Yea, manifold cracked, as suspected so did the right rear exhaust hanger and the mid way hanger! I'm not surprised as I did happen to hit a pothole a few days ago and CRACK the front right rim. So the car definitely took a beating from that.

No biggy, I've got my trusty R50 I'll just borrow the header from... Sooo in the process of getting the R53s broken header off I noticed most of the bolts were oily. Yep, covered in oil. I'm at a standstill here as oily anything doesn't seem good. So I searched and couldn't find anything on MINI's with this issue... So I come to fellow NAM'ers. Have you guys ever seen this, what's wrong, this can't be a very good sign?

 

OK guys so the header was changed out. I reused the old gasket. Gotta get some RTV on the seal, seems there is an exhaust leak there now. Also the car is throwing a P0036 code. I reused the same O2 sensors and they were fine beforehand. On top of the exhaust leakage and code, the car seems to be overheating faster than usual.

Any ideas guys? Thoughts on where I went wrong, I mean it was straight forward so I need to tap into the NAM database brains!

 

Hmm... Now car is overheating. Seems to be leaking coolant, I recently flushed the system, but everything was fine until this incident and the cracked header. NAM, anything? :Confused:

 

First thing, figure out where the coolant is going. How do you know there's a leak? Wet spot under car? Having to add coolant?


Second, this should have been first. RTV cannot be used to seal an exhaust gasket. If the gasket is leaking it needs to be replaced.

Also overheating faster than usual? As in it was overheating before this problem?

 

I added coolant twice. Unable to see where the leaking coolant was coming from. I did get some air out of the system though. Since then it hasn't really overheated, I've been monitoring it closely.

After I put the R50 header on and took it for a test drive the needle was all the way to top notch. The car has never overheated otherwise.

I heard that using a high temp RTV was sometimes used. Wasn't sure if it would hold with the heat. That's why I decided to check here first.

Also, another big concern was the header bolts having an oily substance on them once they were removed?

 

Oil could be coming from a number of places, I'll have to go look at my car for an idea, but off the top of my head maybe a small leak at the valve cover?

 

Thanks for the help man, greatly appreciated as the problems are starting to get the best of me. So frustrating when it seems like a monopoly of problems all at once.

Are valve cover leaks a common issue on the R53s? I guess that's a dumb question as anything is possible... I'll do some research on that.

Edit: Mod MINI saves the day, if the valve cover gasket is the issue? Looks easy enough. How would you know, I don't see any leaks around that area.

Hmm... As many people that have changed their header I'd think someone would be able to give a quick yes or no answer as to the oil on the header bolts.