You can trust the SLR not to leave you stranded, even when it tells you to stop the engine
If you’ve read the previous post, you know we’ve been through some challenges during the supercar rally. Long story short: The AC stopped working on the first day of the rally, which caused haunting flashbacks of Ed’s own experience during GoldRush. After temporarily fixing it, the SLR decided we have to stop it, while we were in a busy roundabout due to low oil pressure.
The SLR is generally bulletproof. Steady and ready under all circumstances, unlike its contemporaries from the 2000s. It gives you the feeling that nothing can go wrong and it’s not a car you have to worry too much about. It’s a proper GT supercar, which feels most comfortable at high speed. That’s when you can feel what this car is about - an engineering masterpiece.
If you’ve watched the content with the SLR on VINwiki’s channel, you’re familiar with some of the issues Ed was experiencing during his ownership. The main ones were: 1. AC issues; 2. Fuel pump malfunction and 3. The battery kept going flat.
It turned out all of these main issues were caused by the alternator and once we replaced it, the SLR was good as new. And in the spirit of transparency, the bill was 3000 BGN (or 1500 EUR). That was last year and since the alternator replacement, there haven’t been any issues whatsoever.
Until now. Just before the rally, I did something very stupid. The SLR hasn't been connected to a trickle charger for almost 2 months prior the rally. Such a big mistake, please, learn from it. It could have been one of the reasons why the AC stoped working. The low voltage can trigger all sorts of errors, including this one. The other possible reason - it didn’t have freon. In our case, it was the latter. But this was a good lesson not to leave it unconnected to a trickle charger again.
The second warning was a bit scarier - “Oil pressure low. Stop engine”. When you get this one, you must stop immediately. Since we were yet to take it to the shop, I can assure you 2 consecutive warnings and errors within one day made us anxious. This one turned out also to be a stupid one - the shop that was responsible for the routine maintenance actually forgot to change the oil. I don’t know how is that possible, but it was a relief at the same time.
All of this did cause some sweaty moments, but both of the issues were cause by human errors.
Basically, you can trust a McLaren not to leave you stranded. But you can’t trust that the shop won’t leave your McLaren without oil.