I’ve been reading this forum for a while but finally signed up for an account only recently. I thought it might be helpful to share some information I’ve learned from years of BMW ownership which may be helpful. From reading the forum, it appears a lot of the issues tend to be electronic or electrical in nature. Typically they are intermittent or difficult to reproduce. While I do not have the entire answer, my years of driving BMWs have taught me that a majority of the issues are battery related. BMWs (and I’m guessing MINI) tends to be hard on their batteries. Either it’s the electronic load, or something to do with how the units stay awake after the car is turned off. Regardless, the condition of your car battery is very important to the behavior of the electronics onboard.

Minis more often tend to be third cars or discretionary purchases for people. As such, they don’t get daily use, this tends to aggravate the problem with battery health. On BMWs it is not unusual to lose 50% of your charge every two weeks of sitting in the garage. Drain the battery dead a few times and it’ll never recover. Further, on BMWs, the service rep told me the alternator cuts off during moderate to hard acceleration to maximize horsepower. Charging occurs mostly during coast-down. I’ve always been curious whether they employed the same performance improvement techniques on a Mini.

But I digress. The key message here is this:

1) If you have a series of electronic issues. Consider checking the condition of your battery first. It’s an inexpensive troubleshooting step. If the battery is weak, replace it (eventually, you’ll have to anyways) and then monitor whether the electrical problems continue.
2) Use a Battery Tender if you don’t drive your car on a daily basis. It’s a very inexpensive solution and keeps your battery in top condition over extended periods of time. Even if you’re someone who drives your car twice a week, you would still benefit because your drives may not be long enough to fully charge the battery.

 

Ive been told by the dealer that unless you drive an average of over 10 miles a day, you should use a battery tender every couple of weeks. I do it on all my cars.

 

I drive mine daily but alas, short commute, but good weekend drives. I put the tender on at least weekly and sometimes find the charge as low as 80%. I can attest to things starting to go wonky as the battery charge diminishes.

 

Any truth to having the new replacement battery coded to the car? I would like to get a bargain on the stock battery and install it myself without the dealer having their hand in my pocket. Is there anyway to register the battery through the on board computer? Thanks guys.

 

I don't know about the LCI cars, but in my 08 I put in a Diehard battery from Sears with similar CCA and never registered the battery to the car and have had no problems with the battery since replacement.

 

Any truth to having the new replacement battery coded to the car? I would like to get a bargain on the stock battery and install it myself without the dealer having their hand in my pocket. Is there anyway to register the battery through the on board computer? Thanks guys.

If I recall that is only on the new BMW and some other Euro's. Basically you tell the cars ecm its a new battery and the ecm controls it from there. It is basically a ECM reset for the battery.

 

It comes down to this;

If you have an AGM/VRLA (sealed gel cell) battery it should be coded. The Mini will adapt the charge rate as the battery ages. If installing a new VRLA unit, it should be reset. Same if switching to a lead/acid.

However if your battery is already a lead acid- go ahead and swap it - no worries.

 

Some of the newer MCS have a small block box attached to the negative cable that controls the charging/coding process, but mine has no such black box attached to the negative terminal. My battery is still going strong after seven years of usage!

 

To my knowledge, the AGM batteries are a direct/better replacement and no coding is necessary. I put one in our 09 a couple months ago.

 

I replaced my batter with a similar unit from NAPA about a year ago, and have had no issues. When I asked the service manager about coding, he indicated that the coding sets the charging rate for the system. He said that if I had no issues, and replaced the battery with the same battery (didn't go to AGM or to a significantly different size or rating), then coding is not required.

I don't know if this helps, but it is another data point.

Mike