The 19th saw us at The Mega MINI Meet at Lytham St Anne’s with the GP UK Owners Club. We have seen this stand many times over the years at various meet and have long wanted to have our own GP on the stand. Ten years later and its job done and we were made very welcome by all the guys on the stand. This is a friendly laid back meet and we enjoyed it a lot. The GP had great fun on its ride up from Malvern and it was good to see him finally on his proper number plates.
The installation is complete now. We failed in one are which was connecting the steering wheel controls. This is because I ordered the wrong lead twice and lost the will to live on that one. Also there is not much room behind the stereo for the extra box it uses, so we called it a day on that one. In truth the fascia is much more user friendly on this one. 18 DAB presets in in a bank of 6 push button presets and a quick switch to change between banks 1,2 and three are easy to do even in a bouncing GP.
Phone auto answers and calls are easy to do using the Siri connected voice recognition. Bluetooth music is a doddle, as is cd and usb music. The sound is as good as in the Opel GT, or better than the Mini Harmon Kardon of the JCW coupe. Put simply we are delighted with the upgrade.
The car finally feels like it belongs with its own 500 plates and a nod to it GP name.
Two modest changes prior to the Mega MINI meet at Lytham this weekend.
We are doing this in stages as we have left the head unit easy to remove for now. First we swapped the head and set it up for sound yesterday.
This has given us Bluetooth music which works beautifully and Bluetooth phone which uses the iPhone’s contact list and Siri for voice recognition calling. This stage of the install went well and the phone microphone has installed easily and also works very well. The voice recognition is excellent and using Siri it is better than the voice recognition on the Paceman and Coupe.
Next the DAB aerial arrived. So we removed the interior a-pillar trim and fitted the DaB aerial and plugged it in the rear of the radio. Removing the A-pillar was easy in the end. We undid the sun visor, two screws, pulled off the rubber trim from around the door and the pulled off the a trim from the top with a hard but scary yank. This was because the Dab aerial is a small box and aerial which pastes to the window and an extension strip which earths to the metal behind the a pillar.
The photos by the way are purely because they are all from my best angle! Next we set up the DAB radio and this seems to work a treat. The FM is not working yet but it didn’t before. This is because we need to take off the stubby aerial on the roof and put the original back. Alas we just cannot get the current one off so that is another job.
Delighted with the new radio features. Last bit to do is to get the steering wheel controls talking to it.
Finally (and thanks to M1RVW of MINI Clubman fame for reminding me to get them) ThunderBeast our R53 MINI GP will shortly me sporting his 500 plates which he shares with:
We have decided to add some blue tooth phone and music functionality, DAB radio and remote control from the steering wheel to our GP. A few adapter cables have also been ordered.
All should be well in theory but it’s starting to look complicated on the wiring front for my poor brain. Will let you know how the install goes once I have all the bits and have had a crack at it.
AutoBeast 