When my mini is idling, I can hear faint rattling like a valve or lifter is a little loose but when I have it floored the rattling gets louder. Is this normal or should I get it checked out?

 

Could be lifters/supercharger/Dual mass flywheel. I would lean more to the supercharger. And when I say supercharger I mean the gears off the back that drive the water pump. My 2 cents

 

I am assuming that you are not talking about the fuel injector chatter... but something fainter under that...

 

That's actually what I was gonna say. A noisy lifter is usually just that: noisy. They get pretty loud. I couldn't think of anything that would cause a lifter to make noise on a newer car as long as it was maintained.

 

When you depress the clutch pedal does the sound go away? If it does it is probably just clutch chatter.

 

Its not clutch noise, I was just curious if all MINIs made a noise. If it is supercharger noise is it anything bad or just normal noise?

 

If.... it is coming from the water pump/ supercharger it maybe a loss of oil in the supercharger's back gear set that turns the water pump. If you search the site great pics of what happens! The question is how loud is the noise? all of this is a shot in the dark at best. With out more info it could even be a loose heat shield, you know what I mean? How many miles? Most Minis that I have heard are pretty darn quite on motor noise.

 

The noise is semi quiet at idle, but when I step on it I can hear it louder and it only makes the noise when the gas is pushed all the way so I know it is something in the engine, not just something rattling around. How would I fix the water pump gear?

 

I'm getting something similar. When the clutch is depressed it goes away but at idle when I get out of the car its quite loud. Certainly not faint at all. This just started, I've got about 54,500 miles on the car so I'm hoping its not something too serious. I heard I weird pop the other day and can't say I heard the clatter before the pop. I figured the pop was me not getting the gear in reverse all the way but maybe they're related?