I am hoping my experience is unusual. My car has been at the MINI dealer for 6 weeks now. Anyone beat that?

 

No, one week has been my max at a MINI dealer. That was for the timing chain tensioner problem. Took them a few days to reproduce the problem.

What is yours in for? Is it waiting for parts from Europe, or for a rep to arrive from MINI? Or, is it some horrific job?

 

So far, timing chain, head and now new pistons. Seems waiting for BMW to approve repairs is a major wait.

 

So, did the chain break? Sounds like some serious damage was done.

 

Timing chain didn't break, but tensioner was FUBAR. I am told the valves were warped and the piston rings were cracked. All I can think of it was running really lean.

 

Lean? Since it is direct injection, how would that happen? Since the valves were bent, sounds like the valve timing was so far off that valves hit the pistons.

 

How would you explain the rings cracking though? I thought that only happened with detonation from either lean or advanced timing. With all this, not a single check engine light.

 

8 weeks.
6 weeks because they failed to order a cable that they were waiting on... and after 4 weeks of me bugging they checked and found that they hadn't ordered it.. and it was the BST cable, and had to be truck freighted from cali (im in SC) then after they installed that, i had to have the strut un-mushroomed
which insurance said had to be done at a different shop, so mini took a day to drive it there, it sat in line there for a week till it was gotten to, then took mini 2 days to send someone to go and get it so mini could do the alignment, which took 4 hours...

my mom was going to get a clubman or a countryman when they came out until this happened...