Anyone got work done when your engine light came on and it turned out to be a thermostat issue. And afterwords your radiator fan came on prrrretty much every time you turned off your car? Whether if you drived hard or not.

 

I never had a CEL when my thermostat went, and I can't say that I ever noticed the fan kicking on more. At least if it did I never really noticed it. The car just started overheating and going through insane amounts of coolant one day so I had it towed to the shop. And I never saw any more than a few drops on the ground...not sure if it dripped down onto something hot and just evaporated or what, but there was definitely not enough coolant on the ground to justify how much it was going through. Did you pull the code for the check engine light?

 

There are entire threads on the whole "fan keeps running" behavior, starting (or stopping) after a shop visit which would make me believe it's tied to some electronic control that gets reset / reprogrammed / changed in the course of other repairs / recalls.

My 2012 MCS always runs its cooling fan, loudly, about 60-90 seconds after the engine's off, and has since I got it in March, so that's "normal" behavior for mine. I figured it was goodness, helping whatever other measures are taken to cool down the turbo / its oil line / anything else in the neighborhood.

"Your car's still running". Yeah, I know. Give it a minute.

 

i got the CEL at about 7,200 miles and it was for a faulty thermostat.

i do notice the fan does run more frequently after turning the car off, but it's also summer in south florida. it never stays on for more than a minute.

 

My light came on around 17K miles. And I tried to get it checked out, called two dealerships around me and they wanted me to take it in the next day. Cuz of work and the time I start, that wasn't feasible. Called a third and success!

I tried to look for a CEL number, couldn't figure it out and how to look for it.

So at the third dealership, they looked at the car and the guy comes back and says it's the Thermostat issue.

So I made an appointment with one close to my house, got a Loaner( BMW 3 Series - Didn't like the throttle response). When I pick it up, the service guy says that they replaced the thermostat added an adapter/harness added some coolant and adjusted/messed with the ECU.

So since then, driving to and from work 24 miles/30mins away, it kicks on for about 40sec, but its already on by the time I park in a stall. Had one time where it stayed on 2min 11sec, another time it kicked on about 20 sec after I got out of the car, that was a short time too.

In the 17 months I had my car, I thought it was norm that it never kicked on. Maybe it would as I was driving or something but not pretty much evey time I drive my car now. Now it's making me think whether my car was running hotter than I thought it was.

 

Jolio, my MCS is the N18 model like yours, but 'born' in Feb '12.

The MCS fan always comes on slowly with the a/c on; you wouldn't hear it. When you can hear it, it's at its fastest 'cool me quickly' speed to stop the engine overheating. From day 1 I found the high speed fan running continually (I'm in UK) when the engine warmed up after ~ 8mls or so and coming in quicker as the weather got warmer. Road noise + radio etc makes it easy to miss...but you know it when you park up and switch off, don't you? (I had no warning light.)

During May/June I kept taking mine back, weekly, to the dealer (I refused to believe their 'feature of the model' blandishment) and they put a new thermostat in on visits 1 (they say) and 4 (certainly, new coolant too). Now it runs fine with no high speed fan noise. I used an OBDII reader plugged into a small lap-top to monitor temps and it now runs about 8 deg cooler at ~217degF.

Most techs I spoke to said it should never run high speed unless you're stuck in traffic on a really hot day. They also said it can come on after switch-off for ~60s on a really hot day if you drive it really hard; more like your temps in CA?

I recently read of a thermostat recall on other N18's on NAM and suspect that getting a faulty 'stat from new is as likely as flipping a coin...

Hope this helps; good luck getting it 'sorted'. Get the dealer to warm it up alongside another N18 that 'behaves' properly; that's what made my dealer realise (finally) that mine was faulty despite my telling them that this was my 3rd R56 MCS and I had never even been aware of a high speed fan on the first two!