Just bought my first Mini a month ago (True Silver '05 S Cabrio with JCW). I'm loving it and got a great deal on it. It only has 28.8k miles, but I am the third owner. (The previous owner bought it as a fun car, but only put 5k miles on it in the last 3 years. It does have a rebuilt title, but that was because of a front-end crash by the previous owner. I had it all checked out before I bought it.)

I haven't had any trouble with the top until yesterday. I drove to work with the top down. It went down fine, and then went back up fine as I parked it and went up to my office.

When I got back to my car at the end of the day, I started to put the top down. As it was sliding back during the sunroof phase, I heard a nasty crack. I looked up and the top was askew, with the right hand side retracted a few inches and the left-hand side not having retracted at all.

When I took the plastic covers off, I could see that the left-hand plastic piece that connects the various bearings had broken. The front bearing had come off the track and it took a fair bit of finagling to get back on track.

Repeated, delicate efforts to get it working revealed that the left side clearly isn't retracting at all, while the right side contracts fine. The torque of one side retracting is what broke the other side.

So here, finally, are my questions:

1. Do I have a chance of getting this covered by the warranty? I appear to be outside the 4 yr mark, but am well under the 50k limit. Seems ridiculous to me that the top would go out like that in only 28k miles.

2. If it's out-of-warranty, how much can I expect to pay for the repair? This is making me a bit nervous, obviously.

3. Is the top a dealer-only thing or can I look elsewhere with confidence? I have a local shop I trust that has experience with Minis.

Thanks in advance for everyone's help. This has been an awesome resource for a new Mini owner!

 

Sounds like you have the dreaded broken sunroof cable - unfortunately not an uncommon problem. Always worth begging at the dealer to see if they'll extend you some grace on the warranty - but at 5 years I wouldn't count on it. Many more details are in this thread, including parts info and DIY procedures (the dealer will charge you a fortune to fix it out of warranty).

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...nt-open-2.html

If you feel the repair is over your head, a reputable independent BMW shop should be able to fix it using the information in that thread, for considerably less than dealership rates.

 

Thanks a million, Paul! This is exactly the information I need. I'm looking forward to doing the repair myself when I'm done traveling. (Headed to Ghana on Monday for a few weeks.)

And let me just say: I love this site and the community here. What an awesome resource.