(It's now fixed. See last posting.)

So, occasionally when I turn my car on, the automatic climate control unit remains off. I simply turn off the car and then back on, at which point the automatic climate control unit now functioning properly. Happens sporadically, but it's annoying. Anyone else have this problem? I'm bringing it on Wednesday and having the Mini service department check it out.

 

If this does it again, can you check and see if your headlights work? Had this happen twice in the last month - no Auto CC and no headlights. Every other light worked as normal and like yours they came back on after shutting off the car.

 

Lots of people have experienced this (including me). I just restart the car and forget about it. Life's too short.

 

Well, considering my car only has 6000 miles, I wouldn't expect this type of behavior. Plus, I generally notice this when I'm on the highway and it's a pain to pull over, especially when I want the heat on because it's freezing cold.

Also, yes, my headlights also failed once along with this issue, but never failed again.

I just wanted to see if others had a diagnosis for this, as it's nice to have that prior to heading to the dealer.

 

Has nothing to do with age or mileage on the car - it's an electrical/computer quirk.
Understood. I guess the few times it's happened to me I noticed it before I took off.
That is one symptom I haven't seen, though if it happened during the day I wouldn't have known.
Again, understood. I didn't mean my reply to come off as dismissive. It was more meant as "they won't be able to reproduce it, much less solve it, so chalk it up as another endearing quirk".

I've been in my '03 for 2 and a half years and 70K miles, and I think it's happened 3 times.

 

This has happened at least 8 times in the last 2 months in my car. I'm hoping they can find the culprit, though am resolved to the fact that they probably won't.

 

I used to deal with this on our '03 Cooper, I believe it happend 4 or 5 times in two years, always when it was hot outside, but never during the winter months.

It never happened twice in a row, was impossible to reproduce for the dealer, and there never appeared to be any other symptoms (nor did the car have any fault codes for the dealer to check).

Always cleared up after a restart, which as pointed out isn't always easy to do after you start driving.

It's frustrating I know, but I also don't know of anybody who's managed to reproduce it for the dealer and get it resolved. On the plus side, I've never had this happen on my '05 MCS.

 

Everyone's entitled to thier perspective/opinion.

Me, I don't feel the need to brush-off malfunctions just cause my mortality is ticking away. Bet your perspective would change if it were an an air-bag malfunction. Life might indeed be "too short".

Has anyone with climate control experienced hot-air blowing out down near your feet - even when you've all A/C climate functions off? Its happened to me a few times - along with other ECU gremlins. Still remains an issue.

 

Hey - thanks!

I bet it would too. But that wasn't the malfunction being talked about, was it?

And I said "life's too short" because I already knew it was a known problem, it was thus far impossible to reproduce, so the dealer isn't going to spend time tracking it down. If there's nothing I (or anyone else) can do about something, I forget about it.

 

No problem, don't mention it

You seem pretty sure of your conclusion. On what do you base your statement "nothing I or anyone else can do"?

Back when rear fog-lights weren't an option in N.A. a guy by the name of Jason Livingood started a petition. He'd pursued MINI about this safety issue & they'd made excuse after excuse of why they couldn't or wouldn't offer a rear-fog retrofit. Most of the reasons were truly ridiculous. In the end Jason Livingood's petition forced MINI to offer the retro-fit AND rear-fogs on new cars. You can thank him if you have rear fogs.
http://www.petitiononline.com/BMWfogs/petition.html

The obvious point in this... If you want to call it a day, then fine... But please don't preach defeatism. Where one person sees futility another sees opportunity.

Voicing one's opinion and or frustration on this board is both social & healthy... At the very least it allows folks with similar problems to relate & or commiserate. AND... On the off chance that MINI USA actually reads about a problem & decides they can fix it... then all the fuss is doubly worth it.

Do you get where I'm coming from?

I'd still like to know if anyone else has experienced the "hot-air in the foot well" issue.
TIA

 

From your previous post, I'm guessing it's always hot air?? Never cold? The reason I ask, is in my 02 I've never really been able to turn off the ACC. Yes I can reduce the flow of air (hot or cold) but never completely off. I always seem to have a residual amount of air flowing. BTW the 02 version has a button labeled "off" unlike our 05 version.

The best I've been able to come up with to reduce the air flow is; to first put the system in the recirculate mode and then shut it off. That helps but doesn't completely stop it.

Good Luck and I agree with your previous comments also

 

I base it on the fact that this problem has occasionally happened to some people since the MINI was introduced, with no apparent pattern, and no one's been able to reproduce it at will. I'm a software engineer by trade, and I know what it's like for someone to come up to you and say "this weird thing happened to me, it happens rarely, and I can't reproduce it." Well if it can't easily be reproduced, it's next to impossible to troubleshoot. No MINI mechanic would want to troubleshoot this problem, and I don't blame them.

Let's say it happens every three months on average. Do you really expect a MINI mechanic to sit in a car and repeatedly turn the key on and off all day in the hopes the Climate Control system might malfunction?
I do have rear fogs, I do appreciate what Jason did, and I signed his petition when it was first created. But for the second time in this thread, you're comparing apples to oranges. The absence of the rear fog option was a decision made by MINI USA, not a bug in the car. The petition succeeded in convincing MINI USA to reverse their decision. No one decided to have the Climate Control fail to come on every once in a while.

Do you get where I'm coming from?

I don't consider my opinion on this defeatism. I consider it pragmatism. This bug rarely happens and can't be reproduced at will. It's not a safety feature. It's a minor inconvenience and a very infrequent one at that. MINI is not going to spend time on it, and I don't blame them.

Try this thread for a discussion of your problem. From the next-to-last post: To keep heat from coming in the car when everything is OFF you must first make sure that you set the temp to low and wait a moment for all the doors and flaps to shut off the heater core area. Like I said, there is NO heater valve in these cars, only doors or flaps that open and close on demand for heat or cold.

 

Thanks & I'll give your suggestion a try.

My MCS is an 03. I beilve its only hot air. I don't know for certain, but I am not driving the car during the winter, so I'm not certain. When its hot out heat is rather obvious... similarly I'd guess if the a/c was pumping out cold air in winter I'd notice. That said, I'm pretty sure its just hot air being vented into the cabin.

 

I appreciate the link you posted. I'll have a look, thanks

In reference to your other comments above:

It appears to me that you are blurring the line between fact and supposition. Evidence is needed to claim fact; where's yours?

In two instances you've been unwilling to recognize analogously similar scenarios... you claim "apples vs. oranges"... Yet you sight your own personal work experience "I'm a software engineer by trade" as support for your opinion on the subject. This is blatant fallacy: "Appeal to Authority". Your job title does not afford you the label "expert" in the context of this discussion.

I did not imply that malfunctions were equivalent to a missing feature. It should be obvious that the common connection is owner expectation/satisfaction. Each owner has a different set of expectations. MINI's motivation to deal with these is a completely different issue.

Lastly, I believe I should get what I pay for. That means functionality as promoted/warranted/promissed. It wouldn't matter if I had Bill Gates' money, I'd still expect to get what I'd paid for. Life really is too short... Too short to accept less (than I paid for) just because someone else is willing to.

 

However one simple fact does remain...

The problem of the Auto A/C not always coming on is difficult to troubleshoot is because it's impossible to reproduce on command. (That's a horribly worded sentence, yet I can't come up with a better way to say it! ) When it happens it doesn't even generate a fault code on the car's computer... I think for most people that have experienced it, the problem doesn't occur more than once a month if even that often...

With that in mind, the problem is virtually impossible to troubleshoot. Beyond making sure that connections are tight, what can you do to troubleshoot a problem that doesn't manifest itself when the technician is working on it? Even more so when the problem doesn't even leave any indications that it has occured which means that there is no way for a technician to determine what happened and why it happend.

This isn't a problem that any dealer has ever refused to fix or even denied coverage of. The problem is that nobody's ever been able to get the problem to occur for a dealer, and since there's no fault code no matter what the dealer does to the car, it's going to check out problem free.

 

Fair enough - I shouldn't have used the word "fact". I'm going by all the threads I've seen about this bug, on this forum and others. In all previous discussions, the people to whom it's happened have all said that it happened rarely and that they couldn't reproduce it. Those threads and my own experience are what I'm going on.

Quote:

In two instances you've been unwilling to recognize analogously similar scenarios...

Because they weren't. Yes they are all things an owner wants, but that in itself does not constitute an "analagously similar scenario". This bug isn't a safety issue (like an airbag), nor is it an option decision by the MINI powers that be (like rear fogs).

Quote:

Yet you sight your own personal work experience "I'm a software engineer by trade" as support for your opinion on the subject. This is blatant fallacy: "Appeal to Authority". Your job title does not afford you the label "expert" in the context of this discussion.

Holy crap! "Authority"? You're assuming way too much. I didn't mention my job in order to come across as "an authority" or "an expert". I only mentioned it because in that capacity I've seen circumstances similar to this bug. Namely that it's very intermittent and not reproducible at will. I was trying to explain that it's not always whether someone is willing to solve a problem, but whether they're able to, given the circumstances.

Can you seriously not see the difference between the rear fog issue which was completely within MINI's control, and this one which owners cannot even reproduce for them to diagnose?

Quote:

I did not imply that malfunctions were equivalent to a missing feature. It should be obvious that the common connection is owner expectation/satisfaction. Each owner has a different set of expectations. MINI's motivation to deal with these is a completely different issue.

Again, it's not whether they're willing to solve the problem, but whether they're able to.

Well, I wish you luck with this problem then. I have every faith that if this bug could be reproduced for a MINI mechanic, they would find a solution for it. But it can't be reproduced. Not yet, anyway. Until it can, I'm cutting them some slack and not letting it affect my enjoyment of my car.

So let's just agree to disagree, shall we?

And to the original poster, my apologies for hijacking your thread with this disagreement. I really hope you get a satisfactory response to your problem.

 

Hmmmmm
Now I'm going to have to call up my tech & enquire, because on at least two occasions when I experienced the "hot air" issue it preceded a fault & code being logged. I've since had an engine wiring harness replaced (under warranty) due to other inexplicable faults/codes. Haven't had any problem crop up since, but I only had the work done a short while ago & now the car is parked for the winter. As we all know (some too well) just because an issue hasn't cropped up yet doesn't mean it won't.

 

Like the yo-yo or stumble?

Ah, now this we CAN agree on. Never did I suggest that ANYONE should let this ruin/effect the enjoyment of thier MINI

As I'd attempted to express earlier. I'm hoping for feedback about this and other issues. If someone wants to vent too that's cool. Keep the free unfettered exchange of thoughts going

 

Again, I'm not talking about the "hot air" issue. Actually that problem is off-topic. I'm talking about the problem that this thread is about. That's the problem where the auto A/C doesn't always turn on. The only fix is to restart the car. It's an intermittent problem that isn't reproducable on demand.

The discussion about the "hot air" issue, rear fogs what's a safety issue etc are all off topic. Let's keep this discussion on topic please.

 

Because I characterize it with a term "hot air" means I'm O/T? Whatever!

Title of thread: Gremlin in my automatic climate control unit

His doesn't turn on, mine won't turn off.... ERGO Gremilin in my automatic control unit.

Is there anything else I've said that you'd like to misrepresent?

Nice moderation mbabis! :impatient

 

Again, you're problem is different, you're talking about your system not turning off, read the original post. Dissusions about different problems (and if the symptoms are different it's a different problem) is off topic.

Once again, I'm trying to steer this back on topic. If it continues to stray off topic, then the off topic posts will be deleted in accordance with the NAM site guidelines.

 

I thought my experience was pertinant, but on your sayso I guess it's not.

If you really want to get a thread back on topic there must be addetive contribution. How's about adding some new thoughts on the subject to get it rolling along?

 

Just thought of this... When you bring the car in have them take a look at the blower...

In Aug 2004 the blower in our Cooper failed. The symptoms were completely different, in this case the AAC turned on, we could hear the compressor going, but it wasn't blowing any air.... The blower was replaced under warranty.

I mention this because while they seem unrelated, after the blower was replaced, we didn't have a problem with the AAC not coming on when the car was started for the remainder of the time we had the Cooper. We traded the Cooper 7 months later in March 05.

For those of you that have experienced the AAC not coming on problem, what year is your car? Have you had a blower failure?

 

Interesting theory - I'll gladly add my data:

'03 Cooper, and no blower failure (thus far).

 

July 02 build MCS - no blower failure.