After driving about 60 hwy miles yesterday to meet some friends for dinner, I had the check engine light (yellow, half solid half outlined) come in about 1 minute in to the trip back. I have just under 50k miles on my car, and this is the 2nd time I have had the CEL come on. the first time the dealer diagnosed a problem with the variable valve timing, and at the same time I had experienced a coolant leak that the dealer couldn't find the source of from the week before. Turns out it was the gasket behind the oil filter housing. Any idea what might be going on here? Today, no CEL in a short round trip. Put my code reader on it, and it didn't pull any codes. Sure am glad I have a certified MINI because it certainly isn't as reliable as a Honda.

 

Bad fuel. Happened to mine one time! I was like wow, my r56 was very sensitive.

 

Could be bad fuel I guess. I only use name premium brand name gas, and I am 2/3rds of the way through this tank.

 

On that note, make sure you always ALWAYS put a minimum of 91 octane in it. If it was the fuel causing the issue, you may have either put too low a grade in on your way on your trip, or a low quality gas at a gas station that doesn't use quality products.

 

I always use 93 octane, usually Shell, sometimes Mobil

 

Ever pump the gas and notice it pumping slower than normal? Could be bottom of the tank, getting all the nasty deposits etc. I'm just trying to play off the "bad gas" idea that was presented. Also, if it came on and then went off at a later time with no major changes, could be an evap code thrown by a gas cap seal not sealing 100%. It could have been a slight hesitation that showed up at the right time to be detected(possibly from carbon deposits or simply a fluke in injection or plug firing) etc.

 

if the light in the center of the tach dash came on and NOT also on the speedo it's 'usually' a temporarily fault. Most of these go away on their own or are temporary issues such as loose gas cap(or improper seal). When the CEL comes on in the speedo cluster is when you can pull the P code.

certain code readers such as snap-on's SOLUS can read the stored BMW codes that are saved when the half power light comes on/off. these codes are not P codes.

 

I switched from BP, big difference in gas mileage and how my car reacts.

 

Via my experience ecu tuning in my subaru days Shell has by far been the most consistent and knock resistant compared to Hess. I also have found great consistencies in Irving. Many a days spent logging knock correction (feedback, fine learning, and knock sum) with my car during similar weather, it's quite obvious when you log to tell whether or not you have bad gas, car runs like chit. On a stock vehicle you may notice it much less than if your butt dyno is tuned to the power you gained after mods and retuning.

 

Could be lots of things that caused the CEL. I would want to have the dealer dig into the history to find the code that triggered it.