Hey everyone, so this all started when I had to do a head gasket job on my car. The head had warped around Cylinder #2, allowing coolant into the combustion chamber & vice-versa. So, I pulled the head, took it to a machine shop, had it leveled (was slightly warped around cyl. 2). They also replaced my exhaust valve guides and all valve seals. Re-installed w/ OEM Head gasket, IM & EM gaskets.

Firing it up, the car was very hesitant to start, but would eventually stumble to life after cranking for a while. The first thing I noticed was if the throttle was blipped up to 2-3k & let drop, it will either fall to 5-600 RPM, catch itself, then settle at a normal idle of 800, or just fall to 0 RPM & die. Also, my boost gauge is only showing 10 in HG at idle. I believe this should be closer to 15. The idle is also rougher than normal & loud - causes whole cabin to drone. First test drive, it threw a P1498 - unmetered air after compressor. Okay, a vacuum leak!

Listening around my engine bay with a length of hose up to my ear, I stuck it down behind the radiator & could hear the green gasket leaking. I ordered a new gasket, replaced it, still leaking. Okay, well, It's possibly time to replace the plastic inlet pipe. So, I order up one of those along with a new OEM green jam gasket. I put it all back together & it's running a little better, as in, it's not dying anymore, but it is still bogging & not reading sufficient vacuum.

I took it to a dealership & they ran a smoke test, found nothing. They reset adaptations & suggested driving it for a while. On my way home, I threw a P0303, Cyl #3 misfire. Cleared it & it hasn't come back.

I went to Home Depot, bought an air compressor & PVC cap to rig up my own pressure tester. Pressurized the system & right away the damn green gasket is leaking, not even holding 1 PSI. Also, I found that the BPV housing was leaking like crazy. So, I order a new Detroit Tuned BPV

Today, I installed the DT BPV as well as re-aligned the SC inlet pipe to hold as much pressure as possible. I was able to get it to hold about 5 PSI before leaking any air, which might be a record considering how terrible that gasket design is. I actually had to put 1/4" nylon spacers in between the TB & TB support bracket along with longer bolts in order to get the mouth at the bottom to align properly.

So then, I'm excited. I finally got the whole system to hold pressure & along with the new BPV, I should be off & running! FALSE! If anything I'm back to square one! Significant bogging when I let the RPM fall & pulling into my driveway from the test drive around the block, the engine didn't catch itself & just died. Still only pulling 10 in HG.

In addition to all this, we actually have another R53 & I have tried swapping coil packs & MAP/TMAP sensors between the cars. No change whatsoever. Also, i'm not sure if this is just a part of the


None of these symptoms were present before the HG repair. I apologize for the marathon post but i'm completely out of ideas. I feel like I've tried absolutely everything..... open to any ideas at all, this project started over 2 months ago & has taken up every weekend since

 

If you took short cut at installing the intake duct green gasket ( not placing MINI into full service mode )then it's probably not "jammed" or compressed enough before cinching down the attaching bolt....Have seen where in some cases requires one person put pressure on duct against gasket to make tight seal while second person cinches down the bolt.

May want to check the 1/8th dia vac hose routed from plenum on pass side horn to the Fuel Pressure Regulator for a leak as well. Has a tendency to crack after a while at the plenum on pass side, that would cause improper fuel pressure dispersion to injectors.

 

In regard to the attaching bolt, I'm pretty sure it does nothing to actually tighten that connection. The bolt itself is a non-threaded post leading up to the head, the same length as the plastic tab. So, the bolt is going to bottom itself before ever putting any real pressure on the intake duct. It seems like the alignment with the BPV makes more of a difference than jamming the pipe down does.

As for the FPR line, I actually pulled that off & pressurized it on its own, soaking it with soapy water & didn't see or hear anything.

I think my next step will be a compression test, just to verify everything looks internally. If everything checks out there, I may take the time to put it back in service mode & really dial in the alignment of that SC inlet pipe. I'm just in awe of how unstable that thing's connection is.

 

That bolt which goes thru that tab is a bit elongated. Takes good amount of force to compress the gasket before you can cinch that down tight. Does make a diff. But you can think what you want, only done 3 of these myself.


GL!

 

If the position of that bolt does in fact make a difference in how tight the connection is, I will totally check that out. I just figured it wasn't really meant to have pressure applied to it since it's very thin plastic?

 

Any other thoughts on this? I've been driving it the past couple days & every time on cold start it will slowly sputter to life & the vacuum reads at 10 in HG. However, once the car warms up, sometimes it will start pulling to the ideal 15 in HG and the idle rests perfectly. It's so close to being normal that I'll probably just drive it as is till after the holidays but would LOVE to have a solid game plan for the next time I work on it. Is there anything I'm missing that you guys can think of?

 

Hey Silence,

I just finished a head gasket job myself and am having a similar issue. Replaced the infamous "green gasket." Ended up putting some RTV Red on it after the first attempt failed to seal. That is all good now, but I still have a rough idle and P1239. I was wondering if you ever found anything else leaking that I might be missing as well.

Thanks for your time!

 

Wow, I just realized how long it's been since I updated this thread haha. Well, back in 2015 when all this happened, I drove the car from Oakland, CA to my home town in Idaho & back. Honestly, over the course of the drive and remaining issues seemed to resolve themselves. I suspect the culprit was doing an ECU reset over & over & that certain sensors just needed to log miles to reset. Since that trip, everything has been running near perfect, except for the occasional stutter on cold start that causes the DSC light to come on. When that happens, I just shut the engine off, re-start & all is well. This probably happens 10 times a year, so enough to be a bit annoying but not enough to continue troubleshooting. If anyone has further suggestions on what could be causing that occasional cold start stutter, I'm all ears!

 

Thanks for the follow up Silence,

After doing another boost leak test I discovered that the bypass valve was leaking from around the spring housing where it clips together. I removed it, (very carefully) popped it apart, inspect the diaphragm and found no issues, so I laid a light layer of RTV Grey around the diaphragm seat, closed it back up and wrapped some rubber tape around the housing.

 

Having torn the front end off mine for the SC service and starting on fitting an electric water pump, I've found a couple vacuum line boots that looked iffy, and also the silicone part of the vac line from the fuel vapor recirc pump to the throttle body was definitely toasty - had a bunch of small cracks in that line. Not sure if that's going to solve my cold idle issue or not, but also replaced the BPV. We'll see when I put it all back together I suppose.