Good morning,

I've had my '07 MCS for about a year now. Other than a flat over the summer, it's been a great car and I love it to death....up until the last week or so. While traveling over christmas break, I noticed that despite the fact it was in the 20s and 30s, the engine fan came on regularly. I checked my coolant levels and while a tad low, they weren't below the minimum (I added some, just to be safe). It kept up, but everything else seemed to be fine so I didn't worry about it too much. Flash forward to yesterday... It's about 25* in the morning when I'm driving to work. Usually it takes about 30 seconds to a minute before warm air starts blowing out. Warm didn't happen....ever. Even on HI, it just blew frigid air out of the vents. So I scheduled a trip to the service department for next week, but I'm still curious what these symptoms could be indicating. Like I said, I've been diligent about keeping my MCS up to date on maintenance and fluid changes. It has been a great little car, but it's definitely not making me happy when it's below freezing and I'm sitting on my hands at stop lights to stay warm. Thanks.

-Noah

 

Think it's got a bad temp sensor or something? maybe a faulty thermostat?

Spridget

 

I was thinking that, but would that cause the heater to not function? This morning, while I was getting my bag out of the trunk, the fan was running and all I could think was "I'm glad you are warm, because thanks to you, I'm not."

 

Could be you need to top it off. With a little air in it, the heater coil goes without hot water flow from the engine. Driving at speed gets you a little, but idling at a light starves it.
Simple fix:
https://wiki.bentleypublishers.com/d...R56+N12+Engine

Motor on.

 

Going to try tomorrow. It never really got above freezing today and I didn't really want to see around with a bottle of coolant, pouring drinks for my car :P

Forgive my noobery, but are there any diagrams/pictures that show what the vent screw looks like? I'm comfortable doing the work myself, but would prefer to at least know what I'm screwing in and out.

 

Okay, so update.

So refilling the coolant system worked. My heat is back and I don't have the fan issues I had before. However, now I've found the cause of all this mischief. I've got a small leak somewhat towards the front. It's not enough to warrant immediate reaction, but best case scenario it's just a lose fitting or something due to the fact Mini likes putting plastic and metal together even though they have different expansion and shrink ratios. All that said, I'm happy to know they won't have to charge me $195 just to find out what's wrong with the AC/Heater

 

i had the same exact issue last week.

there is a leak in your thermostat housing. apparently a very common issue on '07-'11 mcs. i have an '07 with 52k miles. look at my other posts for details. good luck!

 

I have a 2013 mini that's about 15 months old. It has 25k miles on it and I think it's suffering from this.

 

It was a thermostat housing leak, as Rudeboim3 said. In all, it was about $500 to fix at the dealership. My understanding is that it's not a hard fix to do at home, so if you've got the tools and the time...I'd go that route. As luck would have it, it was a small enough leak that it never really completely drained my system. I'd take it in sooner rather than later to get it looked at so that if it's a small leak, it doesn't become a big one that leaves you stranded on the side of the road in the cold :P

 

BJM,

I posted a link with info on your Cooper and locations to check.

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...-throttle.html

Thanks