Coming from somebody who had a car in "no location" since delivery from the dealer 2 years ago... It's no big deal. In the end you'll find that you probably will rarely if ever use the MPG calculations, and as for yards or feet, in 2 weeks it won't bother you...

 

Hey, that's fine... personal preference

I was just regurgitating the information so that people could make up their own mind. The yards doesn't really bother me (I grew up in Australia so I almost prefer meters!), but the inaccurate MPG does, because I do pay attention to it (although it ends up being just to see how BAD it really is with my leadfoot!).

 

> ... converting from feet to yards and British MPG instead of American MPG.

Yeah, flashing back to an earlier firmware and then flashing forward to the latest does get rid of the Nag Accept screen, and you get yards and perhaps hosed-up MPG ratings.
I'm not all that confident in the MPG ratings to begin with, so having that hosed with the wrong units doesn't bother me.
I'm able to visualize yards easier than feet (think American football distances), and I really enjoy the map coming on without having to hit Accept after every engine-start. I'm glad I did it.

As for the British female voice, she does say 'motorway' instead of 'highway', she stops using the phrase 'making a legal U-turn' -- there's no more "legal."

No regrets with the British female voice upgrade, nor with the flash-back/flash-forward to lose the US orientation/Nag button.

 

Hey Leadfoot,

Get your 18's on yet? I'm guessing a JCW ashtray is about the only thing missing for you now..carbon fiber, of course :-)

Oh yeah, "change cup", for those of us who don't like nicotine ;-p

Cheers,
Matthew Z.

 

Hey Mr_Edly - do the MPG readings go even higher than before, or lower? Mine seems to be inflated by an MPG or two, so maybe with it calculating a larger gallon, the readings could be more accurate...

 

Matthew,

Nope, the JCW 18s are going to have to wait until I wear out the Dunlop SP Sport 9000 DSST rubber that came with my web spokes. THAT'S when I'll get the 18s, and turn my web spokes into "winter wheels" with the Pirelli Winter 240 Snowsport DSSTs (unlike some other people, I DO care about the fact I don't have a spare tire... and my JCW brakes mean I can't use the Cooper spare).

Haha good one on the ashtray... seriously though I don't plan on getting ANY of the "carbon fiber" showy JCW bits... if it doesn't help performance, I don't want it. The JCW Strut Brace and R95 18" wheels will be the end of the JCW upgrades for me, unless they bring out more performance stuff.

 

I did the British voice hack on my Nav - even added German to the Spanish button - pretty cool - and I, too, don't like the nag screen. But I have it in my Pilot as well, and I just got used to it. Of course, on my Pilot, if I don't touch the screen in a minute or so, the screen blacks out. On the MINI, the dang thing stays on constantly, nagging ya. I'd MUCH prefer a mod/fix/hack that would have it default to the MINI wings after a minute if you don't press Accept - now THAT would be a nice touch, I think. . .except for the issues of screen burn in. . .

 

My system has been in no location mode since day 1 as well. And I think I did it. My car was delivered with no map disc - apparently I was the first customer to take delivery of a NAV equipped car from this dealer and they didn't know they were supposed to order map discs...

So while waiting weeks for the map disc to arrive, I played around with the system a bit - I changed the language from USA to French just for kicks. When I went to change it back - the choice was "GB" not "USA". So I left it on GB. When I finally got the map CD, I had:
-Distances in yards
-Female british voice
-No annoying "accept" screen
-MPG always reads about 13% higher than reality

Only that last item bothered me - and even then only a little - and in fact I rather liked the first 3 "features"! Then one day the dealer upgraded me to newer firmware and I lost the female british voice (which was rather dissapointing) - but the new firmware did fix a problem I had where the system was resetting itself.

Since then it's been widely posted about how to get the british voice back on a DVD based system - but not on a CD system that I have seen - which still bums me out. I thought that gave the car character...

Now I just need to get some maps CD's other than #6 - like maybe 5 and 7 - and I'll be all set...

 

If someone in the houston area would be willing to let me monkey around with their car , I might be able to produce a how-to on how to make an auto click for the nav! I'm thinking it can be done with a SPST relay with one connection to ground, one to the ignition wire, and the other two to where the button harness is.

 

Eric - On my last 12-gal tank of gas: hard acceleration in city and highway driving as part of my typical routine.

I "recalculated" the computer's mileage at the beginning,
and the computer ended up with 21.5 mpg.

At the pump - 257.2mi/12.119gal = real mileage of 21.2 mpg.

I didn't closely track real vs. Computer mileage before the ECU and SatNav flashes, but I don't recall they were anywhere near this close.

My test and production subject is a 2005 MCS delivered in Oct. 2004.
It's all stock, except for an ECU flash - MTH tuned for my local premium gas: 92 octane/10% ethanol. (The Walmart floormats and fingerprints of friends all over the steering wheel aren't stock either.)

-Ed
(Nothing free from dealer except MA's bad attitude. )