Hello, we are proud new owners of an 09 Cooper S. Horizon blue metallic, sport, cold weather and convenience packages. We picked the Mini up a week ago Monday with 23,000 miles on the OD. It has replaced an 2001 Saab 9-3 SE convertible, which was a very nice car but it had 122,000 miles and was starting to become unreliable. The seat time will be shared by my wife and 16 year old daughter and hopefully I'll get me some "me time" miles on it. I didn't think it was possible to be so enthralled over a car but we all absolutely love this car.
I had done quite a bit of research and "lurking" on various forums to find out as much as possible before I purchased and felt confident with this particular car. I have an appointment in a couple weeks at Mini of Charleston, the closest dealer (80+ miles) to have a few things checked out. The first is the aux. water pump recall, nothing to worry about there. The second thing is having the timing chain checked. I'm not familiar with the normal sound of this engine but I think I hear a faint rattle in that area at times and after reading numerous post with similar mileage and multiple replacements I think I want some real piece of mind in this component area. The third is the "lag" or as I've herd it referred to as the "kitty pounce" when lightly steeping on the accelerator from a stop. There seems to be no response and then it lurches forward. My wife says shes use to it already but I myself don't like it. I've herd that this can be corrected with some ECU reprogramming. Is this correct? Lastly is the warping hood scope. The question hear is which one, painted (worried about the color match) chrome or carbon fiber. As I mentioned the color is Horizon blue metallic, black roof, black bonnet stripes and chrome trim i.e. belt line, bezels,handles and fuel door. Which would look the best? Is there anything else I should have checked out while I'm there?
Sorry to be so long winded but we are very excited with our recent purchase and want everything to be as perfect as possible. Thank you and looking forward to the "Mini Life"

 

Sounds like you're still under warranty. Make sure to have the dealer document every single one of your issues, so if they find nothing wrong now, and something goes wrong later with the same part, they're more likely to fix it for you.

Otherwise, Happy Motoring!

 

Welcome...

1.) Buy the F.E.S. AutoSport module and install it. It will just turn the sport mode on when you start the car. That way you will NEVER have to deal with the crappy non- sport mode throttle response. I never could drive the car with the sport mode off. I'd darn near stall the thing every time I tried to drive from a stop. I'm not talking about hair on fire stuff, just trying to pull away from a stop sign... Sport mode on, and it's a normal car. (really stupid marketing idea by MINI/BMW)...

2.) All of them except the carbon scoop will melt. It's just a question of time and driving style. If yours doesn't have it yet, buy the factory heat shield (about $28) at a minimum.

NM Engineering, Way Motor Works, and probably a couple of others sell other shields that cost way more...

The dealer replaced my scoop at about 20K miles under warranty, and installed the shield. They say that the scoopes have been redesigned with a different material that will resist warpping. We'll see haw that goes..

 

Yes I still have 8 months of service and till Nov.2013 on the warrenty. I will definatly have them document everything. Thank you for the suggestion. Richardsperry, is that the only way to eliminate the "lag"? I thought I had read somewhere that there was reprogrammng that was able to fixi the problem. I dont think I should have to drive in sport mode constantly to get smooth acceleration. Yes, I have herd about the heat shield for the hood scope and will push for that to be installed.

 

Check out M2 magazine too if you want to keep the MINI fix going. I find it has great information and articles, columns by other MINI people. They also have a great grill badge holder that is simple to install--even I could do it.

Just thought it never hurts to see what other info is out there for a new MINI person.

Congrats! You will never look at another car the same way after you drive MINIs.

 

The timing chain rattle is really hard to miss if you have the symptoms. The engine normally has a relatively soft ticking sound to it (attributed to normal direct injection noise), which is hard to confuse with the loud rattling of a timing chain. The rattle is normally associated with cold starts. If you check the thread in the stock problems/issues forum there should be some YouTube examples, I know I posted one a couple of years back.

 

On the lag issue, I would concur that it is probably due to not being in sport mode. I'm not aware of any ECU programming to get rid of the lag. I believe the SprintBooster hardware is supposed to eliminate some of it, but I've never tested it myself to be able to verify that. And I'm not sure how much of what the SprintBooster corrects is the throttle mapping vs turbo lag.

 

Could you possibly supply a link for that?

Thank you in advance.

Michael

 

I drove the car yesterday and it is much better in the sport mode.

 

Hugely better...