Hi All,

This is my first post. I have a 2-year-old green Mini with a white top. Love it! Had to have it!! I liked the new Beetle a lot and tried to win one in contests. But when the Mini Coopers showed up, I had to have one! And it worked; my husband liked it, too.

Well, last Saturday we had a big storm and I drove through some water that I thought was fine, probably @ 4". But it is hard to say how deep it was. It stalled and I was pushed to the side of the road by the firemen. Later my family came and got me...we pushed the Mini up into a parking lot overnight. The next day it would not start and was towed to the dealer.

That was Sunday. On Wednesday morning I called and they still hadn't looked at it. He mentioned insurance. I said, "Oh, I'm not going to use the insurance becuase my deductible is $1000." He said, "It's going to be more than that--you are going to need a new engine." This is BEFORE they looked at the car.

Sure enough, when he called on Thursday morning he said I need a new engine; that water had gone in through the air intake.

I find this hard to believe. The car was not submerged. The car was not in deep enough to have water come into the car. If it is so easy to get water into the air intake, why doesn't that happen when you go through a car wash?

Of course I can't take the car anyplace else to have it examined because the nearest places are far far away.

I hope the claims adjuster knows what he is doing when he looks at the car.

Shouldn't this be covered by the warranty? Or next time it rains should I just walk? Because shouldn't you be able to drive through some water?

 

What was your speed when you drove thru the "4 inches of water"? Unless you crept thru it, you're gonna get water in the intake. Did you read the Owner's Manual? I"m sorry about this, but this is a case of Pilot Error.

 

Alas, the owner's manual is in the glovebox, which is 1 hour and 15 minutes away at the repair shop.

I am doomed.......

 

I have heard of this as a design problem with the Cooper - the instake being too low or something making the car ridiculously susceptible to water intake/engine problems. I had thought that it might have been fixed in the newer MCs ( I could be wrong tho), but of course that will not help you.

I did a quick search and found a couple of other people with the same complaints - http://consumeraffairs.com/automotive/mini.html - and I'm sure Mini2 will also yield more info.

Check around, and perhaps file something with the http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/problems/

Best of luck

 

Thanks!

I think they should give me a new car.

 

I think people should have enough common sense not to plow through deep water.

 

according to the MINI acceptance testing, it should be able to ford ~ 1 ft of water. 4 or 5" really shouldn't cause water ingestion.

of course, if any of the fans throw water into intake, all bets are off.

 

From the Owner's Manual...

"Do not drive through water on the road if it is deeper than 1ft/30cm, and then only at walking speed at the most. Otherwise, the vehicle's engine, the electrical systems and the transmission may be damaged."

 

It will if you are going the right speed, or steer/change speed just right and throw off a good splash.

 

i'm really surprised that this is a problem. the air intake is fairly high up in the engine compartment and it seems fairly well protected.

of course, my other two vehicles are a forester and a low technology LR series I disco.
as i recall, the forester also has the 1ft of water fording limit
and it's certainly splashed thru 4" deep puddles at 30 mph + speeds.

(there are certain streets that tend to flood since the culverts are blocked
off to prevent soil runoff entering the sewer systems during construction)

the mini's aren't like my old mitsubishi gsx where the air intake is mounted in the wheelwell
(definite water ingestion possibility)

 

Since this question hasn't been answered, I'm guessing that the speed was faster than "walking speed."

 

same thing happened to me last year while i was living in florida. new engine also. i definitely feel your pain.

 

Ummm - Forester = 'cute-ute' & LR Disco = major off-road ute. Either of these will be able to handle water much better than a MINI.

I'm also curious as to what the speed was through the water. . .splashing and/or plowing would be bad. . .

 

My wife hit a deep 4-6" puddle at about 30mph. Car sputtered for few seconds, all the warning lights started to flash. She got through to the other side, pulled over and turned the car off, by this time it was idleing kinda rough. Restarted the car, all lights went off, idle smoothed out. She definately knows she got lucky and now creeps through standing water and if is doubt of its depth will pull over and let someone else go first so she can guage it. I have the HAI mod and even w/ the downpours here in NE Florida haven't had any problems. I think you either have to be hauling butt or catch a real unlucky break.

 

my old vw jetta gli used to do exactly that when the alternator belt got wet.(stumble, warning lights, rough idle). these problems went away after
i got the dealer to put the splash guard that they had left off back on.

 

my 91 passat used to break belts in the rain....for some reason it would snap belts in half when ever it got in the rain.....


it broke a gatorback, something must have been seriously wrong! lol

 

If it was less than 1 foot of water, then why would this not be covered by the warranty? You did what the owner's manual permits.

I'd send a letter to Mini making a formal written claim under the warranty. I'd tell them that the water you drove through was significantly less than one foot deep, and other cars had no problems going through the same area. You had no reason to know that the Mini had any special limitations. After the dealer informed you that the repair would not be covered by the warranty, you discovered on bulletin boards that the mini has a design defect making it highly susceptable to damage from water. If they are not willing to honor the warranty, ask them to explain specifically why your claim is being denied. If the car failed in ordinary use in accordance with the owner's manual, the repair should be covered under warranty. I'd also copy the dealer on the letter.

If they refuse to cover it without good cause, I'd investigate whether your small claims court limits in your jurisdiction are high enough to cover the repair (some states are $5,000-10,000). If not, you may need to consult with a lawyer. I think you can recover legal fees if you win under the mag-moss act. But they may voluntarily cover it. I think they should cover it unless you were really driving at high speed into a lake.

 

With all due respect, no, they shouldn't. They should cover it if the water was less than a foot deep, and this person was driving at walking speed. That's what the manual says. I don't want my car insurance premiums going up because other people don't bother to read their car's manuals. (I'm not saying that the person who started this thread didn't; I just suspect it since they haven't explicitly said that they were following the manual exactly.)

 

Quit being so harsh!

BRG MINI

Sad news, I never saw that in the manual either. Hope everything works out.
Thanks for the heads up, I drove jeeps for years and might have done that for fun.

Good luck.

 

No, Chrisnl - my interpretation of the quote from the manual is that speed is only relevant if you're driving through a foot deep of water (which is very deep).

Do not drive through water on the road if it is deeper than 1ft/30cm, and then only at walking speed at the most.

I'm not sure what they meant by this, but it's far from clear how slow you must go if the water is less than a foot deep. How fast can you drive through 6 inches of water? Two inches? An inch? A puddle? It's a crummy warning burried in the owners manual. If they want you to go at walking speed through an inch or two of water, they should say that clearly. They didn't.

If you're driving at normal speeds through a few inches of water (as the poster suggested), the manual gives no warning about any special risks. I'm sorry but our cars should not fail driving through a few inches of water, even at high speed. If they fail as a result of a fluke, it should be covered by warranty. If they file as a result of a design defect, they should be covered by warranty. Either way, they should be covered.

Obviously, my statement about a lake was meant to be funny. If the poster drove through a foot of water, there is a problem. But a foot of water is a lot. A few inches is not a lot. I've seen other posts like this from people who say it was only a few inches deep.

 

I totally agree! When I read the manual and posted the quote from it, I thought...what the heck does this mean??

Really badly written and very ambiguous. Don't drive through water more than 1 foot deep, but if you do (and you have just been specifically instructed not to), then drive only at a walking pace!

 

I think there's more common sense involved here than you guys are admitting. Think about where the air intake is on these cars. How high is is to the top of the bumper - 18", maybe? The intake is practically right there. All the manual is saying is that you don't want to drive quickly enough through water to get a heavy spray of water up to that level. If the water level is just below there (i.e. a foot), then anything faster than walking speed is going to make such a spray pretty likely. Unfortunately, they can't detail every kind of situation between a dry road and a foot deep pool, so you need to use your brain.

In the continued absence of the original poster from this thread, I'm going to continue my line of reasoning and guess that the puddle in question was deeper than 4 inches. How about 6 or 8? Here's what they said:

"Well, last Saturday we had a big storm and I drove through some water that I thought was fine, probably @ 4". But it is hard to say how deep it was. It stalled and I was pushed to the side of the road by the firemen."

If there's been a big storm and there are firemen pushing cars out of flooded streets, who knows how deep it was? It sounds to me like they just plowed right in there like all the other yahoos, and ran up against a limitation of our cars that they would have known about if they read the manual.

I'm sorry if I seem harsh or unsympathetic, but this is an avoidable problem. If you drive your MINI into deep water without making SURE it's not getting into the intake, you're rolling the dice.

 

That's not at all what it says. I'll be the first to admit that the MINI manual is full of BS lawyer CYA garbage, but I don't think that this warning should be so hard to understand.

 

Truth hurts. I'm not harsh, I'm real. If someone can't read a manual...don't know what to tell you. If you don't know not to plow into standing water...you probably also make other bad choices on the road. Who cares what you did in a Jeep - a Mini is not a Jeep.

 

If you read the first words of BRG MINI's post it says;

"Hi All,

This is my first post...."

I also see they have not posted again. That is my point.

I see that your posts generally run with the same tone. You say that "I'm not harsh, I'm real", in society it might be nice if maybe everyone was not so "real" all the time. You also said "Who cares what you did..." That is really the point of NAM. Most people do actually care what others do. You are right, it is a MINI not a Jeep, however, without BRG MINI's post, I may not have remembered. That is the value of the lessons here. Keep in mind, the rest of us are not perfect.

As for the real point of the thread; Regardless of the nuances of the owner’s manual, I hope BGR MINI gets some help from the dealer and is back on the road soon. :smile: