Year: 2018

P0455

Yesterday about half way home from work, the check engine light come on. Not on the Mini this time, but the Miata. Just like in the Mini though, there was no discernible reason for it and the car showed no drivability symptoms at all. When I got home I hooked up the bluetooth OBD2 scanner and read the code – P0455 – which translates to ” EVAP Emission System Leak Detected Large Leak.”

The most common cause is your gas cap is too loose. I opened the filler door and twisted the gas cap and when I did it may have moved just a tiny amount. I reset the CEL and we’ll see if it comes back.

On the forum, they say if you just tighten the gas cap and keep driving the light will reset after about 30 miles of driving, so I wonder if it takes 30 miles to show up. We filled up the CTBNL last Tuesday night, so it made 3-1/2 round trips to work and one quick run to the bike store on Saturday, which is roughly 30 miles, before lighting.

I’m Afraid I’m Jinxing It Somehow

A couple months back I started keeping track of how may work days I have left. I have a letter-sized whiteboard on the side of one of my hanging file cabinets that I use to track some things and on the bottom of it, in the lower right-hand corner, is a two-digit number that is decreasing in size. It is on the side that faces away from the door so I’m the only one who sees it. Every morning. First thing, I subtract one from the number there.1

I have not made it a secret that I am hanging up my spurs here at the Valve Store, but I’ve only really shared it with just a few people. Everyone in my department, my cubical neighbors and HR of course, but word is starting get around. Seems like every other day now that I’ll get asked, “Is it true you are retiring this year?” I’ll answer in the affirmative and then tell them the number that is on my white board.

Now that the number is in the thirties, I’m starting to feel a little like a pitcher with a no hitter going. I know what is going on, everyone in the dugout knows what is going on, but nobody is saying anything for fear of jinxing it. So when I say the number out loud…

Fun With Stickers

Like with the Miata, the Mini has a forum for answering questions and bragging about how cool your car is. Well the other week I was poking around in the General Mini section when I came across a thread about some promotional stickers that the Mini marketing company produced back in the beginning of the “New” Mini, circa 2002. Somebody wanted to know where they could get some of them. The thread started back in 2014, but someone had resurrected with the same question just before Christmas.

I chimed in that I thought I could probably print some out on a plain vinyl sticker and put them in my CafePress store for a couple bucks. I spent a couple hours cleaning the image up and because of the size of the sticker and the available space I got to add another column of 4 sticker images from a different picture in the post. The base cost of a 3″ x 5″ sticker from CafePress is $2.99 and then they add $1.99 just to mail it to you. I added 2 cents to the base cost to make the total cost an even five bucks.

Before I posted a link to my creation on the forum I wanted to buy one and see how the finished product looked. My toggle switch label stickers arrived Friday. Yesterday I cut out a few and stuck them on the lower toggle switch panel. They actually look better in person than in the photo shows. Now all I need is 250 other people to buy one of my 3″ x 5″ labels and I’ll have recouped my cost of buying the sample one.

Retirement Banner

One of my collateral duties here at the Valve Store is Banner Maker to the People. Birthdays, Anniversaries, Baby Showers, Retirements, etc, if someone asks they will get a 3′ x 4′ full color banner printed out on my 42″ wide HP800 plotter. I have a few stock ones that I drag out, but most of the time I try to design something unique with a fancy font and incorporate the person’s personal interests somehow.

It was a slow Friday afternoon so today I decided to go ahead and design the last retirement banner I’ll ever print.

No More CEL

At about three o’clock I got a call from Jason at Newton’s Automotive, the Mini was ready to be picked up. He did a little research about the P2177 code on Minis on some auto mechanic forums and found the same thing I did on the enthusiast’s forums; the code is always associated with cars that have a very rough idle or failing to start. Neither of which the Ladybug suffered from.

He cleared the code, took the car for a spin and the light didn’t reappear. He told us that if it does come back, bring the car in and leave it for a while to give him a chance to do some in depth troubleshooting before he starts changing things out.

So, with our shiny new oil filter and four and a half quarts of pristine synthetic oil, Donna in the Mini chased me in the Miata back home.

P2177

The empty can with an exclamation point inside wasn’t the only light that appeared on the Mini’s speedometer yesterday.

After lunch Donna went to the other side of town for her allergy shot. On the way back home she noticed that to go along with the tire pressure warning light there was one that she recognized right away. It was the one that preceded the downfall of the Emperor, the check engine light.

When I got home, after filling all the tires up with air, I downloaded the Torque Lite app onto the phone, took my bluetooth OBD2 scanner out to the Mini and found out the Ladybug was suffering from a P2177, AKA: System Too Lean Off Idle Bank 1. So I Googled “P2177 Mini” and got a couple dozen hits on forums, but almost all of them included other codes and scary symptoms like won’t start & rough idle. Some of the cures sounded even scarier like replacing the high pressure fuel pump or pulling the cylinder head of to de-coke the guts of the motor. Or my favorite, multiple dealer visits with still no resolution.

To fully reset the low tire pressure system you need to drive the car around for a few minutes for the sensors to calibrate to the new pressures. So, I started the car, it fired right up. It idled fine. Donna hopped in and we went for a couple mile drive around the neighborhood with no problem. Not wanting to take any chances, we called up Newton’s Automotive and we dropped off the car tonight for an oil chance and some diagnostic work.

Empty Can with an Exclamation Point Inside

The Miata resides in the garage while the Mini sleeps outside. Monday night it was cold as all get out, so I was not really surprised when Donna called me from the gym to tell me she had a light on the Mini’s speedometer that looked like an empty can with an exclamation point inside. The small info screen on the tachometer also indicated that the right front tire was low.

It was obvious that the tire wasn’t flat or she wouldn’t have made to the gym, but I asked her to take a look at the tire and see if it was noticeably lower looking. It wasn’t, so I told her I’d fill them up when I got home.

The sticker inside the driver’s door said the tires were supposed to be set at 33 p.s.i. The right front had 28, the right rear had 30, the left rear had 29 and the left front had 30 p.s.i. I dragged out the long extension cord and my little air compressor and filled all four tires up to 34 pounds.

After I rolled up the 50′ extension cord, stored away the air compressor and was nice and warm inside the house I realized I didn’t check the tire pressure in the spare. I wonder if it has ever been checked since October 4th 2012 when the car rolled off the assembly line. Better put that on my list to do tomorrow.