So, I was driving to work the other morning and at a light I go to accelerate and hear a quick metallic sound and suddenly the CEL comes on and the car has very little power. No weird noises after that. CEL went on and off as I limped to the dealer. I thought it was a carbon issue as I'd been having rough idles at startup the last few weeks and I already had my timing chain replaced about 12k miles ago. I get a call from the dealership this morning and my MA says they think it's turbo related. I was a little surprised and now I'm also worried. I've had the FORGE VTA diverter valve plate installed for maybe 9 months on my '09 R55S. I never heard any compressor surge or weird turbo noise previously. Now I'm afraid they will say the VTA caused the turbo to fail and not cover it under warranty. The car only has 38k miles. Anybody with any experience or a guess as to what I broke in the turbo? The only bright side is I love the Countryman loaner I have...

 

They could say it caused the problem if A) they are jerks and just want to avoid a warranty claim or B) it actually caused an issue. I wouldn't worry to much yet though. If a VTA DV or plate is causing an issue with performance it's usually isolated to the diverter system it self and can be fixed by simply correcting an install error, replacing defective parts like vacuum lines / seals, or just putting the stock diverted valve back on. Installed and used as intended I've yet to see a DV or VTA plate cause any physical damage so the odds that it caused an expensive repair are low. Depending on what they find you may have to pay the tech to swap the part out for your stock one if the DV is the problem.

With that said if the turbo it self is having issues it will most likely be from lack of oil as that has been the more common of turbo killers for MINI's. Your DV would really have no effect on that so it shouldn't cause a warranty issue if that proves to be the reason, but like I said they could be jerks about if they really want to.

 

Great reply Mike. That makes me feel much better. The metallic ping I heard when the turbo gave out leads me to agree with an oil feed issue. If they wanna be jerks I can be a jerk right back and get it taken care of. If the VTA plate actually caused the damage then I can own up to the issue being my fault and swallow the cost. Won't hear back from them until Monday at the earliest. The waiting is painful... The hardest part of having to replace parts if it was my fault will easily be explaining to my wife what happened...