Was waxing the mini today and when I went to polish the back, I found two cracks in the hatch door going top to bottom. At first I thought it was just water streaming down, but no my fingernail catches the crack. Then I found another just below the window and above the license plate also going up and down. Has anyone come across this on theirs?

No rear ends to this mini, I don't even slam the hatch down.

 

A big shopping car blew into my hatch putting a huge dent into the metal. I wonder what could be cracking!? Maybe bondo from a pre-dealer delivery port repair?

 

Are they parallel. about the width of sport stripes?

 

That was a good thought. I had to go out and make sure. But no that is not what it is. Only on one side is mine. Not a perfectly vertical crack slightly off. And the long one goes from the window (bottom) down to the molding, then it continuals from just about the end of the molding down to the bottom of the door (about 3" apart). So I assume the crack suddenly takes a turn at the molding. The other crack only goes from the bottom of the window to the molding just to the left of center, nothing on the right side. The wax made it show up as the wax dried in the crack. If I get the notion I'll take the tuperware off the inside and see what it looks like there. Otherwise when I come up for service I'm going to bring it up to the service tech. This is not an accident (crash) type of crack.

Thank you for a good suggestion to look at. I never thought of that one.

 

Can you post pictures? Thanks.

 

Not sure, but I'll try. I will go take them now so latter today I see what or how to do it.

 

OK, I'm ready to give it a try. OK, that didn't work, I'll try to resize. Ok, ready to try again.

Well, it's not as big as I hoped but you can see the fine crack in both pictures. As I said earlier the dryed wax makes it show up more.

 

That is (supposed to be) metal, so no cracks possible...unless, as suggested it was bondo-ed. If a weakish magnet won't stick nearby, there is plastic filler there.

Otherwise, sadly, it is likely a scratch.

That's all I can figure.

 

The first thing that came to my mind when I saw the pictures was that someone had keyed the OP's car. Is that a possibility?

 

If it had been keyed it would have left a wider and straighter path. If you look really close it is literally cracked (jagged). How how far through I don't know. Perhaps it is just the paint. But with modern day paints and clear coats I find that unlikely. I thiink I'm going to have to break down and remove the inner shell linning. The path it follow is consistant with a stress crack, it follows the easy route. In the picture it followed the molded section and came down the outside edge where there is a crease in the metal as it was produced.

 

If your car is still under factory warranty, I'd let the dealer take it apart, so they can document what they find.

 

Good call, I'll do just that.

 

Strange. Is there any signs of rust? I don't see any load point on the boot sheet metal to introduce stress nor cause metal fatigue failure. I could be wrong, but like others have said, it looks more like an hairline crack in the paint/bondo or it is a scratch. Please let us know what the dealer says.

 

Will make sure I get back about what the dealer says. As to bondo, I don't believe so. I can place a magnet (granted a poor test) against the metal in this area and get the same magnetic attraction all along the crack line as I do the rest of the cover. The only thing I could come up with if someone slammed the lid when something was in the door to stop it???? that would have given a start point at the weakest point which would be right at the end of the moulding end. It's really hard to say, my annalisys is just a conjecture on my part.

 

Please keep us posted... this is just weird!

Spridget