For starters I'm a new mini owner, originally bought the car for my wife, but it gave her sooooo many problems while I was deployed that she has disowned it. this may seem like a bad thing for some, but after driving this little beast I'm in love and can't get enough of it, and now its all mine lol. Yes this car has its problems, all common enough on first gen r53's, the random overheating at idle, the yo-yo, the rough cold starts, but I've made strides in the right direction to correcting these issues. I purchased the car for $5000 with 75000 miles on it so spending a little $ is no big deal. Here is how it has gone so far:

I deploy, meineke takes my wife for $2400 after the car overheats for a new waterpump, thermostat, injector (for a random misfire code) and spark plugs (they put in HOT cheap plugs with no anti seize grrrr). none of this fixed any problems. The wife makes due with the car (when the temp starts to rise, just press on the gas to about 3000 rpm for 10secs and it goes back down and stays there for awhile). I get home, empty and flush and refill the coolant sytem, bleed it of air (following the process outlined here in one of the threads) from both bleed valves and drive it for awhile, turns out the expansion tank cap is leaking, letting the coolant boil, turn to steam and escape, causing air/steam bubbles to build up in waterpump and voila overheat until you press gas pedal and break up the bubble with increased waterpump rpms. I order new OEM cap, install refill, bleed, car is fine for a bit but air keeps getting into system, no water in oil, no sweet smelling exhaust, no moisture in exhaust system, so no head gasket leak right? I'm thinking wrong, small leak that won't let water into the engine, but is just big enough to let the hot high pressure combustion gases into the coolant system, causing gasses to build up and heat to rise leading to overheating.
Going to do a sniffer test on the coolant to look for hydrocarbons to be sure. Okay so on to the hard start, only happens in colder (60 F or below) temps, and only after car is warm and then i try to restart it, causes random misfire codes on my code reader...bad HPFP, (notorious on our cars) is my guess, will order part and replace to make sure, BTW also replaced plugs, wires and coil (with OEM one). also will get leak down test done to ensure compression is good on all cylinders to rule that out. After all this I still LOVE THIS CAR lol and will use all this as a reason to rebuild it into the beast I know it can be. Anyway glad to be a part of this site.

 

Welcome aboard!

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Well hello and welcome to NAM, we love ya back!

Sir, thank you for your service to this country - and to that little MINI you love so much! Love your positive attitude.

Chris