Hello everyone and my apologies if this may be in the wrong section but I am in a bit situation after last night.

As of last month I am the proud owner of a new 2013 Chili Red Cooper S and couldn't be happier with with the car. Everything has been going great and I have even been on two road trips already with my mini!

Last week I decided it was time to start modifying so I ordered the stiffer BOV spring from Alta (aka the Stiffy mod) and a new DOS intake. Install went great for the two mods except for the fact that DOS forgot to include the rubber lining that goes around the bulkhead hole. This was no big deal so I put some electrical tape around the hole (as advised by DOS) and waited patiently for the part to come in. Finally yesterday the seal came in so I took apart the intake, put the seal around the hole, reconnected and tightened everything, and fired up the car. Car started and ran for about 20 seconds and then it started to choke and continued to choke until the car died leaving a exclamation point on my tach. Tried again but this time added some gas and yet same problem. I checked all the hoses and even took everything out and reassembled the intake but still no luck. Tried resetting the ECU by unplugging the negative terminal for 30min but still no luck and same problem. Gave up around midnight and decided to call it a night. This morning I tried again to start on a cold start. It ran for about a minute just fine doing the warm up but as soon as it dropped the RPMs same thing happened again but now there is a little triangle next to the odometer (Check Engine Light?). I restarted the car at that point and took it for a drive around my neighborhood and it ran but choked at stop signs and during driving as well. Ended up having to take another car to work this morning because I didn't want to get stuck on the way.

Does anyone know what could be the problem? Should I just take it to my local dealership and see if they will fix it or will they just blame the intake for the problem and make me pay for repairs?

Any input would be greatly appreciated!

 

Put the stock intake back on and see if the problem still is there. Sounds like a vacuum leak, did it stumble on start-up?

 

No that's the odd thing! It starts perfectly fine and the stumbling only occurs after a few seconds of running below 1k rpm.