I took delivery of my new MCS a couple days ago. First mod was installation of my Garmin with the Craven FlexPod Fixie. While driving today, I noticed that the MINI's digital speedometer was registering about 3 mph less on average than the Garmin. If I had to choose one being more accurate, I would think the gps gets the nod. Anyone else notice a similar discrepancy?

 

Yup. 3mph higher than actual speed is the norm that most of us see. Someone once posted that it allegedly has something to do with Euro regulations and heavy fines for the speedometer displaying a speed that was lower than actual, so car manufacturers will tend to err on the side of caution with the speedometer readout.

 

My R56 reads off 3-4mph at 65. 225/45-17's reduced the errror by about half when I sent the runflats away.

 

Interesting. Thank you. I spoke with my son tonight. He has an 09 Clubman S and when I asked him if he had noticed this as well, he told me the same thing.

 

yeah the speedos aren't 100% accurate. i thnk the dealer is allowed to go upwards of 10% off. i just changed my wheels and im now running 205/40/17s and my speedo is off by 10mph.

 

Its a BMW thing. My 335i, X3 and 325i are all about 3 mph off.

 

First to the OP there are aver 25 threads on this subject already.

It is NOT just a BMW thing many European cars are that way.

Yes it is a law in ALL EuroZone countries that the SPeedometer CAN NOT read a speed lower than the actual speed the car is moving and this is why there is a built in percentage to be off. If you were to check the ODBII readings they would be the same as your GPS.

I believe the MINI has a setting in the main computer files which can switch this off but the techs are not allowed to make such a change. strobyprobey can confirm this as he is about the best with finding the setting in the main programing.

 

Yes, the OBII readings are close to the real speed of the car. But for my particular tires it is still about 1 MPH off from the GPS speed. The tach speed can be changed to match the actual speed, but then the cruise control and analog speedo will not match. So it really is best to live with the over-inflated speed reading.

 

I find that mine reads about 2mph faster than Im traveling. This from the local police carts that state what speed your are traveling.

They place these around the county in various high traffic areas that are prone to speeding.

 

yea... it's not just us. I used to have a T-bird that was off too. Everytime I drive past on those post mounted speed detectors that flash your speed it has ALWAYS been differant than what my speedo says.

 

ALL my BMW motorcycles did exactly the same thing. But with them the error got worse the higher the speed. On my MCS it seems to be about 3mph off at all speeds

 

80 indicated is actually 75 according to my Garmin. The error is proportionally less with speed, indicating that this is a 6.67% error, not X mph regardless of speed as some may think. One result that we're overlooking in this thread is that the odometer is off by the same amount. If you think you're getting 36 mpg highway, think again. In my case it's 6.67% less than that, or actually 33.6 mpg. Based on this error, my 50,000 mile warranty expired 3,333.3 miles sooner than it should have and my 36,000 maintenance warranty expired 2,400 miles sooner than it should have. In my view there should be punitive damages for this kind of deception, intentional or not.

 

I love my MINI but this speedo error is frustrating. My biggest gripe so far.

 

Others report the odometer is correct, while most of us know the speedo isn't from GPS cross checking. You could try your odometer against road sign measured miles for example, or a distance traveled GPS calculation. Would be interested in those results.

 

i did this the other day and found out the same thing. my speedo is roughy off by 10% throughout the whole range of speed which makes it pretty simple math to figure out how fast im going and now i am just used to seeing 80mph as 72mph. as far as the odometer, i thought the same as everyone else, if my speedo is off then my odo is off. well its not. i used the mile markers on the side of the freeway and it matched up just fine.

 

well, at least i know i'm not going crazy. i took notice to this the first week i had the car. as i was driving, i told my wife "no way we're going 80mph." it didn't feel like we were doing 80 and everyone on the freeway doesn't drive 80, haha! she said the car felt slower than the speed rating b/c it's more stable, but now we know the truth! =)

 

The mileage thing is good to know. If it was true we all were being skimped on the warranty period.

 

Honda was class-action sued over this exact issue. Short changing millions of vehicle warranties by 10% adds up to be a huge savings for them.

For my odometer is only about 2% off, whereas the speedometer is further off by design. Using an OBDII port I can see what speed the computer thinks the car is going and it is normally 0-1 mph different from the GPS.

 

maybe mini just sucks at gages. speedo, fuel gage, lack of engine temp display ...

 

Even though the MINI speedometer typically reads high by a few percent, the odometer is usually close to spot-on, so there's no reason to worry about being shorted on your warranty coverage.

The fact that the speedometer reads high is a purposely-introduced error in the gauge in order to make sure that it never reads low. There's no such intentional error in the odometer.

 

My odometer seems to check spot on at highway speeds per the mile markers...... So I assumed the speedo was accurate at highway speeds. False assumption on today's computer controlled cars sounds like.

Speedo most def reads fast around town compared to the speed carts.

 

Don't feel persecuted. Any European car - by law - will read up to 10% high on the speedometer. It cannot be low. (Not odometer, that's accurate.) Search this site, BMW sites, Porsche sites. This has been a fact of life for a very long time.

 

As long as the odometer is not off, I actually don't mind it. Anything to help me not attract the attention of the local armed govt fundraisers!

 

Exactly. And as long as your speedometer is reading too high rather than too low, it's hard to get the dealer to adjust it as a warranty issue because the allowable range of "too high" is so broad.

Specifically, the speedometer is not allowed to read even 1 MPH too low, but it's allowed to read as much as 10% too high, PLUS an additional 2.5 MPH. So if the car is actually traveling 70 MPH, any speedometer reading from 70 MPH to 79.5 MPH is still "within spec". Likewise, if you're going 80 MPH, any reading from 80 MPH to 90.5 MPH is within spec.

 

My speedo is off from 4-5 mph at 70. I checked it with my gps and to be sure I checked it with the mile markers. At 72 on the gps the speedo showed 68.

tim