranty for these items.

Mini, Ooh Yeah!

A few months ago, Moby held a contest to direct the video to the song Ooh Yeah. The video features a naughty classic Mini carwash, circa 1972. Good stuff. Watch to see if they clean behind the wipers! Ooh Yeah! Don't worry, it's not real porn. Just don't let anyone see you watch it at work. ;-)
Official music video for "Ooh Yeah" from Moby's new album Last Night (out now on Mute). Directed by Matteo Bernardini © Mute Records 2008. YouTube

MINI E

I have always been intrigued by logo designs, especially ones with a good concept. The MINI E badge is no exception as it not only clever but very well executed. The most recent one I was impressed with was Obama's Logo but I think MINI has a great one at bay. Kudos to MINI for putting the thought into this branding. I love the play with negitive space and the resulting plug that appears.

It's great to see how MINI is taking on the energy crisis head on. Hopefully this will be a successful endeavor and will result in these being available to the general public. I would certainly buy into this concept if it weren't for a few minor drawbacks. One being that not everyone has a garage to plug in the car every night.

Only lockable garages or similar buildings will qualify as homebases and power stations for the MINI E

If there were numerous methods to "fill up" and if it were at the very minimum just as fast and convenient as conventional gas, then I think this would catch on instantly. Read more about the MINI E on Motoringfile.

MC in Nobel Son

Professor Snipe returns! Here's a new movie that features an R50 as a full size remote control MINI Cooper that runs a muck in a shopping mall. Looks like it might be funny but it's no Italian Job. Check out the trailers at apple or at the official movie site. It should be out by December 5th so look for it then.

B&W Stamp

Just having a little fun with photoshop. This one is a little like an ink blot. what do you see?

Here are some more images I messed around with.

Good to be in Chicago

You can feel the air is thick with excitement. I hope we make history today.

dcmini Web Stats

It is interesting to see where dcmini visitors are coming from. Here are a few maps that describe this rather clearly. To read the maps, keep in mind that the darker the green area is the higher number of visitors came from there. The maps are from google's analytics service that is tied into the blogger services that they provide. All for free and quite the resource.

World Visitors


From that you could see that the US is still very strong among world visitors.  But it is nice to see that there are some people stopping by from Europe, Asia and Austrailia.  Even some from Africa and South America.

United States Visitors


That was surprising. Apparently most of you are from the great state of California (Beautiful state I might add). I wonder if this is proportional to the number of MINI dealers in each state. I notice no hits from Montana or Maine. Where as California has the most hits with its four major MINI markets.

CA and IL Visitors