Hey...

I slipped up and my MINI and I landed in a snowbank and raised up about 2 feet from the ground. It took over 4 hours of digging and buckets of hot water but she is now free. Yes I have winter tires and DSC and was driving 35 kmph. No it did not help me avert the problem...

Well the issue now is that I am free, but underneath where the snow was, there seems to be some green fluid that leaked out. It's a lime green and it was probably around the back of the engine compartment area? All the fluids are stock, I have not topped up anything myself. My windshield washer fluid is blue and all I've had serviced is oil.

So my question is, what fluid is green? And should I be concerned about it being in the snow and not in my MINI? She drove fine when I drove her back into the garage. (Yes, I got stuck on my road... how silly eh?)

 

Sounds like radiator fluid.....

 

Sounds like coolant to me, most important thing is check your resivoir and make sure you have enough in there.

Are you still within warranty?

 

Yes, my warranty is fine. I have 3.5 years or 50,000kms left for the main warranty.

Also, a member of my local MINI club (SOMC) mentioned that it could be antifreeze or power steering fluid... Argh..., that would complicate things... Is everything green in there??

I will check all of the fluids tomorrow in daylight. I've never really checked engine fluids much... I work at a dealership so I've always been taken care of, but I'm at home for Christmas and 200km from work so it will be quite a drive before I can ask the techs to take a peek for me. How do you know when the resevoir has the right amount? Should they all be pretty much full??

 

If you ran into a snow bank, I seriously doubt your warranty will cover any repairs.

That'd be like running over a piece of pipe in the road, getting a flat, and expecting Mini to replace the tire under warranty. Not likely..

 

The coolant(antifreeze) level is easest for me to check by grabbing a flashlight and sticking it over the open top, it lights everything up then if you look on the side (right when you facing engine bay) there are Min and Max lines, anywhere in there is good.
Power steering is a darker paler color, to check that unscrew the top wipe off the dipstck put it back in and you should have fluid on the middle tier.

You've got an 06 so I'm almost willing to say it's got a good chance of being the thermostat housing, in which cse it's a slow minor leak, might need to top up before going to the dealer, but under warranty with parts in stock, it should be a one maybe two hour job for the techs. That or a hose came loose, which might take a little longer to find but not a hard fix.

 

Thankyou so much for your help!!!! I will check tomorrow morning as the light in the garage makes it hard to see.

It's hard to tell if it's still leaking... The rest of the snow that caught up underneath has now melted so the garage floor is all wet. Would laying a sheet of white printer paper in the puddle pick up the green hue of the fluid if it was still leaking? Or?? Haha, just a crazy idea of mine.

I will post again tomorrow after I check it out

 

You can just need abarrier between the paper towel and the water


Left is very diluted coolant, right I think is PS fluid.

If the snow bank hurt something, then it's an ins. claim but if it's your themostat thats a common known MINI issue and the puddle left is the evidance of it.

 

I took some pictures of the snow that was underneath the car because at the time I was already quite concerned about the green liquid.

The pictures are the first 3 here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lilcoopr/

The brownish spot behind the green could be anything really.. I've been thinking that it was dirt from underneath the car? Maybe it's also another leaking liquid? When I was digging out, there was quite a bit of shaking going on because one wheel (front right) was very stubborn and even when it was pretty clear, it kept spinning, and that made the car shake a bit. Is it possible something just overflowed and maybe it's not a leak? Either way, I will know tomorrow when I check, but here are some pictures of the colours....

 

Hmmm that looks much more like power steering fluid,unless of course you're approaching the service life on and early 06 model, then it could be a dirty coolant, hard to tell until you report back tomorrow.

 

It's probably the same coolant leak that a lot of us are having: https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...d.php?t=118242

 

Ok an update... I didn't check it for a few days because I was honestly a bit scared!! And because it was Christmas and I was home and carpooled with my mum for boxing day shopping :P

Anyways, so I checked the coolant. Well, it seems like I don't have a working flashlight at the moment so I couldn't see the MIN/MAX levels. I see the line on the side inbetween the MINI/MAX and I assume that it is supposed to be in that range? Is there a measure on the inside too? From what I saw, and it wasn't much, it *seemed* to be in the right spot or close to it, and it looks blue because I wiped the cap off on a papertowel. So it's not "dirty coolant" then?? Or??

The next thing I checked was the power steering fluid. It was really difficult to get the cap off and I had to hold the container because it was making the hose it was attached to move slightly and I didn't want to use too much force and dislodge something. The PS fluid is the same green that I saw in the snow. Exact same colour. I wiped off the little dipstick and stuck it back in to check the level. It seems to be right between A and B according to the picture in this thread on MINI2: http://www.mini2.com/forum/maintenan...uid-level.html
It was quite hard to tell exactly where on the dipstick it was, so I tried it a couple times with a completely dried off dipstick and it seemed to be between A and B.

Everything looked rather normal on the inside. This is the first time I've opened the bonnet since the lodging in the snow event. I noticed random splatters of something all over the ... (is it the intercooler? the big plastic and metal thing right when you open the bonnet.. has the S logo on it.... sorry, I'm still learning ) and the MINI logo. And a bit in the surrounding area. I dabbed at it carefully to try and distinguish if it's some sort of fluid that exploded from somewhere in the engine bay or if it's condensation. I haven't done a very good engine bay cleaning lately (was saving that for the spring time) so it was dirty brownish. Maybe from the dirt? Or maybe from the fluid? There didn't seem to be excess residue on one of the fluid containers so maybe it's just condensation?

A quick peek underneath at the garage floor in the similar area of the spots in the first place wasn't so successful. It seems like all the water from the snow hasn't completely dried up yet so it's hard to tell if there is still a slow leak or not. I will reverse out of the garage in the morning (yes, I checked at 1am because I was having trouble sleeping worrying too much about if my baby Stella is broken!) and dab at the liquid on the garage floor to see if it's colourless or not...

Should I still ask my dealership to take a quick look at it? What could be the reason for my PS fluid dripping into the snow? I'm just still worried because isn't there a certain amount of liquid in there for a reason? And when some leaks out, it's probably because something is wrong..?