Near Mt. Bachelor, Oregon



I’m retired and wanted a project car so I got an ‘05 MCS, drove it for 350 miles and parked it. I have near zero experience working on cars but I did work on my own touring motorcycles for a lot of years. I studied Mod Mini’s excellent videos and removed the engine and transmission. I worked super slow, took 300 photos and bagged and labeled everything.

My goals for owning this car are: tool up, do all the work myself, learn everything about the car, enjoy the car for many years. I like the car the way it drives so I won’t be doing performance mods.

I did some things comically poorly. Jacking the car up, jackstands, maneuvering the engine around after it was on the crane, seperating the tranny from the engine were all crazy clumsy but nobody saw a thing and nothing bad happened. If Mod Mini didn’t specifically show how to do something on video, I really fumbled around.

Reasons for taking the drivetrain out:

Always wanted to take the engine out of something
Didn’t know anything about the MCS, want to learn
I sure enjoy working on anything BMW made, love the design approach
Car has almost 100k miles, needed a good going over
Suspected a thrashed throw out bearing (it was)
Wanted to know if the clutch needed changing (it does)
Wanted to service the Supercharger (surprise, the oil is clean in there!)
Suspect a worn out cam chain tensioner
Want to inspect or replace the plastic cam chain guides
Original radiator hoses look terrible compared to the rest of the car

Now that I’m off of the Mod Mini videos for the time being, I seek wisdom from the collective. As I have questions I’ll post them separately. Many thanks to everyone here.

 

HOSES...

I’m fumbling around buying hoses. I’m leaning toward OEM hoses and clamps but I’m open to any good solution.

I want to replace all the hoses I can, radiator, heater, power steering reservoir.

Is there a vendor that sells a complete kit of OEM hoses, or a couple kits that add up to everything? Is there a go-to place for buying OEM parts?

 

Should I replace these parts while I’m in there?

Water pump flange (water pump o-rings are very worn; yes on o-rings, flange)

Water pump? (leaning no)

Rear Main Seal? (doesn’t leak, willing to go back in there if I have to, so leaning no)

Idler pully? (no clue)

Belt Tensioner? (leaning no)

 

Some people are in the camp of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' but you've got a car with 100k miles and an unknown service history, I assume. I'm personally in the camp of replace it before it fails.

I'd replace the water pump, front main and rear main seals, oil filter housing and oil cooler gaskets, crank sensor O-ring, harmonic balancer, belt tensioner, idler pulley, power steering hoses, rad hoses, radiator, thermostat. Make sure you radiator fans are working properly, too.

In terms of hoses, use realoem.com to find the part numbers then punch the part numbers into a MINI parts vendor like thebmwminipartstore.com or minipartsdirect.com. There's a lot of hoses and plastic components, and they're not cheap - I went through this last spring when I bought my 2006 back and started a restoration project on it.

 

I did same thing when swapping out a auto trans drivetrain for a manual tran drivetrain. When I replaced the clutch I replaced the guide tube,
lubricated the shift arm shaft and replaced the seal on the transmission input shaft.

Things that are easy to do when engine is out
replace starter (if needed)
replace O rings on oil cooler (one to block and two on the aluminum heat exchanger
replace timing chain and guides (I elected not to do this because had evidence it had already been done)
You have access to subframe so good time to do PS reservoir hoses and maybe pump if it looks bad and any bushings, inner ball joint ....

Other things I did
Supercharger service with a new green gasket for the inlet duct
Water pump with new connection flange (On all my projects this has been corroded)
New knock sensor
New Crankshaft Position sensor
New thermostat + housing
New Camshaft Position sensor
New upper motor mount
New belt tensioner and belt
New oil pan gasket
New valve cover gasket and spark plug tube gaskets/O rings
New spark plugs
New hose from pipe to Water pump
New hose from inlet duct to BPV

Probably leaving a few things out. I have gotten crazy on some projects and replaced the shift cables and the slave clutch cylinder

 

Wow, that’s awesome you just jumped right in and went for it!

“Always wanted to take the engine out of something
Didn’t know anything about the MCS, want to learn.”

These are probably the best reasons I’ve seen on the forum for pulling the engine. It looks really clean, did your clean the engine bay or motor before these pics?

For the above, I would go with the o-rings and just an inspection on the pump and flange since you’re willing to go back in if you have to.

I would change the rear main seal. Going back that far is a big job, and I would rather go back in for a less likely premature failure or bad install, than rely a seal with that many miles on it.

Bad things can happen if the tensioner fails so I would change the idler pulley and tensioner now, unless you know they’ve been changed recently. More importantly, check crank pulley as these are known to fail, with the same bad results that are possible with the tensioner, or just upgrade it now to an ATI pulley.

Other things to consider:

• Strut tower reinforcements - it looks like your towers might be mushroomed. I went with the VIP reinforcement/bar combo, but the reinforcement plates are also available separately.
• A new passenger motor mount - Hard to tell from your pic, but it looks like there’s a hydraulic fluid stain from a leaky mount. Also, if you care what your engine bay looks like, use a mild cleaner and test it in a hidden area. The paint in there, and in the hatch jambs is not clear coated and will wipe away with most solvents and cleaners.
• Hoses.- I would probably go with stock. The engine compartment is pretty cramped and I wouldn’t want to take a chance on a slightly different shaped hose rubbing or causing some other issue. Same with the coolant, MINI coolant isn’t really that much more and unless there’s no MINI dealer around, I would go with that.
• Crank position sensor o-ring. This often leaks
• Supercharger pulley, belt, and colder plugs - Unless you really want to keep your car stock, this is a great, low cost mod.
• Coolant tank - these often crack at the seam and many go with an after market aluminum replacement.
• Bushings or anything else which requires removing the subframe like the FCA, sway bar, and steering rack bushings.

Also, the power steering pump and passenger seat occupancy sensor might be under recall so check for that. If so, many dealers charge extra for the power steering hoses so you should have that covered with your planned replacement.

 

Good on you for diving in. It's absolutely the best way to learn. Because you're driving a BMW-designed Mini you'll find parts prices are ridiculously high. Partsgeek.com and Rockauto.com are two competitively priced sources for Mini parts. Partsgeek, in particular, sells both OEM and aftermarket Mini parts. I've used them for years and have never been disappointed.

 

Depends on if you're willing to go back in and repeat alot of this work, rear main seal for example. I had it replaced when I had my clutch replaced, because I didn't want to have to pay for all that labor twice.

If I had the engine out, I'd replace every gasket, o-ring, and seal that you can get to, it's 10 times easier to get to now, and then you'll know that they're all good. I'd replace the hoses if they look iffy because they are also hard to get to with the engine in place. I'd probably also replace the all the wear items on the subframe, like the inner ball joints, control arm bushings, sway bar bushings, and steering rack bushing. I replaced all mine with powerflex black and have no regrets. Outer ball joints and tie rods I could go either way on because they're easy to get to. If the engine and trans mounts are original, I'd replace them.

Just my 2 cents, I much prefer driving my mini to working on my mini, so if I had the motor out, I'd do as much as I could, but if you're not too bothered by repeating the work, then you could definitely get away with replacing fewer parts.

 

Zillon: "I'm personally in the camp of replace it before it fails."

Corkus: Noobs are easily swayed. I'm glad you said this.

Zillon: "I'd replace the water pump, front main and rear main seals, oil filter housing and oil cooler gaskets, crank sensor O-ring, harmonic balancer, belt tensioner, idler pulley, power steering hoses, rad hoses, radiator, thermostat. Make sure you radiator fans are working properly, too."

Corkus: That is a great list. Thanks. I wasn't thinking of lots of those items.

Zillon: "...use realoem.com to find the part numbers then punch the part numbers into a MINI parts vendor like thebmwminipartstore.com or minipartsdirect.com."

Corkus: This is GOLD! Thanks very much.

Zillon: “...the power steering pump and passenger seat occupancy sensor might be under recall…”

Corkus: Recall? Whua? I’ll definitely check on that.

BoostedBlueToyotas: Thanks for you list. Now I'm going to do the water pump and flange. I was only going to do the flange.

RB-MINI: "...the engine. It looks really clean, did your clean the engine bay or motor before these pics?"

Corkus: This was a very clean and straight car when I bought it. No crud like so many English MINI's you see on YouTube. I cleaned very little. I especially didn't clean any hoses or wires. I'm looking for leaks and the dirt marks on the wires sometimes show how the wire was before I took it off.

RB-MINI: "...passenger motor mount - Hard to tell from your pic, but it looks like there’s a hydraulic fluid stain from a leaky mount."

Corkus: I don't know if the mount leaked or not. Really nice dirty surfaces show no evidence of a leak. That's why I'm not cleaning much until later. It seems ok, the threaded part moves back and forth like I'd expect but what do I know? Seems like the original part.


cooper48: "...Partsgeek.com and Rockauto.com"

Corkus: Thanks for telling me about Partsgeek. That's the info I was looking for when I posted.

Racingguy04: "...rear main seal... every gasket, o-ring, and seal that you can get to"

Corkus: <gulp> that rear main seal intimidates a Noob. Changing it gives me great pause. Not changing it does too. And your voice sounds like it is from another galaxy where people have done the work, know very well what they are doing and have cars that are just what they want them to be. I want to be like that. I took this car apart to go in this direction. So the rear main is probably going to get changed. <gulp>

 

I need a pilot bearing, right?

Any reason to replace the supercharger pulley if I'm staying with the same size pulley? I am changing the crankshaft and idler pulleys and belt tensioner.

Which torque to yield bolts do I need to replace?
Flywheel bolts
Crankshaft pulley bolt
Others?

 

Flywheel bolts, long motor mount bolt that threads in from the bottom, crankshaft bolt - all TTY.

Does the clutch feel smooth or crunchy when you depress the pedal? If it feels crunchy, just do the guide tube, throw out bearing, clutch, and new dual mass flywheel (clutch and flywheel is cheap on these cars). Do the Luk kit.

No need to replace the S/C pulley if you're not looking for any additional power.

 

[QUOTE=Corkus;4578134 that rear main seal intimidates a Noob. Changing it gives me great pause. Not changing it does too. And your voice sounds like it is from another galaxy where people have done the work, know very well what they are doing and have cars that are just what they want them to be. I want to be like that. I took this car apart to go in this direction. So the rear main is probably going to get changed. <gulp>[/QUOTE]

Haha, I'm on my second 2003 R53 and have driven over 215,000 miles between the two of them over the past 18 years, so I suppose I have a little bit of experience, and have a good idea of what I want out of the car. Full disclosure, I had planned to do the clutch job and service with the help a pro-mechanic because I didn't think I was up to it on my own, but when he backed out, I ended up paying another guy to do it. So I did fork out for some professional help, but had purchased all the parts and researched as much as I could so that I would know what I was doing.

I'm getting ready to replace my crank pulley and plan to do the front main seal, and feel a similar sense of trepidation, but it looks doable. The front main seal is a lot easier to get to than the rear seal which helps. I'm generally in the replace it before it breaks camp, but there's not a high incidence of rear main seal failure, it's just one of those things that is a $1,000 job for a $35 part so most people do it while they're there.

 

Haha, I'm on my second 2003 R53 and have driven over 215,000 miles between the two of them over the past 18 years, so I suppose I have a little bit of experience, and have a good idea of what I want out of the car. Full disclosure, I had planned to do the clutch job and service with the help a pro-mechanic because I didn't think I was up to it on my own, but when he backed out, I ended up paying another guy to do it. So I did fork out for some professional help, but had purchased all the parts and researched as much as I could so that I would know what I was doing.

I'm getting ready to replace my crank pulley and plan to do the front main seal, and feel a similar sense of trepidation, but it looks doable. The front main seal is a lot easier to get to than the rear seal which helps. I'm generally in the replace it before it breaks camp, but there's not a high incidence of rear main seal failure, it's just one of those things that is a $1,000 job for a $35 part so most people do it while they're there.

 

Love how you jumped in, Sir. Way to go

You have a good list of things to check / fix above...but I will offer one thing. Consider fcpeuro for the lifetime warranty, especially the more expensive parts. Just make sense to me...

buy it once and not have to buy it again

 

Update here. My garage adventure is hardly finished. So far the experience has been everything I hoped it would be. At this point the engine has been placed back onto the engine mounts and everything I can think of seems to be clearanced properly.






Here’s a basic recap of what I’ve done:

1. Leak #1 Valve Cover Bolts. This was a nice steady leak I didn’t know about, nothing on the ground. But all of the valve cover bolts have inner tube style seals and all of them had split open. $80 for new bolts with the new seals.)

2. Leak #2 Power Steering Hoses.

3. Valve Cover Gasket, Spark Plug Grommets (old ones were in decent shape)

4. Oil pan gasket (old one was thrashed)

5. Crank Position Sensor O Ring (old one might have had a slow leak)

6. Fuel Injector O rings, all 8 (old ones were decent)

7. Water Pump (old one unknown condition)

8. Thermostat and Housing (old ones looked brand new, I think they were but which thermostat, who knows?)

9. Clutch, Pressure Plate, Throw Out Bearing, Rear Main Seal, Plastic Shift Lever Bushings, Transmission Seal, flywheel bolts and my first ever roll pin on the exterior shift lever. Interestingly, I only had to line up the clutch once following Mod Mini’s directions but the clutch didn’t go in until I suspended the transmission by the circle shaped connection on top of the tranny. That balanced the transmission very nicely, thank you to the engineers who balanced that thing, and everything went together. I did have to spend several hours trying to line up the engine and tranny, so it wasn’t a quick process at all but I did only tighten down the clutch plate once. It all went together after I remembered Mod Mini saying he put the tranny on easily when the engine was on the ground, so that’s what I did. (Clutch was almost completely worn, throw out bearing was in pieces.)

10. Coolant Reservoir

11. Cam Chain Tensioner (old one unknown condition, but the cam chain sprockets, cam chain and plastic chain guides looked brand new. I think they might be.)

12. Belt and Belt Tensioner (old tensioner was shot.)

13. Crank Pulley/Harmonic Balancer (expensive piece. Old one was not in great shape, the rubber piece seemed worn and looked like it had, say, 30,000 miles left in it before it might fail.)

14. Idler Pulley (old one seemed fine)

15. Front Main Seal, Timing Cover Gasket

16. Supercharger Oil Change and Fill Plug O Rings (S/C oil was clean, obviously changed recently. Took me a long time to find O-rings. They are imperial, not metric. Finally found perfect replacements at a local hardware store for 69 cents each.)

17. Supercharger Bolts changed (the two bigger bolts were buggered by whoever changed the S/C oil I guess. I’d never touched a tap so this was an adventure. Tapped out both bolt holes while holding my breath. Everything worked fine. Big relief.)

18. Hoses and hose clamps. I changed every hose I opened except for the breather hose that goes to the valve cover from the Throttle Body. What a long learning experience. Had to learn how to disconnect a hose (took forever), how to connect a hose, how to order hoses, figure out which hoses I was going to change, which ones were to be aftermarket or OEM. And those BMW hose clamps, what a freakin’ pain in the butt those were to figure out, order and use. If I had it all to do over again I’d skip the OEM snap rings and use OEM clamps only when they came attached to a new hose. Otherwise I’d re-use the old hose clamps or use generic worm style clamps. Hoses and especially clamps were that big of a hassle to me. One time I waited two weeks for two very expensive snap ring style clamps for the cutoff valve hose and when they arrived I promptly ruined the first clamp I tried to put on because I didn’t understand how it went together. After that worm clamps were ok for me when I need them.

19. Oil filter Housing gaskets (and O rings? I forget. Is it 3 gaskets and 2 O Rings? All replaced. Old ones seemed fine.)

20. Changed the torque to yield bolt on the motor mount (first time ever turning a bolt to stretch it.)

21. Miscellaneous horns, air filter, cabin filter, fuel filter, oil filter, oil, coolant, some seals I probably forgot, etc.

Takeaways so far:

Is it worth it so far? To me, YES. Who knows if this car is going to start without a fight, but I’ve learned so much so far. Before this job I had no idea where the location was for the water pump, thermostat, or shift linkage or what they looked like. I’d never touched a clutch plate, never held hose clamp pliers, never held a tap, and certainly never stretched a torque to yield bolt before. I had worked on many motorcycles for general maintenance so I did know my own way of doing things but I’m a car NOOB.

My NOOB process:

I worked very slowly, learning as much as I could before completing a task. That included RealOEM parts diagrams, part numbers, parts diagrams, parts supplier web sites, Bentley manual (not a great manual but necessary and useful), NAM Forum searching, YouTube videos and taking frequent breaks to meditate or sleep on things before proceeding. Often that was a huge long process but that is the way I have to do this. It’s my process. That’s why it took more than 6 months to service everything so far.

I took over 400 photos, numbered them, carefully filenamed them, logged them into a photo log, and backed them up on a second device. Kept a journal logging all my steps which wasn’t real useful as I relied on the photo log a lot more. I bagged and labeled all nuts, bolts, brackets, small parts. Over 50 bags with inventory cards of what was in the bag. Also photographed every bag with the inventory card. Labeled, photographed and stored the larger pieces onto shelves. Also labeled and photographed lots of parts on the engine and in the engine bay. This was great insurance for an ignorant mechanic. Trying to video anything didn’t work for me. Video is a lot harder than it looks on YouTube.

Take engine out: 6 weeks (just follow Mod Mini Videos)
Service everything so far: 6 ½ months
Left to do: Connect everything and get this baby on the road

Reasons I was so slow:

1. Ignorance and Inexperience
2. Parts Inexperience and Parts Wait times
3. Had to Build My Infrastructure and find many first-time-ever solutions

My preferred parts companies:

1. Pelican Parts for most things
2. Out Motoring when Pelican doesn’t work out
3. Amazon but not for many MINI Specific Parts.

I have a lot more to do and nobody on earth knows when this car will actually start and drive.

Thanks to all the Forum members. The collective knowledge here has been invaluable.

 

Looking out for updates 👏👏

 

Wow, gutsy and impressive. Well done!

 

I sure don't feel gutsy. I'm almost ready to turn the key and check for smoke.

As I got within a few days of possibly turning the key here, I hit a 4 day delay for a parts order. I spent the whole month of June waiting for various parts orders because I had to learn every tiny thing about how to order parts and organize a project like this. This time I ordered coolant months ago, but I didn't order enough because I didn't think to check for how much I was going to use. The thought never crossed my mind until I reached for the coolant. That is the sort of mistake I made many, many times. I'm ok with any number of mistakes like that. Those errors are unavoidable dues to be paid for my inexperience.

The goal is total zen-like acceptance whatever happens. I daydream about the odds of this car working, on the first turn of the key, or after weeks of fixing 10 things I did wrong, or basically never. When everything seems to be working, if that day comes, I'll be relentlessly reliability-testing the car close to home.

First turn of the key should be within a week.

 

I turned the key.

Everything seemed fine. I was plenty nervous. I didn't want to turn that key. I was braced for multiple problems. I used too much anti seize on the exhaust manifold bolts so that was burning off right away. Other than that I couldn't detect any problems at all. All the fluids stayed where they were supposed to and the dashboard electronics seemed happy.

I'm running water as coolant right now. I wanted to see if the coolant went all over the place before I added the regular stuff. Front end service mode has to go back together, a few airflow clamps need to be cinched down, fluids topped off and then it's time to test drive.

Much testing on the to-do list. Fingers crossed.

 

Great thread, and a very thorough noob, great job!

 

That’s a huge accomplishment. Goos job.

 

Congratulations! I can imagine both the trepidation before turning the key and the pride after. Well done.

 

First problem...

The car did not move because I couldn't get it to shift into any gear. The clutch is not fully disengaging.

Symptoms:

1. When the car is off it shifts fine in all gears.
2. When the car is on it will not enter any gear.
3. Car starts fine with the clutch pedal down and the car in neutral.
4. Big Clue: Car will not start if I leave it in gear and push the clutch pedal down all the way. In this case, the car lurches when I hit the starter.

Unless I'm missing something here, the car lurching is a strongly indicates the clutch isn't disengaging because it should start fine in gear with the clutch pedal down. It should never lurch forward in gear with the clutch pushed.

I'm wide open to suggestions, but my uneducated guesses are that I messed up something around the shift rod/shift fork inside the transmission. Perhaps the clutch fork ended up on the wrong side of the throwout bearing when I was pushing the tranny and engine together? Or maybe I messed up installation of that shift lever piece that sits between the slave cylinder and the transmission shift rod? I don't think I did, but something is wrong. The dimple on that shift lever piece attached to the transmission shift rod meets up nicely with the slave cylinder plunger so I don't think it on backwards.

Unless one of you more experienced folks can better illuminate the situation, here is what I think I'll do:

1. Maybe there is air in the clutch slave cylinder. I'm going to test it carefully, maybe bleed it. Watch the clutch slave cylinder as the car is shifted, and when the car is turned on. Take it off and feel it work as the clutch is pressed lightly. I turned the clutch slave cylinder upside down when I moved it out of the way. Did air get in the line? Maybe I think.
2. Examine the slave cylinder and lever piece it pushes on that turns the tranny shift rod, both of these are together outside the tranny. I'll try moving the lever piece, it should feel like it attached to something, and it should not move completely freely.
3. I'll check the shift linkage. Hey, it's outside the tranny so I'll look.
4. If I can't find anything external to the transmission, I'll open up the transmission and start trying to figure out why the clutch isn't disengaging. Shift fork seated correctly, etc.

Should I look for anything else before I open the transmission? Any suggestions will be much appreciated.

 

Slave cylinder is definitely the most common culprit. Did you disconnect the slave line when you had the engine and trans out? or did you just disconnect the slave from the transmission? they're notoriously difficult to bleed, and often like to fail after being moved out of the way (damned if you do and damned if you don't...)

 

Thank you!

I confirmed a bad clutch slave cylinder. Found tiny amounts of fluid on both sides of the assembly.

Part Ordered. Now the parts wait.

This is all a NOOB mistake. I never thought of replacing the Clutch Slave Cylinder until the car would not shift. This part should have been on the list to replace long ago. Inexperience.