Hi all! I am new here so let's introduce myself. My name is Niels and I am an 18 year-old who just bought his first car. it's a 2007 n14 Mini Cooper s. sadly it started acting up and doing some weird stuff. it all kinda started when the battery was flat. i ordered a new one but it took 3 months to get here. when I eventually got the battery, I installed it and fired up the car. at first it ran fine but after 5 - 10 seconds started to jumped shake around like crazy and then shut off with the car giving me half a check engine light. I must say it's worse when it's cold outside. but if I keep starting it and it gets warm, it idles fine. until I rev the car up, it'll rev uncontrollably and keeps floating. when I let go of the gas the engine turns off. I also can't see the coolant temp anymore (which I could see a few weeks ago). and changed it for a new one without any luck. it just says ***ºC. I went ahead and got an ISTA device and read the codes from the car. it had like 18 codes, but then cleared them all. there were 2 codes left after that: knock sensor and super knock. im thinking about the timing chain, tensioner, spark plugs, coil packs or the HPFP. I also have some videos from how the car acts. I do apologise for my English but i'm Duch. if you watch the video to the end you can see it does some weird things. it also sounds like a diesel engine or something. I really want it to work again. as I just got my license and now I can drive on my own.

 

I would lean toward an ignition problem like a bad coil pack because in your first video you have an obvious miss causing the engine to stumble badly and then stall. You should be receiving a misfire code from your OBD II reader. If it is a misfire code, try switching the identified cylinder coil pack to another cylinder and see if the OBD II code moves to that cylinder. That will identify a bad coil pack and that may be all you need to change. It's also possible that you have multiple bad coil packs. Good luck.

 

hi! thanks for looking into my problem. I have read the car and it didn't give me misfire codes (what I thought was strange). the coils packs do look rusty or orange like. and I have no idea how old the spark plugs are. ill took into changing them, although I don't have the right tools to get the spark plugs removed. do you think this could be related to the timingchain? and does a misfire cause half an engine light to come on?

thanks

 

I would start with the least expensive repair. That would be your spark plugs but I doubt they are the problem. Before replacement, you might try removing and re-gapping the plugs to see if that makes a difference. If your engine skipped timing you would be experiencing much worse problems. i.e., a valve hitting a piston. I have an R53 so our engines are different. Hopefully, someone with a 2007 N14 will weigh in here with good advice.

 

hi, I've changed the coil packs, but that doesn't make any difference. ive also bought new spark plugs but I still have to install them. im thinking its a hpfp related problem, because the symptoms line up with what I'm reading online. I see the prices range from €80 - €800 so that's a bit confusing. I don't have the right tools to replace the spark plugs yet.