Brought Gizmo in for our first service visit for two problems: club door wouldn't open (in fact the actuator button was actually broken this time from the front door banging against it with the cable frozen). Also, it's been stumbling on cold start- never bad enough to stall, but rpms are clearly irregular for about 15-30 seconds.

I live an hour away from our dealer (New Country Mini in Hartford, CT), so I was definitely in need of a loaner, and was quite surprised I'd have to wait over a month to get one! I said something about it when I dropped the car off, and my SA explained that they have a loaner pool of 60(!) cars, but they've got so many new customers that they're constantly in use. I felt a bit better about it after that, I wouldn't have expected them to have that many, so they're obviously doing all they can.

Anyway, a day later, the club door switch was replaced and the cable rerouted as per the TSB. They documented the stumbling idle, looked for vacuum leaks, checked plugs, etc, and found nothing. Then the service guy went out in the lot and started another clubman that did the exact same thing. In fact, I noticed that my loaner did it as well! So for now they're calling it normal, but they want me to bring it in if it gets any worse. Anybody else been noticing this problem? I searched here for rough idle, but I think the other common idle problem is different, with an accompanying engine clatter that I'm not experiencing.

So all in all, a good service experience, despite the wait.

 

search on cold start issue. there are plenty of discussions about that... however last one i read implied that there was a fix for it. Something to do with the tensioner???

 

That is very true but the cold start issue is for noise from the tensioner. It sound like hutch is talking more about he engine running rough or getting close to stalling rather than the cold start noise. But i could be wrong in my assumption of the words Hutch used.

But at any rate mine has nether issue. And I do not remember anyone talking any studdering or fluctuation RPM or close to stalling issues on cold start.

 

Gang. I have an 08 that I picked up from the dealer 2 weeks ago that had 3k on it. I too have noticed a fluctuating idle but it never gets close to stalling. Funny I though it might be normal. I am guessing not.

 

Exactly. Something to keep an eye on for now, I guess, as long as it doesn't get any worse.