Greetings Mini friends!
I tried searching hopefully maybe others had run into this same issue, but didn't find much (lots of mentions of rattles and vibrations and squeaks, etc. though...).

My wife has a 2012 Countryman, we bought it about a year ago. It only has about 20,000 miles on it and for the most part has been lots of fun. There is just one issue that has been driving her crazy, and that is an intermittent rattle from the back seat area. It tends to happen more when it's cold, and generally goes away after a few miles, which is part of why it is intermittent and difficult to troubleshoot. Since it's still under warranty we've had it into the dealer probably 4 or 5 times, and each time they say either they can't reproduce it, or they do some "fix" like lubricating the seat bolts, finding a twisted seat belt, or something like that, but the rattle always comes back.

We've tried a number of things to fix it... we've tried hooking in the seat belts, just to make sure they aren't rattle against the trim. We've tried stuffing paper or cloth behind a number of "movable" parts in the area like some of the parts in the cargo area, but that hasn't helped either. About the only sure fire fix for the rattle is put the seats down, or at least partially down, in which case the rattle won't be there anymore. I'm thinking of taking it to a different mini dealership just ot see if they can find something idfferent, but unfortunately there aren't many to choose from in our area.

Any help to offer? Anything to try or tell the dealer to check?

 

You might need to turn up the volume to hear, but here is a video my wife took of when it was doing it...

 

I just recently had a similar 'rattle' in the rear of my 2011 and initially thought it was coming from just behind the rear seats. Couldn't find it there so checked all of the panels and then the licence plate with no success. I did finally find the problem and it was the clip that holds the rear bumper cover to the metal hangar on the drivers side. It had come loose and the bumper cover was banging against the hangar. Tightened them up and all is okay. I figured i likely caused the problem when using my boots to knock ice/snow out from under the bumper during the winter....

That said, my seat belt connectors occasionally hit against the side panels and rattled once in a while. I fixed that problem by wrapping a piece of foam around them.

 

Thanks Mikey, I will look into it but it definitely seems to be something in the seat area. Unfortunately since its somewhat intermittent it is also quite challenging to troubleshoot... we've had times where it'll be doing it so I'll get in the back seat to try to listen more carefully to see where it might be coming from, and then it stops making the noise... and its like having 8 smoke alarms right next to each other and trying to figure out which one is chirping "low battery", or maybe my hearing just isn't good enough to figure out a better idea of where its coming from...

 

Another video of the rattle from today...

 

I think the 'going away after a few minutes' might be your smoking gun. The exhaust warms up and expands as you drive the car. It may be that you have something touching your exhaust when it's cold, but then it expands. Have a mechanic put the car on a lift and shake the exhaust when it's cold. It might be something simple.

 

Thanks I will mention that to them as well as an idea.
I realized that the youtube videos posted were set to private, so not all that helpful probably, LOL. I've set them to public now, should be able to see them.

 

Well the dealership hsa the mini now. It's supposed to be pretty cold the next few days, so hopefully that might help troubleshoot. Told them to keep it as long as necessary to troubleshoot. Provided them with videos and a few other suggestions just in case.

 

So after about 5 visits to the mini dealership, I think we may have finally figured it out. They finally got it on a day it was doing it regularly, and were able to find the seat frame had a broken weld and a damaged bolt, or something like that... they said they needed to replace both the bottom and top of the seat frame, but only had parts for the bottom in the country, the back had to be ordered from Germany... so they went ahead and put in the bottom parts and we have had the car for a week or so now, and no noise from the back seat! Once the parts for the back of the seat frame arrive they will schedule a time to put that in as well, but so far, so good!

 

Thanks for the update, glad you found the issues.

 

Interestingly enough, after several months, the opposite seat in the back started making the same noise. We still had about a month left on the warranty (thank goodness!) and the dealer made a similar repair. Apparently whatever portion of the frame it was that was damaged, they had to take the seats out, take the seat covers off, and replace the frame entirely. Apparently there was damage to several of the bolt mounts of the frame. Disappointing.
Glad we were able to get it repaired under warranty, can't imagine how expensive ti would be without that...

 

I recently started hearing noise from the backseat when i went over bumps and before it got any worse i began searching for the noise it was the seatbelts hitting the frame everytime there was a bump. Make sure you slide the seatbelt all the way up and also slide up the clip that keeps the seatbelt from sliding down.