I’m sad today. I took She-Ra in for service this morning because she’s been making a funny noise for the last couple of days. Come to find out its her timing belt. Thing is I just took her in last week because of a broken water pump. 2 things in less than 2 weeks…I don’t know…is this the beginning of the end? Am I being paranoid? She’s only 16 months old so I don’t understand why she’s falling apart at such a young age. I drive her very conservatively about 90% of the time. I have only done cosmetic mods, nothing to the insides or the engine.

Her other recent faults have been 1) occasionally a sort of stutter/stall when going at low speeds, 2) occasionally a low knocking noise when coming from a stop. Taken it in for service on both issues and they can’t duplicate/don’t know what it is. Anyone here know?

Any thoughts/suggestions/comments? Is She-Ra dying slowly?

 

Wow thats quite a few issues for a young car..

 

Not sure what the setup is like on the mini but on many modern front wheel drive cars the water pump runs off the timing belt. Others have the water pump behind the timing belt meaning that the timing has to be removed to get at the water pump. When a belt tensioner goes bad it can make the kinds of noises you have described.

These could all be issues that are related to one failure. Hopefully, they can pinpoint the problem and get you back on the road. With it being such a young car I imagine there was a manufacturing defect in one part that cascaded out to others.

 

You sure it's the timing belt? I thought that both the Chrysler and Peugot engines had timing chains that lasted the life of the engine. I'd think it was a serpentine belt and or it's tension take up idler pulley. How many miles do you have on this thing?

 

I don't know about the Gen 2 MINIs, but the timing was handled by a chain. The water pump is driven by the serpentine belt on a Gen 1 MCS, and problems with that belt could cause the stuttering problems if it were slipping.

Slipping happens more frequently when it's cold or humid out. When my belt starts to get loose/old, I notice a 'chirp' from the engine bay and a quick decrease & recovery (1 second) in power associated with the chirp.

With only cosmetic mods, it would be a bit early for a belt to wear out for you at that mileage, but if the pump was causing problems and preventing the belt from spinning well, your belt could be warn as well. It could be a bad tensioner as well.

I'm just a shade-tree mechanic and there are folks on here who know a lot more than I do, but it doesn't sound like an insurmountable problem. Keep at the dealer to make it right. You have plenty of time left before any warranties start to run out.

 

I agree....I've had good luck getting issues sorted out w/ MINIs. Once a repair was done (under warranty), I've never had it come up again.

 

Well I feel a little better knowing I (hopefully) won't have any other future issues after these are fixed (well atleast hopefully not related to the timing belt and water pump). I have 24k miles. I'll find out tomorrow whether it's the timing belt/chain or tensioner. Thanks All!!

 

Good luck!! Sorry to hear about your Mini, but im sure its nothing to worry about too much.

 

On the R56 the water pump is electric and only operates as needed, not driven by any belt... The Mini as any machine will break, you probably just had some bad luck, they'll fix it and you'll be on your way before you know it...

 

+1 it's a chain.

 

Heh! An '07 R56 MCS timing chain diagram: http://www.realoem.com/bmw/showparts...24&hg=11&fg=25

The tensioner and belt drive system looks much simpler than mine: http://www.realoem.com/bmw/showparts...17&hg=11&fg=18

 

Actually, I think the water pump is belt driven:

http://www.realoem.com/bmw/showparts...31&hg=11&fg=35

You might be thinking of the turbo cooler, it has an auxillery water pump that is electric:

http://www.realoem.com/bmw/showparts...46&hg=11&fg=35

And I'm sorry it looks like we do have a timing chain, wonder how on earth this is bad?

 

Manufacturing defect?

 

That's what I said earlier, I'm just wondering what could be wrong with it to cause the problems reported and allow it to still function. There's not a whole lot of room for error with something like that.

 

I'm gonna put my $0.01 bet on a problem with the serpentine belt or tensioner.

 

On the R56 the main water pump is belt driven through a Friction clutch system to give "on demand" to the engine cooling. The Mini S also has an auxiliary pump that provides cooling after shutdown. The engines use an internal timing chain with a tensioning mechanism which has been known to go bad in some early R56's.