2011 S with 13,000 miles. have not run the car for about 4 weeks. The battery was a bit low but started fine. Even though it said reduced power, I had full power, no roughness or anything.

Is there a easy way to clear the message and see if it repeats or remains clear. I was thinking disconnecting the battery for a while and try again.

 

A bad battery can cause all kinds of weird problems with a MINI.

I have heard that you can disconnect the battery for a while and it will reset the computers, I haven't tried it myself though.

Dave

 

^^^This, about the weak battery.

Also: at stop / start cycle can sometimes clear it. I didn't have the weak battery thing, but my MCS cleared it's trauma when I parked overnight and drove the next day. Several days, actually. But it wasn't kidding, I got the light again a few days later and took it to MINI for evaluation. It was complaining about the high-pressure fuel pump, or a symptom of it, in my case.

Smartgauge or a code reader can help sometimes also, so you'll have a sense of what's going astray. The other threads with the "weak battery" as part of the problem point to weird codes being produced b/c the sensing system is "confused" about what's going on. IOW, potential to chase a bunch of faults, incorrectly, just b/c the battery didn't power the system(s) correctly. Or something like that.

 

The low battery causing a bogus code seams like a very likely culprit. I will disconnect the battery when I get home and see if it clears.

 

I had reduced power mode kick in earlier this week. Unfortunately, no OBD codes to help me diagnose. Google results for CID 029 were all over the place. Cleared itself after a day and before I could get it into a shop to see if they could pull any codes.

 

So for a follow up, When I got in my car to drive home, message gone, no problems. ( I did nothing to clear the message, cleared on it's own)

Must have been a low battery brain fart.

 

get a code reader and see if there's anything set. Codes can be stored with no CEL. I had a similar problem on my 2012 MCS, I was getting the reduced power light but no change in engine power. I got P10D0, P15E8, and P0128 at various times - CEL would come on with the 1/2 power symbol but the car ran fine and it would clear after a restart or two.

There was a batch of bad temp sensors, dealer replaced it under warranty.