I brought my non-S F56 in for an oil change today. They are keeping the car to check for the crankshaft bearing issue.

As I recall in prior discussions, this issue previously applied to just the S.

Note my car has 101K miles. I'm not opposed to a new engine. I've never noticed any problems, but I don't know what I would notice.

I have a June/July 2014 build.

 

BMW has widened the radius for the recall because they do not want anything to slip through the cracks. It is quite obvious BMW has a renewed interest in furthering the MINI brand, and to be able to do that, they have to get out from under the reliability concerns.

Also, remember that these engines are going into BMWs as well too, so BMW has a huge incentive to keep them running because they now reflect on BMW too.

 

New engine at 101k would be great as far as I am concerned, good luck.

 

I hear that they are now looking at automatic transmission minis in the same timeframe. So now we have non-S models at S models and possibly automatics? Does anybody hear the same thing?

 

Well this is some disheartening news. Looking forward to hearing what they find. My car is going in on Saturday for a whirring noise that I hear every time I even slightly touch the clutch pedal. I hope it is not connected to these bearing issues.

 

I explained my noise to the service writer when I dropped off my car Saturday (12/17), and his immediate concern was that it may be related to the bearing recall.


It will likely take a few days for the parts to arrive for the recall to be performed. Once disassembly begins we will know to what extent repairs need to be made. The service department feels that the recall will alleviate my noise issue.


In the mean time, I've got a loaner '16 F55 S to bomb around in.

 

Just got the call today on my '15 Justa stick. Bring it in tomorrow to see what's going on. Hoping for a bearing replacement and not the engine.

 

50k miles per year?? Wow...

 

Wife's car just went in, I had a chance to look at the crank, the bearings, and the updated parts.

No damage to be seen at 21k, but I've seen others that have required engines. On the bright side, MINI does seem to be owning up to this mistake very quickly.

 

After dropping the car off in the morning, waited to hear from the Dealer most of the day (they told me once it was apart I would get a call), even called twice to try to find status and had to leave messages. In the end, I was told I would not get the car back, they didn't have the new bearings in stock.

Maybe I'll get it back today, but the engine does not have to be replaced... at least according to the first and last Dealership update.

Poor communication from the dealer.

 

After nearly two weeks at the dealer, I finally got my Justa back. It only needed the bearing shells replaced, which is nice.


The recall didn't fix my noise issue though, so I will be bringing the car back to the dealer to have the throwout bearing replaced under warranty.

 

Just learned that my 2014 F56 Hardtop (non-S) has to be inspected for the crankshaft bearing recall when I brought the car in for my last (3-year mark) LOF. Most of the forum hits I found were for non-US owners, and fairly limited to the Cooper S models.

I haven't had problems with the clutch 'sticking' as described by some who had to have either the bearings or the engine replaced during the recall inspection. However, I did have the vehicle in last year for a "drivetrain malfunction" light (which was reportedly fixed with one of the many recent software updates applied to my car). During the last 6 months, I've noticed a bit of a 'knocking' sound when shifting at low gears...I think bad main bearings cause knocking sounds during startup mainly, so hopefully it is not a sign of the bearings failing.

 

There was a massive mess in the bearing world as this engine launched. It was the EU push to lead free bearings. Bearing shells are an engineering marvel and the change in metals ended up creating huge process issues in manufacturing. They had to fight getting parts to testing with final production part testing was rushed. This just didn't impact BMW it was all manufactures I was in heavy diesel assembly at the time and we were expedite shipping skids of bearing shells to keep the lines running.

My guess is this will haunt more than Just BMW.

 

MIminiclubman: I don't doubt your assessment of the bearing issue potentially being industry-wide. But, when I mentioned the recall to my wife, she just rolled her eyes and said, "another one?" She bought her Clubman a week after I bought my hardtop (in 2014), and she's had zero recalls, while I believe I am up to number 5 or 6 now.

 

Mine is due this July for the annual. Wonder if they will check mine or do I need to ask them too? Is there a TSB out?

 

For the S recall, it stipulates that the new MINI weight oil is to be put into the crank case.....Find out what they put in for oil after bearing sleeve replacement as it's what you probably need/should be using from now on..... ( I think the MINI bulletin for this fix says to bill out and fill with MINI 0W-20 instead of 5W-30 or 0W-30 ). It may even appear on your work order....

Remember, first two years of F models had engine bay oil decals removed as part of a bulletin, and none went back into their place.

 

Yes, there was a TSB issued in November, 2016 that extended the service to F55 and F56 models with the B38 engine built between December, 2014 and June, 2015.

I asked about it when I took my car in for its scheduled oil change. The SA checked on the key reader and confirmed I was due to have this checked. The bearings were replaced in about 3 days.

 

I was just told that this was not needed on my F56, i just needed some kind of reprogramming. Sounds a little odd to me

 

Hi-De-Ho: I saw your post in the other NAM thread with the November 2016 TSB, but it must have been expanded beyond the initial manufacture date span given (12/14 - 6/15). My F56 had a production date of 5/15/2014 (along with the B38A15M0 engine).

angrymini: Yours could have been for a separate recall involving an unrelated software update. They applied the fix for that recall to my hardtop during my recent oil change (which was to fix some sort of potential "false positive" issue within the code), but I had to reschedule the bearing recall because of the extensive time required.

 

i will ask about that when i pick the car up tomorrow.

 

I have no reason to doubt you on this. I don't know about builds prior to 12-14; the only TSB regarding crankshaft bearings in vehicles with the B38 engine I have found (bbbind.com/free_tsb.html) indicates the 12-14 to 6-15 builds.

 

Even though I haven't received a Recall notice letter for my 2014 MCS, this crankshaft bearing shell recall leaves me a very sour taste in my mouth as I'm the first time Mini owner, and I've bought about 10 new cars since 1976. My MCS now has 66000 miles and has been running OK except for intermittent and very annoying "Drivetrain Malfunction Error" message one dash. I've also had a very poor reliability experience when I bought a new MB for the first time in 2006. I think I'm about done with European brand cars.

 

I noticed there are 2 separate TSB entries for the B38 engine at the website you referenced...one of them (id 197454) would not open the corresponding PDF for some reason. Perhaps that covers an earlier manufacture date interval. I mentioned this discrepancy to the Mini service adviser this morning when I called to schedule the recall service. He double-checked against my vehicle's VIN, and assured me it was definitely part of the crankshaft bearing recall.

Chazman: I, too, encountered the "drivetrain malfunction" warning (see my earlier post in this thread). I was assured that issue was addressed with one of the software updates my car has since received, so I'd recommend asking your service adviser about a potential fix. BTW - 66,000 miles in 3 years....you must have one heck of a commute!

 

Thankfully my mini was built one month after the cutoff date for this bearing issue. I did get some kind of software update but couldn't get any word as to what it was for.

 

I wrote about my experience with this issue in another forum, but I have a 2014 MCS manual and the bearing shell damage was so bad they had to replace the engine. This was about four months ago and the original engine had about 40k miles on it. The whole process took a few days and I had a free loaner to drive in the meantime. Not to mention they did a full inspection of the vehicle and fixed a few things I had noticed but not mentioned before dropping off. Overall the whole process was relatively painless, and judging from what I've read about this issue (varying scale on severity) on this forum and others it sounds like I'm not the only one who found it so. I have about 3,000 miles on the new engine and everything has been perfect so far.


Clutch sticking was how I came to discover this in my car, and there are some interesting theories as to why the symptoms are more noticeable in Europe/UK than the US. First, I noticed the issue almost always popped up while downshifting into a right turn. There are mechanical reasons for why this occurs, but I can't recall the exact explanation off the top of my head. Anyway, UK drivers are on the left side of the road and face a lot of roundabouts. If you haven’t driven there yourself just spend a few moments imagining this and it will become obvious that downshifting into a right turn happens more frequently on UK roads than US roads. Couple that with the fact that manual transmissions are much more common on the other side of the Atlantic and it all starts to add up.


I could be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure the Clubman didn’t make the switch to the B38/B48 until 2015, one year after the hardtops. Your wife’s 2014 Clubman likely has the “2nd gen” Prince N16/N18 engine which probably wasn’t affected by the bearing shell recall. I could be totally wrong about this though as I’m basing this on the assumption that the manufacturers were not focused on lead free bearing shells for an outgoing engine model.