My son is driving to see us for July 4 about half way here (6 hrs), the half fill icon on the engine came on (low power mode). on cylinder #1.
When they pulled the spark plugs, there was oil in the cylinder.

He is in Mount Vernon, IL and its a weekend. There are probably no good answers here.

The shop that is helping him, is going to clean off the oil and put in new spark plugs. No idea if that will let him get on the road and limp to Atlanta or to the nearest Mini dealership.

I suppose he could rent a vechicle and tow the mini to Atlanta or back home.

Any thoughts?

 

The most common cause that I'm aware of is a dropped valve seat. I had this happen and I drove it home about 200 miles on three cylinders. i had to stop about every 30 miles to add oil. I was lucky and the cylinder wall wasn't damaged too much...

If you can avoid driving it, that would be the best option....driving it could further damage the cylinder walls, which would likely result in the need for another engine block.

Best of luck....keep us posted on your decision and what happens.

 

Thanks for the commentss. He was able to get to a UHaul and reent a truck and flatbed for the Mini. He wil get into Atlanta late tonight. Hopefully on Monday we can get to a shop who can do the repairs.

I would love to dive into the job with him but time pressures and need to get back to Kansas City probably make that a bad option.

I am guessing the valve seat is a possibility. He was just in the shop yesterday morning for an oil change and check up. He hasn't seen any sign of coolant or oil loss before this trip and no indication of overheating.

He drove it about 15mi on 3 cylinders to get to the garage last night.

Any tips on getting a good shop to work on this? There are a couple of import garages nearby that specialize on BMW. THere are also a couple of dealerships nearby.

 

I'm glad he could rent a truck...15 miles wouldn't have done any more damage...finding a good shop is always difficult. I've taken MINIs to shops familiar with BMWs but they didn't have much experience with MINIs and I have little doubt that I funded their learning experience.

The first place I would consider is -

Way Motor Works
3115 Marjan Dr
Atlanta, GA 30340

Way is a NAM vendor and active on this site. I've never met him, but I've spoken to him on the phone and ordered many parts from him. His shop also repairs MINIs, and has received many recommendations on NAM.

Also, you can check out this site-

https://www.minirepairshops.com/sear...anta%20georgia

Best of luck, and I hope it works out.

-Steve

 

Here is the scoop on thsi one. When I looked at it today, the oil wasn't in the cylinder it was in the spark plug tube. I could attribute that to the valve cover gasket. Running a couple of checks on the sparkplugs confirmed that it was the #4 sparkplug that wasn't firing at all. A new sparkplug/coil stem solved the problem. Huge relief.

He still had to rent a truck and trailer to get to Atlanta but he wasn't going to get much help in the middle of nowhere.

Larn for next time.