i have been trying to get her to sell it. no luck so far...
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Mini Cooper S
- Thread starter truck56
- Start date
I owned a 2006 S…. Biggest P O S II have ever owned
Mrs Roundhouse just bought a 2011 turbo six speed manual , 40k miles , came with slotted rotors ceramic pads , HID headlights , fresh air intake and a borla exhaust installed . The borla exhaust sounds soooo good and as you’ve discovered , it’s the fastest car ever.
Order the oil change kit online with the factory filter and royal purple oil
And get the vacuum pump thing to suck the oil out the dipstick tube .
It’s just like a pump up garden sprayer but backwards , pumping created a vacuum and it pulls the oil out .
And CHECK THE OIL every few days .
Check the oil when you get gas , never pass up a chance to check the oil .
It only holds four quarts ,the turbo cars use oil , if it gets a little low , it doesn’t take most oil consumption to only have three quarts in it, and that ain’t good
a few years ago everyone used to check the oil and look around under the hood in every car , while the gas was pumping .
The dipstick is brown plastic and it’s very very hard to read the level .
Find a donut spare tire to slide in the floor behind the passenger front seat for long trips , cause the turbo ones don’t have a spare tire , the exhaust is where the spare tire goes .
When I get time later I will post your some useful forums for minis.
Buy a Bosch Bluetooth code reader , they are super handy in any car , and there’s a bmw / mini specific code reader that you need , lemme see if I can find the details on that .
Just keep in mind that it’s a fun European sports car that’s out of warranty , and fun costs money .
It’s a car designed by BMW, assembled in the England with a Peugeot engine.
What’s could possibly go wrong ?
No European car is ever going to be as reliable as a Honda or Toyota or Kia .
If you’re a decent shade tree mechanic you can do a lot of stuff yourself , and you need to find a mechanic that works on minis , on the side at home .
We are still looking for someone for the big jobs I don’t want to do or stuff that requires expensive one time use tools .
When the missus was driving a Volkswagen turbo diesel We found a guy about 40 miles away that . He was a mechanic at delta and worked on V W diesels as a side job at home .
The other things mentioned , walnut shell blasting the intake valves and the fuel pump etc , and known problems that rear their head on some cars
The walnut shell thing and the fuel pump problems is because of the CAFE requirements and the car makers trying to squeeze another mile to the gallon .and most carmakers have gone to this .
The gasoline is injected directly into the cylinders , like in a diesel . More power and uses less gas , but the gas isn’t getting sprayed onto the intake valves to keep them cool and wash off the soot and keep them clean .
The soot comes from the EGR, the exhaust gas recirculation , a process that’s been used for decades and works fine if you have regular fuel injection .
The EGR blows some exhaust gas back into the engine and actually helps performance and it lowers pollution .
When your engine gets some miles on it and starts using oil , that burned oil gets recirculated back into the engine air intake and gets stuck on the intake valves and there’s no gasoline spray on them to wash it off .
The bmw shop near me does the walnut blasting for about $650
You can get one of those camera scopes that hook an a smart phone and look at the intake valves and see if it’s a problem .
And CHECK THE OIL .
A lot of minis use a quart every thousand miles. So if you never check the oil you can run it low in no time.
And change the oil every 3000 miles . Do NOT run longer than that . Turbo motors are hard on the oil.
Great post!
Check the oil! Best advice.
You're right, that dipstick is incredibly hard to read. What were they thinking?
This is another reason I’ve always enjoyed this site. Stranger helping a stranger. Thanks for the info.
North American motoring is the most popular forum for minis
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This is the oil change vacuum I use
You will need a new socket for the oil filter. It’s a oddball size
The oil filter is up top under the radiator overflow tank
You have to remove one bolt and flip the overflow tank out of the way to access the oil filter .
Go ahead and buy a dash cam and get a radar detector while your at it . That car is fast enough to get some attention.
This is the oil change vacuum I use
You will need a new socket for the oil filter. It’s a oddball size
The oil filter is up top under the radiator overflow tank
You have to remove one bolt and flip the overflow tank out of the way to access the oil filter .
Go ahead and buy a dash cam and get a radar detector while your at it . That car is fast enough to get some attention.
Yep I’ve already have had blue lights flashed at me a couple of times. It’s amazing that as small as it is that when you’re going 60 it feels like you’re barely moving. Just changed the oil in it. Not hard as I thought it was going to be. Little more difficult to get under than my son’s Chevy Cruze.
I couldn’t get the drain plug loose . And didn’t want to pull on it any harder .
I was after and it had been glued in because it was stripped or something
So I just got the vacuum deal , and it’s turned out to be super handy for cleaning out master cylinders and all kinds of stuff
This thing adds Bluetooth if your mini doesnt have it
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