The A/C in my MINI just does not get the job done, mine is a 08 with auto a/c.
My car sits out in the sun all day and after driving 25 miles home, about 40min it still has not cooled the interior.

Has anyone had their a/c checked by MINI and found a problem or had it improved ?

 

my 08 has weak A/C as well. I think that's just the way they are

 

what do you keep it set at?

On both my 02 and 07 with the auto-air I've kept it set at 68 most of the time and it cools off pretty quickly even sitting outside in Florida sunshine. I do use a sun sheild on the front on really hot days but also have the sun-roof with no additional sheilding .... nor any additional tint.

 

A little more info:
My sunroof has extra tinting 20% I think
I do use a sunshield in the windshield when parked out in the sun.
I run the a/c on max all the way home, 25 miles no stop and go.
The air temp out of the vents will be in the mid 60 deg range unless I reduce the fan speed then it will get into the lower/mid 50 deg range. The temp should be in the mid 40 deg range.

 

I just had my first service on my '08 Cooper (1 year, 26000km (~16000miles). One of my issues was the weak A/C. I had to have the fan on full speed/recirculate all the time to get any cool air from it, and on the hottest days it just couldn't keep up. Standard A/C, no auto-air.

Here's the excerpt from the dealer service invoice:



It was a good day for them to be checking the A/C - 35 degrees C and miserably humid.

I've noticed a marked improvement on the few hot-ish days we've had since then, but the weather here has mostly been rainy and miserable since I got the car back. I'll report back after some more hot humid weather.


__________________________________________________ _____

 

My 2007 MCS R56 has auto A/C and it seems to handle the high temperatures OK. It's been in the low 90's here the last couple of weeks (southeastern NC). When I park in the sun I crack the sunroof to vent the hot air and that seems to help. I would think if you are getting only 60 degree air from your vents that your A/C needs attention.

 

My 07 gets the job done here in AZ, which was a pleasant surprise. I expected a typical weak BMW AC. But I do not have a sunroof and ordered it with cloth seats. I find my cars with leather stay warm much longer than the cloth.
I agree your temp vent should be a bit lower.

 

complain at the next service and see what they do.

Matt

 

KC... I took mine to Century when summer started because my A/C was completely useless. They took it in for half a day and told me the coolant was low. After a leak check and re-charge, it's all good now and was covered under standard warranty.

p.s. I posted a thread about it on our site a while back.

 

I live in south Florida. I have a white top with no sunroof. My AC will freeze my nut$ off if I dont raise the temp setting.

 

Mine does the same thing. To the OP try pulling out the air filter under the passenger side dash it may be clogged up.

 

Running your A/C on "Max" may be your problem, set it to Auto with the Temp. on Low, this seems to work better than Max to me. We had Low 90's yesterday and even with the Sun Roof Open it worked fine. I'm a Sun Bum (former Phoenician), so I've got to have the Sun Roof Open as much as I can.

 

I had mine in last week for the 15k mile service that ended up being 18.5k miles, they fixed my sunroof but I did not tell them about the a/c. After doing a little checking and reading I'm convinced I need to take it back for a checkup.
Thanks Bart.....


KC

 

My auto A/C is ice cold and it gets cold FAST. Bummer.

 

I'm on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Nothing but 100+ heat indexes here for the last couple of weeks. I've been really happy with the auto a/c on my 08 MCS. I do not have the sunroof. Maybe it's that or your a/c has a fault. Good luck.

 

I had mine checked last fall, as I didn't feel like it was cold enough.
They measured the temp on the floor and it matched the temp as set, so they said it was fine.

I don't think they measured the temp of the air output though. Is that the SOP for checking if an AC is working properly? It does keep the car cool once it gets it cooled down, but it just seems to take longer than it should to cool off.

 

I have an 08 MCS with auto air. When getting into my car on hot days in Birmingham (Al), I hit the "Max" setting, and lower my windows and sunroof. It takes maybe 5 minutes before the car is cool and comfy and I can go back to the "auto" setting (72 degrees). Actually, I am pretty impressed by the AC. Perhaps you should have your service person look at it. The cooling agent may be low.

 

Before getting in the car, hold the unlock button on the fob down until it lowers the windows and opens the sunroof. A lot of the heat will rise out of the sunroof immediately. Drive that way for a little while to clear out the "greenhouse effect" heat and get it down to the sweltering ambient temp. Then close it up and turn on the AC. In the long-run this could save you some $$ at the gas pump.

 

The A/C is weak on these cars. There might be a problem with yours, but it sounds like most of the members on the board are cold natured, lol. Anyone who raises the temp above low in the summer is easily cooled off. I always have my cars set on low and never raise it from that level in the summer time, but I am hot natured so I never get cold enough.

 

Well I wasn't sure if it was the MINI's A/C that was weak, or just me comparing it to my previous car, a Lexus ES300. That car still had the old "R-12" freon in its system, the last year before it was replaced with the newer "R-134a" type refrigerant that all cars are req'd to have now. That Lexus A/C could form icicles on the rear-view mirror 30 seconds after pushing the button to turn it on. I never ran it on "max" for longer than a few minutes, it got too cold even on the hottest days. Plus - the car was (is, I still have it) a dark metallic green colour with totally black interior, a real heat-sink in the summer months.

I thought that maybe I was expecting too much of the MINI air system, comparing it to the massively over-capacity Lexus one that I was used to. But the MINI dealer did find that mine was down on refrigerant slightly (.9 lbs. measured, 1.1 lbs. capacity); didn't seem significant to me, but the service people said that was enough to make a difference. They also checked for leaks etc. and found none. Maybe mine didn't get filled completely from the factory? I don't know. But it did seem to cool more quickly after the service; we've had a long run of cool wet weather (raining again today) so still no sustained, really hot temps to compare the performance before/after. I'll re-post after we get some summer!

So, I guess it's a good idea to mention the A/C performance to your dealer at service time, if you're finding it's not up to your expectations. My MINI service dep't was really good about checking and fixing this and several other minor complaints I had, no questions asked and no B.S. answers ("it's supposed to be like that", "they all do that", "we can't duplicate it so we won't fix it", etc.; you've heard them I'm sure). A good experience all around.

 

OK...took the mini in to have the A/C checked today. They evacuated the system found a leak and recharged it(the freon was low).

Now the vent temps are 46 to 48 deg. thats a 8 to 10 deg improvement.

I'll know for sure how good it is when the temps get back up in the 90's.

 

So is "vent temp" something they actually check? When I complained about mine all they checked was if it'd get the car cooled to the indicated temp on the auto climate control.

 

Before I took it to the dealer i bought a small digital thermometer that has instantanious readout and checked the vent temps which should have been in the mid 40 deg. range (SA said 48~50 deg.). I had confirmed that my temps were about 10 deg to high.
After the service I did the same check and found the temps to be 8~10 deg lower.
Did the dealer measure the vent temps, I dont know, but measring the interior temp only wont tell you anything because of many other factors.