Maintenance: required vs. recommended (your thoughts?)
 

For those who are still covered by included maintenance (or extended maintenance) and also by warranty (standard or extended) what are your feelings for paying for "recommended" maintenance (i.e. Fuel Injector Flush) vs. just having the required maintenance done and, should problems arise, trust they will be fixed under warranty?

my feeling are if it's not in the owners manual it's not required.

±1

If there is another dealer in your area try them.

Your current dealer just demonstrated they cannot be trusted, especially once maintenance is on your dime.

Just playing devils advocate here (and doesn't directly relate to the OP) but the same owners manual tells us to change oil at 10k. :wink: Of course it can be compared to the Bible, in that its open to interpretation :grin:

Anyway, back to the OP. The 'recommended' maintenance really depends on what they are recommendings. I see the fuel injector flush you gave as an example. Skip that, just pick up some seafoam or BG44K and dump that into your tank, you'll be fine.

What else are they 'recommending' you to do? And how many miles do you have on your Coupe?

Thanks for the feedback.

The car is a non-S at about 29,000 mi.

At this point they are recommending the Fuel Injector Service and an alignment.

If it's under warranty, it's under warranty. Not paying for a 'recommended service' doesn't void a warranty.
That said, I wouldn't bother with a 'Fuel Injector Service', especially if you use a quality gasoline. If I were going to check my alignment, it wouldn't be at the dealer, and I've had pretty good luck just keeping an eye on the tread.

Agreed with the above. Unless you're using garbage gas, then don't worry about a fuel injector service. Alignment, unless they gave a reason, is not needed. Unless you're hitting curbs, large pot holes, or going over speed bumps too fast, your alignment should stay the same.

I was referring to if it was needed to keep your warranty . I change oil more often then required.

It's the talk of injector cleaning and walnut blasting that MINI tries to get us to pay that I say no to. I hear people being told walnut blasting is a maint item and not covered by warranty, I say show me the maint schedule in the manual for that please, oh it's not there, then its a warranty issue, thank you

I put a can of techron in the tank of both my MINI's at oil changes, can't hurt.

I'm pretty sure MINI will cover the walnut shell cleaning under warranty if it gets bad enough to trigger a CEL, cause a rough running engine, etc.

The references to treating it like a maintenance item is for when your MINI is no longer covered by a warranty. Eventually you will need to get the valves cleaned. Plan for it by assuming you'll need to spring $300 - $400 every 50k miles or so or figure out how to DIY.

I would not bother with injector cleaning by the dealership or any mechanic. Run some Techron or whatever your favorite fuel injector cleaner is through a tank of gas on occasion. Any benefit is going to be minimal at best and limited to the injectors themselves.

The N18 Justa engines aren't known for a lot of carbon build up. So its slim that they would ever trip a CEL and get a walnut blast for free. And chances are the OP could go longer than 50k if they wanted, since the N18 has a different pcv system.

My top requirements for keeping your MINI alive is: oil changes, brake flush, coolant flush, transmission flush, spark plugs, intake filter cleaned(once a year, if not using stock panel filters), and tire rotations to keep your tires a lot longer:wink:. Other than that, I'm sure you'll be fine, if not, time for a tune up if you're not the first owner(mentioning to others, not the OP).