I can't believe this. What kind of sicko does such a thing???
I keep reading about MINI's getting vandalized. Is it more than average or is it just because I'm always on the site???

Well I guess that's why we have insurance! I'm sure that doesn't make you feel any better though!

:???:

MEB

 

First off thanks for all of the replies and support.

I hope I never find out who did this. I am liable to do something brash and end up in jail for much longer than the creep who drained some oil. I am a 6'4 280 lb guy that benches over 400 lbs, EX collegate offensive lineman. I would most likely BREAK the individual that did this, and I don't mean a leg......

I live in the mountains of CO and on top of that I live on a secluded dead end road. The hill to my house is a 35% grade and is a nightmare for most people, it is considered a 4X4 trail by the county. My driveway is gravel and the spot of oil was small on the surface. Until I grabbed the rake you could not even tell there was an issue.

The low oil light NEVER came on, I think it may denote a change in oil pressure but if the car is out of oil it may never register a "change" in oil pressure.

To make it even worse, my transmission on my WRX blew out on Tuesday. (I know, iamgne that a WRX with a broken tranny... ) This is crazy. commuting in a 400+ hp chevy with 4.56:1 gears in the rearend is truly and experience that most will never understand. However, I forgot how much I love my 52 year old car that can pull the front tires off of the ground from a stoplight. i guess that is a reason that i can make positive out of all of this BS.


P.S. Denny- As a matter of fact my lower bsck sure does feel sore. Maybe it is beause my ********* are lodged there currently.....

 

>>You should be thankful that they didn't take your kidney while you where sleeping.

TIm,
Sorry to hear about your mishap. Glad to know that it was due to very low oil.
Here is something really creepy that happened to me many years ago in California.
I go to sleep at night with my wife and 1 year old daughter in the next room. We were renting a 3 bedroom home in Torrance.
It was rainy and the bathroom window was left ajar a little. The next morning we wake up to find the front door wide open and our TV and VCR are stolen after someone entered through the open window and left muddy tracks down the hall to each of our rooms and then out the front door with our stuff. The Police said that cat burgulars are not as common- takes some nerve to go into someones home and steal then they are there. No one was hurt and it never happened again but it was rather yuk to think of it.

 

Wow! That blows! I have had acts of vandalism commited over the years to my property and have learned one thing. dont try to understand it you'll go crazy.

It looks to me like your homeowners insurance is going to have to cover this. I read this thread this afternoon and it is driving me nuts!! It take one depraved mother to screw with a dudes car. Its just wrong. Karma will come to haunt this man do not worry.

I am now going to ignore my own advice and wonder out loud WHY!!! I have not climbed under my car yet to see where the drain plug is. It just seems like a lot of trouble to go through for a prank.

Have you checked to make sure there is not a leak of some sort?? Have you checked the oil again since parking it? Did the level drop? I would throw a piece of cardboard under the car and see if there is not some sort of major leak going on.

 

Jim's warning not to seek logic is surely valid but...

This doesn't make sense. There must be a leak that the shop just didn't yet find. Maybe every time the engine is started or stopped it squirts a pint of oil from some odd place. There's just no way someone would come all that way, manage to squeeze under the car with the correct tool and associated lighting, wait around for the draining and then put the plug back in. No way. Didn't happen.

Take a milk jug of water out to that gravel and see how big the puddle is with just water. Then imagine how big it would be with a gallon of oil dumped in 90 seconds.

Mute point at best anyway 'cause the oil warning light failed. The light does not do any tricky relative or time-based measurement. It lights when the oil pressure's low -- that's all. Not when the pressure is lower than before or going down, just plain old low. Furthermore, there is likely another fail-safe that should have intervened with the prolonged oil pressure problem. The engine light likely should have lit and maybe even put the engine into that emergency low power mode.

 

As I brought up in the related post of blown engines by Randy, the oil pressure switch on the MINI is no different than what has been used for umpteen decades on every imagineable car. A simple switch that opens once the pressure being applied to it rises above a certain value, in most cases, 5psi. Make this pressure any higher and you risk false warnings (even a modern engine in excellent condition can oftentimes have oil pressure at idle of 10-20 pounds, especially when hot). The problem is, many high performance engines built to tight tolerances when run with very little or no oil can actually build up enough AIR pressure from the oil pump sucking air and remaining drops of oil from the oil pan to extinguish the light. I have seen this in action before.

By saying this I believe that the MINI should have an oil pressure GAUGE as standard equipment, if not an option.

Tim, it really sucks that someone did this to your car. I hope you can get to the bottom of it and ensure it doesnt happen again. As for you being a big man and busting up the guy... hey, I didn't see anything...

Best of luck to you.

 

>>That means some Mother F*^& came up to my house and DRAINED THE OIL OUT OF OUR MINI. On top of that this individual had enough gumption to put the oil plug back in. Who in the heck would do this?

Sorry to hear that BigTim. I hope insurance pays for the new engine.

I had a similar experience with my wifes car (mazda) a few years back. Luckily before starting the car, my wife noticed a large puddle underneath the car and recognized it was oil and didn't start the car. I couldn't believe how the oil could have leaked out. I crawled under the car and everything looked normal.

I then filled the car with oil and drove it to the dealer. Once on the lift at the dealership I notice the oil plug was not in properly. We had brought the car to the dealer for service a couple of days before (which included an oil change) and whatever idiot changed the oil did not put the plug in properly. The funny thing was that the car was really leaking when she was driving it. She drove it over a hundred miles the next day. I guiess once the car was stationary in our driveway the oil settled and then leaked out the drain plug. Maybe that's what happened to your wifes car.

I never heard of someone draining out someone elses (the Mini is low to the ground and it would take a while for all the oil to drain) Would they be able to wait there in the middle of the night and wait for all the oil to drain out before they put the drain plug back. I guess anything is possbile.

Also, did you or your wife perhaps bottom out over a speed bump of something, sometimes that could damage a low oil pan or drain plug and cause a leak.

Hope that helps and good luck!!!

RaceCarDriver

 

why would his homeowner's policy cover this? wouldn't this be covered under the comprehensive coverage on his automobile policy as "vandalism"?

 

For those of you who can't believe it and think there must be a leak - I felt the same way! We had the car up on a lift with myself, a service advisor, and a MINI mechanic under it - there are NO leaks. Not out of the engine or the exhaust. When you start the car, it does not blow oil out.

I think it is good that most of us have a hard time believing it, as it means we all still have much faith in our fellow man (or woman).

After reading Greatbear's post about air pressure, it is a good point that I honestly hadn't thought of - kudos to Greatbear. It had all of us at the dealer stumped. That underlines the importance of an oil pressure gauge.

Good things happen to good people, bad things haapen to goood people, good things happed to bad people, and bad things happen to bad people. Let's hope the last will take car of this in regards to the culprit.

Randy

 

I'm a little confused about all this. Feel bad that Big Tim is having all this trouble. But when I read his post of Aug 30, he stated that the dealer said he was 3 qts low on oil and that he (Tim) had added oil at 3000 and 6000 miles. So, by the dip stick (I'm supposing) he knew he was using oil at that time. Then, on Sept 5, he said the car used no oil???
Also in the Sept post, Tim said that the dealer said he only HAD 3 qts of oil in the engine -- per mini's specs, if he was 3 qts low (per aug 30 statement) then he should only have had 1.7 qts in the car. ???????? I may be suffering from brain fog, but this is just NOT making any sense!! I'm probably just fooling myself, but I don't WANT to believe that someone would be nasty enough as to drain someone's oil right in their driveway. Probably I'm just reaching for some sane explanation--- but, again, I'm havin a hard time following all this.

 

I'm having a hard time figuring this out too, FF. Whatever the cause I want to add my sympathies to BigTim too. The result is the same regardless the cause. Soemthing to add to this discussion, though, is that IF someone drained the oil on purpose and IF they are apprehended, I want to throw away my aspiring Gandhianism for a bit of the prosecutor mindset. In addition to vandalism, another book to throw at them is dumping an environmentally hazardous material illegally. Living in Colorado there must be a law against draining oil like that.

A sidenote, BigTim. as someone who sat on the bench and is devolving into a skinny armed geek, I am always glad to learn that beefy ex-footballer types also have MINIS. Check the driver's side shocks often, though, and I bet you cut a mean looking figure motoring around the mountains.

Seriously, best wishes for getting through this really bad thing!