I don't know if it is common knowledge but I found an easter egg in the mini cooper. If you hold down the trip button and then turn the key to the first position a series of different codes and test can happen. Press the trip button to scroll through the selections. To make a selection just wait a second and a nother set of numbers will pop up. I don't know what any of this does but I selected 19, next I selected 21, then off followed by reset. After that I heard a funny noise. Does any body know what these codes mean.

 

More important than what do they mean is
why did you do it?

 

Not exactly - but I do know that you can reset the service indicator doing something very similar as described here.

 

You set the self destruct feature. Your MINI only has 19hours and 21minutes left....


J/K - -

Why in the world would you go into the code functionality and start messing with stuff.

You may have to ask the dealer.......

 

This was the subject of a long thread on Mini2. See this thread.

It's way to technical for me, but the bottom line is that what you've stumbled upon is one way to get access to the fault/status code readout from your MINI's OBD system. I think the upshot of this conversation was that the data was just information and for most "normal" owners, there was absolutely nothing that you could do with it. Oh yeah, the jury remained out on whether or not it was possible to totally screw up your computer through pushing hte wrong combination of buttons while playing with this.

Have fun.