Does anyone else think that the heater does not work very well.

It's winter now and I have tried turning up the temperature setting to 28deg but the cabin still does not get very warm.

Heater is a little slow to warm up ~2-3 miles of driving. Wife has a BMW X3 and almost has instant heat. Mini heat is OK, but you have to drive the car to get it going. Sounds like if you have the heat maxed out, it should be blowing much hotter. I would visit the dealer and have it checked. Could be a faulty thermostat...but also could effect your engine.

Quite the opposite, actually. I find the heater to be very effective yet quiet. Huge improvement over my A3 which made a lot of noise but not a lot of air.

Check your engine temperature. If it's not warmed-up yet, neither will your heat be. Once the engine temp is into the normal range (it says "low" before that), the heat will be good. I use my seat heaters in the meantime. THEY are excellent, by the way. Hot!!

I agree with the OP. I don't find the MINI heater very effective. Given how small the car is, you'd think the heater on high would blast the heat out.

I don't find the seat heater very effective. When on high it takes a long time before I have to turn it down.

I also don't find the A/C to cool the car very quickly. As with the heater, it takes a long time before I have to turn it down.

I'll mention this to MINI service next time I am in. Maybe there is a thermostat issue.

Smaller vehicles with modern energy-efficient engines just don't make the amount of surplus heat that older vehicles used to. If it ain't making friction, it ain't making heat.

I wonder if it's a difference between auto a/c and the standard unit. On my standard unit the heat gets absurdly hot.

I have auto and it will run you out of the car.

It was a sunny 24 degree F day today and I drove about 150 miles with my heated seats on, the heat about medium, and the sunroof open. Long answer, but I've always thought the heater was fine.

A couple of things...
1. You are low on engine coolant and/or you have an air pocket at the heater core
2. Maybe your heater valve (lets engine coolant into the heater core) is not opening up correctly


Best of luck...


Motor on!

Today I noticed that when I turned my fan higher the heated seats became hotter. Does this state this any where in the manual. Because the seats with the higher fan worked a lot better to being nice and warm....

Funny. I was commenting to my wife the other day about how awesome the heater is. Far as i can tell, my heater works fine. I have automatic control and set driver side to 74 and pssngr to 76. I'm toasty warm. Don't usually even mess with the heated seats.

I sure hope my car's seat heaters don't do that. That would be stupid. My seat heaters are fine. My car heater rocks. Leave it alone!

I did nothing that is how it is program!

The seats are programmed to a set temp per each setting, independent of fan speed

I telling you today when I turned the fan to a higher speed the seats got warmer.

For which car? The non-F56 2014 JCW Coupe?

2015 f56

I thought mine was doing that last night too, but it wasn't. Like I said it would be sort of stupid to link those 2 different functions together.

Yes that's what I have. I realize it's a different car but many of the things are still shared.

Do these cars have an auxiliary heater? The only reason I ask is while browsing Sewell parts list I found a reference to 64119334416 (http://mini.sewellparts.com/oem-cata...-F56-2014.html) which appears to be an electric heater used in an i3.

I also noticed the alternator is rated at a mammoth 180 amps (http://mini.sewellparts.com/oem-cata...-F56-2014.html), though maybe this is normal for cars with electric steering.

The beefy alternator is most likely because of the idle-stop-start system. That's why the battery is also AGM instead of old style sealed lead-acid.

From a 2013 Nov. press release information, this is what I see:
F56 70Ah battery, 150A alternator.
F56S 80Ah battery, 150A alternator.

I suspect the alternator size is more likely to be the result of the 'brake energy regeneration' system, although that is allied to the auto stop/start. Since the battery is (mainly) charged when braking - so that it is using 'free' energy to restart the engine - it must be larger than usual since it has less time under load than a regular alternator charging system.

Battery is not charged when braking... There's no such thing as "brake energy regeneration" in our primitive auto stop/start system. Alternator generates power proportional to engine RPM. Your generates more power while driving. If you really want brake energy capture system, it's going to be a hybrid or a super capacitor setup where it requires additional hardware. They don't do this because it adds to cost and brake doesn't really generate that much energy to begin with.

You mean that BMW has been comprehensively lying in their technical descriptions of the charging system that has been fitted to all Minis since the early days of the R56? That the whole thing is a complete fabrication and in 6-7 years no-one has ever caught them out, despite being able to check by putting a voltmeter on the alternator output terminal? I guess that could be true, as I've never stuck a voltmeter on the alternator while driving.

Learning about alternators might be educational, as their output is dependent on the field current supplied to them, as well as on rpm. An alternator is not just an AC dynamo and the ability to control their output independently of rpm is one big reason for their use in all cars. BMW have said that the field current is, when possible, only energised when braking so that the energy to charge the battery is taken from the engine's inertia when fuel is not being supplied. So absolutely nothing to do with the stop/start system - I believe this charging system has been fitted to all R56s, even US-bound cars, since early in the R56 life (though not in the first year or two, I think).

It is a very clever idea, since it requires nothing that is not already present on a car except maybe to increase the alternator size and a bit of ECU coding.

In contrast a hybrid system is expensive to make and Prius owners who have instrumented their cars seem proud to convert as much a 10% of the car's kinetic energy into battery charge. Reports on the all-electric BMW i3 suggest that it does much more regenerative charging but has an odd braking feel from a closed accelerator as a result - the avoidance of which has been given as Toyota's reason for not achieving more regenerative charging.

Angib, where do you see such thing mentioned on a F56? I don't know anything about R56 (except MINIs had bad reputation on reliability) since this is my first MINI. I'd like to read more about it if you can point me to the right direction.
I read a lot of their technical write-ups and never once seen anything mentioned about brake energy recapturing in a MINI. Mazda uses super capacitors because there are not that much to be captured. With the captured energy they just provide some power for the accessories for a little bit.

The usefulness is also related to how much brake you use during a trip, but even if our cars had a brake energy recapturing system I don't think braking will do the majority of charging up your battery. Let's say you had a dead battery and did a jump start (assuming you don't have a AC charger). Would you rather takeoff-and-brake 100 times in a parking lot instead of running on a highway for an hour?
If brake energy capture was that effective and you capture that much energy back into the battery, you should also see much less brake wear and more odd feeling when braking.

I see there's a mention in wikipedia about this brake energy capturing that powers auto-idle-stop-start. But it says "all non-US vehicles", besides this is different from brake energy regenerative capturing. A link to the actual technology would be nice, but I figured that it's just a clutched alternator that's controlled by the ECU and nothing fancy. Okay, maybe a bit more intelligent ECU will be needed.

After reading some more at BMW.com, what it does to increase efficiency is when you accelerate it decouples the alternator (if you have enough battery already) and on a down hill or coasting when you let go of the gas pedal it couples the alternator back so it charges the battery. This won't be happening all the time.

This is far from brake-energy-regeneration. I hope this wasn't what you were referring to. If yes, then I think you were suckered into their marketing.