It went out on the way to work on Friday. I saw something on my back window and used the wipers to wipe it off and it just smeared. About 30 seconds later my oil light came on. I pulled over. I got out and saw oil everywhere. I used my mini roadside app on my phone and had it towed away.

2010 with just over 13K miles. I'm sad.

 

I understand their reluctance, but seems to me MINI really ought to seriously consider a recall to get these new tensioners tightened up properly. The negative publicity would be bad, but I'm starting to think the negative publicity of MINIs sitting on the side of the road covered in oil is going to be worse.

 

Holy crap. What a mess! My classic Mini did that to me once (spewed oil out). Not fun.

 

That is so painful to see...makes me even more thankful I was finally able to convince a dealer to do the bulletin. It really should not be this difficult MINI. Srsly!

 

Wow such few miles on it!

Its like it bled the death...

 

So what exactly happened? Did you have the cold start issue and did they not fix it properly? What is MINI doing with your car to fix it now?

 

I've never had an issue with my car at all. I had driven about 10 miles(20 minutes worth of driving) when it occurred. I just called and the car is done. They are trying to clean off the oil right now.

 

So what went wrong did they say?

 

^

How long was that motor running without oil or very little oil? This is getting very scary.

 

From the look of it, his tensioner backed out of the hole. The tensioner is fed by the engine's oil pressure, so if it backs out, even if it's not all the way out, oil under pressure will be blown out around the threads. It doesn't take a lot of oil to make a big mess - even a quart spread all over will make a huge mess.

Unless the engine ran out of oil to the point where it had no pressure, I doubt there's any internal damage.

 

The light come on and I pulled over asap. Maybe 10 seconds with the light on. The dealership said they are trying to get off the oil but it might need to be detailed. The said they would cut me a deal but I think Mini, not the dealership should pay for the detail since it was their part that failed causing the oil to go everywhere.

They said it was the tensioner. I'm not the kind of guy who is a pain in the butt. I got rid of my BMW because it had problems. I don't want this to lead to problems after my warranty expires at 30k.

 

What's the actual bulletin (link/number) again?

 

Chances are very good that you won't have any further problems, at least with the tensioner - the problem is due to improper assembly at the factory - the engine factory, not Oxford.

They just didn't tighten them properly when they built it, I'd feel pretty confident that the dealer did!

I also do not understand why MINI hasn't started if not a recall, at least a service bulletin on them, there have been enough problems with this just reported on this forum to warrant that, IMHO!

 

I just got my car back. They said it was a washer that came loose and that i had very little oil left. Almost none.

 

Your warranty runs out at 60,000 miles.

 

60k? why not 50k miles?