After 3.5 months of ownership of a broken R50, I finally have it together enough to drive it. In the last 2 days, I have put around 225 miles on it as part of the sorting and break in process. However, I seem to have difficulty shifting smoothly. I have over 500,000 miles of manual trans experience between my Frontier (408,000), Geo Metro (120,000) and an unloved Sentra (10k), so I am well acquainted with driving a manual. However, all of those cars had a cable throttle while the MINI is drive by wire and I wonder if that is the issue. It seems to be hard to modulate the throttle at low inputs while engaging the clutch, yet in neutral it seems responsive to minute inputs. Is this a normal trait of these cars that I just have to learn to live with? My R50 does not have DSC or traction control, so I expect a more linear response without my inputs having to go through committee like they do in my (Unloved) Prius C.

The next concern I have is the oil pressure gauge. Once the car warms up, it seems to read at "1/4 tank", or one line above zero at idle( I have the Chrono Pack if that helps). Is this normal? Does this engine have a way of dynamically adjusting oil pressure to reduce drag via the PCM or is it done the reliable, old analog way? Is this too low?

Finally I have an issue with the passenger's side door. When the window is up, it will not open from the outside or inside. I reset it by holding the switch up and that brought back the auto down feature, but it still does not like to open unless I lower the window. Also, the inside door handle has a mind of it's own and will not work most of the time. It does not matter if the windows are down and the door unlocked it will not open. Then, some times it will open, seemingly at random. I figure it must be something to do with the latch but would like some idea before I pull it apart.

Oh, and one more odd thing happened. When stopped at a light, the engine lost idle speed and then surged back to normal a few times. This only happened at one traffic light, but it left me wondering if it may be the harbinger of a more serious issue.

 

Blue

There's a reset procedure for the throttle. It gets out of sync if you operate the throttle manually under the hood.
I think it's - Key On engine not running - hold the gas pedal all the way to the floor for a good 30 seconds - release & wait 30 seconds - maybe repeat once.
See if that makes a difference.

Oil pressure - I'm not sure about the 1/4 tank - it reads pressure, not oil level. Since you have the Chrono pack (I don't), I think you can display the actual oil pressure with that.
Look for 50lbs psi +/- when driving normally. Otherwise, get a real pressure check done with a mechanical gauge.

Door - on some cars it takes two pulls of the interior door handle to open the door. This is a programmable feature. Normally the window should drop 1/2" when the door is opened & close fully after the door is closed.
Again, there's a reset procedure - Doors closed - Key On engine not running - hold the window switch down for 30 seconds - hold the window switch up for 30 seconds - maybe repeat once.
There are plenty of threads on here about troublesome windows & door locks.

See if any of this makes any difference.

 

I did further research about the reset procedure and found it online. I tried it, but to no avail. I think part of the issue is that this engine lacks the low end torque I am used to in my 4 banger Frontier and I need to learn to rev it up a bit more. I am used to being able to start off in the truck smoothly and never see the tach go above 1500RPM. The sweet spot in my MINI seems to be around 2500RPM. So far I have put around 450 miles on it in mixed driving and this seems to be the sweet spot.

As for the Chrono Pack, I was using a fuel gauge as an analogy. Full tank would be 70 PSI, Empty is 0 PSI and there are three tick marks, one at 1/4 one at 1/2 and one at 3/4. It is only at 1/4 at idle, the rest of the time is around the midway point.

The door issue seems to be the latch mechanism. I need to source one from a junkyard so that I can take one apart and see how it works and try to figure out a solution. I just don't want to spend $150 on some poorly designed, cheap Chinese...errr... I meant German junk. So much cheap, brittle ABS plastic in these cars... ( why not use nylon or even PVC? I expect this from Dollar store garbage, not a "premium" brand car!)

 

Does the car have a hydraulic clutch? If so what type of fluid does it use? If it uses brake fluid, or shares the brake fluid with the brake hydraulic system a brake (and clutch) flush and bleed operation might be called for. My Boxster clutch hydraulic system shared fluid with the brake hydraulic system and when I Iet fluid go 2.5 years between flushes the clutch engagement went south and shifting was crunchy. A brake and clutch fluid flush/bleed had the clutch engagement easy to modulate and takeoffs were smooth and the shifting crunchiness was gone. I was rather surprised the fluid had that affect. Might mention that as far as I could tell the braking behavior/performance was unaffected. But the fact the clutch behavior was clearly affected really underlined how important brake fluid (even if no clutch is involved) flushes/bleeds are every couple of years if nothing else to help prolong the life of the brake hardware.

One trick to taking off smoothly is to rev the engine a bit -- just take RPMs to1K -- then concurrent with releasing the gas let the clutch pedal out smoothly to take advantage of the energy in the flywheel to get the car moving. I used this technique with a number of my cars and one can get the car moving off very smartly and very smoothly, with minimal clutch slippage and clutch life is extraordinary. I got over 300K miles out of my Boxster clutch. I'm hoping the clutch in my JCW lasts a long long time, too.

If hot idle oil pressure is about 1/4 of 70psi that's 17.5psi or about 1.25 bar. That ain't bad oil pressure at hot idle. Is the oil the correct oil, the right (multi) viscosity and reasonably "fresh"? Oil with miles gets contaminated and this includes water which can lower the oil's viscosity..

 

Blue

I think your car is OK. MINIs like their revs! The real 'sweet spot' is closer to 6k.
They also like their oil, so change it at 10,000 max, not the 15k that used to be recommended.
Oil pressure looks good.
Door - since it's a somewhat intermittent problem, before you tear it apart, just check the wiring. The huge poor quality issue on MINIs is the wiring. Look carefully for corroded plugs. The least amount of corrosion or dampness causes all kinds of weird issues. Got a sunroof? Oh dear!
Clutch - as long as it engages at about the right point I'd probably live with it. The slave cylinder is tricky to bleed - again there are plenty of threads on here.

Sorry you didn't like your Nissan. I got 170,000 out of my SE-R.
I just got rid of my 2nd car, a Lincoln Town Car with 350,00 on it. The MINI is a bit different.

 

The brake fluid was changed fairly recently in the car's history and has less than 10k miles on it. It is shared with the clutch in the MINI. However, I may change it if I can't find another solution. I have tried varying the RPMs on the car and found 2500 to be a sweet spot. My personal best for a clutch was on my Frontier, with the original going 210k in a vehicle that was driven quite hard and was used for everything from pizza delivery to towing cars and even running down the drag strip (mostly pizza delivery!). I bought it new in 1998 and currently have 409,000 on it. In that truck, I can shift lightning fast and smooth. In my Geo Metro I could too. I even built the transmissions in all three of these vehicles (Frontier, Metro and MINI). I have also taught multiple people to drive manual transmissions successfully, including ones who were very intimidated by the process and that's why I find this issue so frustrating.

As for the oil, a change is in the works but it was also done fairly recently and looks good. I was just waiting to see if the car had any leaks that had to be taken care of after a few hundred miles of driving. I already have the new oil, Mobil 1 synthetic in the recommended viscosity (5W-30, if memory serves) and a new MANN filter. So far, no visible leaks so the oil will probably be changed this weekend. I had expected to find a pan gasket leak, but I cleaned it and changed the crank angle sensor O ring and now everything is clean and dry.

I did find a new issue today though and that is that there is a little slop in the shifter mechanism, about 1.5 inches at the ****. It seems the cheaply made ABS plastic shifter base wore a bit where a metal shaft goes through it that acts as a fulcrum for a plastic lever. I may have a go at fixing it if I can find a suitable nylon bushing, like one from a brake pedal, and a drill bit to bring the hole out to an appropriate size on the drill press. I would rather not pay BMW prices for cheap plastic that wears out on a car with only 83k on it. It still doesn't explain the notchy shifting, and I checked all of the dog teeth in the trans when I had it apart and they all seemed fine. I would have preferred to use new blocking rings, but they don't sell them and BMW does not believe you should want to fix a trans and sells only complete units. I couldn't find anything but bearings and seals and a reverse idler gear aftermarket, and that aftermarket gear is noisy (I documented it on video both from inside the trans and once installed.). There simply aren't many parts available for the Getrag 5 speed, and no service manual that I could find ( the Bentley one omits it too).

 

I actually love my Nissan and happily still own it after 21 years and 409,000 miles! Out of my 5 cars, it is the one I would keep if I had to keep just one vehicle. I just rebuilt the transmission right before I got the MINI and it has ice cold A/C (I rebuilt the whole system and replaced EVERYTHING). I only used it as a point of comparison since the KA24DE has such different characteristics when compared to the N/A Tritec engine in the MINI.

As for leaks, I have one. It leaks at the rear hatch handle. Luckily, all of my other seals are still in great condition. I think this car must have lived most of it's life in a garage. The interior has no musty smell, just that lovely leather scent. I know it's the door latch because I can easily replicate the issue. If I open the door with the window down, it will open from outside but not from inside. If I close the window but do not lock it, the window lowers and the door opens. If I lock it, the pin does not drop into the door to show it is locked. If I then unlock it, it still will not open unless I open the window.I can also still lower the windows and open the sunroof by holding down the unlock button on the key. Something is not working right since all of those interlocking functions in the latch are not moving at the right time. I hope I can fix it this weekend when I do my revisions to the car, that is unless I end up pulling an engine in the junkyard for my buddy's Jeep TJ. (The Frontier will come in handy for that!) I bought the MINI partly because Japanese cars no longer posed a new challenge and I wanted a car I liked to tinker with and sort out.

 

Here is a picture of the oil pressure gauge with the engine at operating temperature, idling. Pardon the lack of dash pieces, but the car is still very much a work in progress! Also, Ignore the TPMS warning. I am missing a sensor.

 

The oil pressure sensor, if you had one, is set at around 10 psi before it activates so you are good. Doesn’t take much oil pressure to maintain a hydraulic film on the crank.

 

I think your car is OK. MINIs like their revs! The real 'sweet spot' is closer to 6k. well i am, not an expert i am just a towing truck driver at rite way towing nyc would recommend you to ask from any expert.

 

Oh, I know it loves it's revs! What I was referring to was a minimum rpm to shift at for low speed driving. I was trying to work out how to drive it in stop and go traffic, like we have here in the Tampa area. Sadly, the clutch is now chattering after less than 700 miles, so it's now a moot point. I have to rev it too high to get it going so it doesn't chatter to do the whole traffic thing.

 

I would t shift below 2000 rpm.