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cooper4us · Mar 6th, 2003, 07:56 PM

Just push the ge****lector to the right and when "SD" appears on the odometer LCD display, you are now in this "Middle" mode known as sport mode.

The minute you flick the gearshift selector either up (+) or down (-) you have entered "Steptronic" mode because the "SD" readout gets replaced by an actual gear number 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 and now you are in control of the shifting as the CVT is not longer doing it for you (But keep in mind that the CVT programming is fail safe to avoid damaging the engine or transmission, for instance if you are in "5th" gear in Steptronic mode and you forget to downshift as you approach a curve or are bringing the car to a standstill, the computer momentarily takes over and does the downshifting for you....you'll see that the computer downshifted the car to second gear because you forgot to do it yourself).

Also the failsafe program helps avoid overrreving the engine. The computer will not let you downshift to "second gear" when you are in 6th gear at 70+ MPH.

This CVT is so cool and chock full of interesting features, MINI should have wrote an entire separate manual just to detail all the goodies hidden in this tranny.

Have fun playing.

Mar 6th, 2003, 07:56 PM	#16
cooper4us MINI2 Master Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Florida Local Time: 05:16 AM Posts: 1,423 Offline	Just push the ge****lector to the right and when "SD" appears on the odometer LCD display, you are now in this "Middle" mode known as sport mode. The minute you flick the gearshift selector either up (+) or down (-) you have entered "Steptronic" mode because the "SD" readout gets replaced by an actual gear number 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 and now you are in control of the shifting as the CVT is not longer doing it for you (But keep in mind that the CVT programming is fail safe to avoid damaging the engine or transmission, for instance if you are in "5th" gear in Steptronic mode and you forget to downshift as you approach a curve or are bringing the car to a standstill, the computer momentarily takes over and does the downshifting for you....you'll see that the computer downshifted the car to second gear because you forgot to do it yourself). Also the failsafe program helps avoid overrreving the engine. The computer will not let you downshift to "second gear" when you are in 6th gear at 70+ MPH. This CVT is so cool and chock full of interesting features, MINI should have wrote an entire separate manual just to detail all the goodies hidden in this tranny. Have fun playing. '02 MINI Cooper CVT On Order: 2004 MCS (Est production date: 9/5/03)