I've got an 07 R56 cooper S with the John works engine and this weekend I was on my way to an autocross event when I lost all of my boost. I could full throttle the car and I wouldnt get anything above 1lb on my gauge. About a minute or two after this the "check engine light" showed up on my Tach but does not come on the speedometer. I stopped at autozone to see if they could give me something I could start looking with, but nothing. They could not pull any code from the car at all. I checked that the boost gauge was still properly connected. I also checked all the tubes going to and from the turbo to make sure they were on good, and I also checked to make sure the noisemaker(aka waste gate, BOV, not really sure what to call it) wasnt stuck open. Heres the check engine light on the tach but not on the speedometer.




Can anyone help me with this? my Dealership is 2+ hours away and I dont want to risk driving it there.

 

Really could be a bunch of things so I guess it boils down to your mechanical skills and determination vs AAA flat bed.

I have seen some turbos in the 07/08 vintage develop housing cracks leaking boost but they still spun. There have been problems with the oil feed line becoming glogged up like colesterol plaque in an artery. Eventually the bearings of the turbo fail causing the turbo fan to cavitate and seize up.

Frequent oil changes and installing the updated clip-on-heat shield that covers the upper banjo bolt helps as preventative measure. I would also incorporate a regular replacement proceedure for this critical line/2 bango bolts/4 metal washers every 60K miles....

 

In my experience, this happened the same with my 11' MCS. Mind you this happened when I had about 26K miles on her and now she has 38K miles. I was driving and all of a sudden, I lost boost. Same thing, I tried to floor it and she wasn't going anywhere. I immediately stopped at a gas station(Shell, only brand I use). And I began to fill her up a few gallons. As I re-started my MINI, she was clear, nothing was showing on my gauges anymore. But prior to putting gas in her, my scangauge read some code P or U as beginning letter, but I can't remember right now. Good luck, hopefully it isn't as serious as I thought mine was.

-Rob

 

So what you do is go to Autozone and have them run the OBD codes. It is free and only takes a couple of minutes. That will narrow it down a lot. CEL doesn't tell us anything without finding out what the code is.

 

As I said in my first post, I did take it to auto zone but there were no codes to be read. Its not lighting up the check engine light like it did when I had a misfire code a while back. The check engine symbol only comes up on the tach never lights up on the speedometer.

I usually only put shell in my car but I was forced to put in BP gas as there were no shells close by. I put in the highest grade gas like I normally do.

I did have 2 oil lines going to the turbo replaced about 3 maybe 4 months back because they were dripping a little bit of oil, this service was done by the dealer.

 

had same experience, no power lost, just stop the car and restart, no more problems again....

 

Are you running a tune?

 

Your car is most likely in limp mode because of another problem that the ECU detected. This is just a guess by the way but from what I understand about the limp mode feature it is there to protect the engine from a self destruct situation such as damage caused from detonation "knocking" from poor fuel. I would think that there would be a code but it may not be seen with a simple OBDII code reader. I think the Bavarian technic tool would see the problem but if you don't have access you may need to check with a dealer.

 

I'm not running any tune on it just the factory ecu settings.

I'm going to go by the BMW dealership today to see if they have the Bavarian tool, and maybe get my car over there to be checked out

 

Hmmm dealership will help but see if there is a local BMW/MINI mechanic that might be able to help. It would be a little cheaper.