To be honest, that wouldn't be such a bad thing. They replaced the HPFP 11 months ago...and it would be an easier discussion on who pays for the repair.

Odd that a potential failed part that is 11 months old is looked at as the possible silver lining here.

 

No, that would be a GREAT thing, as it's warrantied for 150K (IIRC). When mine failed at 36K, I got a new HPFP, new cats, and the walnut shell cleaning (the 15 miles I drove my car home really built up a lot of carbon... I got about 3 mpg), all covered by MINI.

 

My Mini Cooper Super S 2007 was diagnosed with carbon buildup. Mileage is at 118,000+. Cost was $700 to clean but I didn't do it. The check engine light came on and stayed on, but I noticed NO CHANGE in performance of auto, until 6 mths later when another light came up indicating there was a loss in power, and in fact, there was. Drove it home going around 60 mph (down from 82mph). Put the car in the mechanic's shop today. Waiting for valve job completion. Will give me pictures of inside engine and I will post them here. Note: if you see a link here do not use it - it hangs, just go to my next post and click on each picture to maximize. A hole happened in one of the valves. Don't know how this happened.

 

Here are two pictures:

 

This happened because the valves had so much carbon on them that at least one couldn't close completely. My thoughts are your $700 saved by not doing a needed carbon cleaning cost you a whole lot more for the valve job.

 

You are saying that the hole was caused by the valve not being able to close properly? Do please explain how a 'hole' could happen because it couldn't close properly? Yes, of course you are right. I have definitely learned a lesson! The valve job is costing $1,324 which is very low for this type of work. What I have bought with that also is the great knowledge picked up from this thread, and my personal experience. In short, if the light comes on, even if there are no symptoms, take care of it asap!

 

Did the pressure literally push a hole through the valve, or did it cook the valve and become brittle and break off? Sent from my iPhone using NAMotoring

 

If the valve couldn't close all the way, then it would be stressed by the uneven pressures from incomplete support behind it and combustion before it. Stress fractures would follow and eventually, as we see, the part started coming apart. Heck of a cautionary tale!

$1300 seems like a very fair price for the amount of work that goes into this repair, btw. Still, what a bummer. Hell of a holiday event. :-(

 

Thats awful. Sorry it happened, especially this time of the year. Hope all goes well with the repairs.

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So, uneven pressures due to carbon buildup. Yes, indeed, a lovely cautionary tail for Christmas...still, it IS a gift because who can get that job done for so little?! I get the car back tomorrow. It will be a 3 day job. My nephew seems to think that I will continue to have issues because
"[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3][FONT=Arial][SIZE=2] these heads and valves must be made of cheap material for a hole to have blown through a valve like that. Its as if there was some debris floating around in the engine. Although I suspect it is the cause of inferior head and valve material; in turn could be the cause of why excessive build up of Carbon seems to want to cling to valves and interior engine components; rather then burning up in the combustion chamber and eventually proceeding through exhaust. Glad its not costing you a whole lot to get it fixed. However I am of still the same mind set that there is something seriously up with the design and material of these engines, and wayyyyyyyyyy to many cases of people with reoccurring problems, and in that regard I still would be looking to sell the car and look at another Manufacture all together. "

Much has been said about the causes of the carbon buildup, but I don't think the above reason was part of it...

Well, I will be KEEPING my Mini - love it too much!
[/SIZE][/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT]

 

You don't have to look far to find more carbon deposits, intake runners and the back of your valves. Why, because of the direct injection there is not injecter to spray cleaning solvents onto the back of the valve, it's here where the carbon builds up on the back of the valve stem and can prevent it from closing all the way.

It has nothing to do with inferior metals, when you have high pressures from boosted engine any valve not closed all the way will have damage after some amount of time. My combustion chambers aren't that bad because I'm taking special attention to them keeping them clean and having my intake runners and valves walnut blasted every 20-30k.

A couple of cans of BG 44K will keep those combustion chambers clean.

 

Mini recommends valve cleaning every year. They should perform that service for free since they don't tell you that upon purchase.

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Well, this is NEWS... for free? It's worth a try - a year from now....

 

Duly noted. Thank you. Walnut shells every 20-30 K and BG 44K for the combustion chambers cleanup. My mechanic says to replace the engine oil every 5,000 miles (even if synthetic is used) instead of the recommended 15,000K, and when I do this to clean the combustion chambers at the same time. Do you agree? And thanks so much for this valuable information!

 

Do you have an N14 or N18 engine? And no I don't think it's for free, but it should be.

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This is an official mini service bulletin. Read and take away what you think from it.

http://www.mini-power-forum.ch/attac...0&d=1322230494

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Ah, so my mind has become one-dimensional. So obvious you were joking! Who knows, maybe they will issue some recompense for this defect. I previously drove a Toyota for 450,000 before it needed a rebuilt engine. Sadly, this is not the case with Minis.
My Mini is an N14 but has always run beautifully until it suddenly didn't. No running rough, no mis-firing. The description in your link did not pertain to this particular mini.

 

My link is about all N14 engines installed in the MCS. what about the article doesn't pertain to your car?

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It all pertains, but I just didn't read far enough down... The beginning of the article indicated problem with misfiring and solution of same. But I read that as not being pertinent for my mini at this time. Further down there was useful information regarding leak down test, etc. and will keep for the future as info for the mechanic. I was especially interested in the actions to take to keep the valves cleaned. The whole article is on file for myself and the mechanic. How useful is this ? The ability to get information without someone's vested interest... Thank you again.

 

Glad it helped you. I found it interesting that they are recommending a yearly cleaning, that is customer pay, even though it should be a part of their maintenance plan, or a warranty item. It's crazy that the car is so prone to the buildup that every 20,000 miles or so your car needs to have 800-1200 bucks thrown at it to keep it running.

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I was not told this by my Mini Cooper dealer, i.e., that it should be part of routine maintenance. It should have been STRESSED that it would lead to engine trouble. I only found out through this thread... But really, does it make sense to consider that the design is fine and that one needs to remove the carbon every20,000 K or so? I personally don't think so. The design should be improved. It maybe well-known throughout the industry, but really that doesn't excuse a less than perfect design. Who knows maybe it has been improved since I bought my car back in 2007.

 

Interesting isn't it. To be honest, I've become somewhat jaded. I see that the bottom line is always about money, not integrity... It's good that we have so many folk having similar problems with carbon buildup, because as a group we could have some muscle to push back and have some responsible action taken by the manufacturer. I do not see why we have to pay for really what is shaping up to be a design flaw. If the engine and its components were better designed then we would not have this issue. I do not buy that just because it's a well-knownissue with direct-injection engines across the industry, that we must end up having to sink so much money as you say every year to keep the cars running.

 

It is crazy that the new BMW Group direct-injection engines still haven't incorporated port injection back into their design, like VW and Toyota have done. It would be an easy way to prevent this from happening, have happier customers, and probably improve all around performance. I bet BMW is just trying to boost their client pay maintenance work percentages to make it appear like their cars are more reliable than they really are. If they didn't have us locked into getting some work done that we had to pay for, their reliability ratings would be in the tubes, and it would be 90% warranty work, which means their cars are crap! But if 50% of their cars sold need carbon cleaning, they've got a sure fired way to even that out.

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You could always buy a car that uses a different type of fuel delivery.

 

Or maybe BMW could simply incorporate MPFI into their design and stop making their cars have enormous trade offs of ownership. GM cars aren't having terrible DI build up like these engines are having, so maybe it isn't the actual DI, but more of how it's designed to run.

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