15 Jul
2011
15 Jul
'11
1:38 p.m.
One of my friends had one for a while... IMHO it's
an "OK" car, but with
one big 'why the fsck did they do that?': putting the damn speedometer
dead centre between the front driver and passenger seats.
That was aparody of the styling of the original Mini, of course. The
first Minis had one central instruemnt, which was a speedometer with a
little fuel guage at the bottom (in the unusepad part of the sepedometer
scale). Various warning lights also appeared in the middle of the dial.
Some later minis had the '3 dial' cluster. This kept the speedomter/fuel
guage as, but added a smaller (stnadard accesory instrument size, about
2" in daimeter) instrument on each side. IIRC was was a water temperatur
gauge, the othre an oil pressure gauge.
The BMW 'Mini' has a large central speedometer, and IIRC air distribution
thingies (for the heater) on either side, in rogutly the positions of the
other 2 instruemtns on an older Mini.
Sorry, but I want all the important gauges in one
place WHERE I CAN SEE
THEM, not half-way across the blasted car!
The thing that annyes me a lot more than that is that on moder cars all
sorts of parameters are monitored by the electornci engine (and
trasmission) management cotnrollers, but you can't display them on any
dashboars instrument. My father's modern Skoda certainly monitors inlet
vacuum, air temperature, engine oil temperature, transmisison oil
temperatuir, various speeds, and so on. You can read this stuff out over
th CAN bus with the disgnostic tester, but you can't have it on the
dashboard. ARGH!
-tony