The clearance issue...

 

I did not grab a shot of that (too busy swearing), but here is a whole thread about it with pics:
Clearance issue

 

the stuff of nightmares.

 

Absolutely. And it's worse because I never would have needed to pull the pan in the first place if the dealership hadn't lied about doing the timing chain. But they did, and it disintegrated, and now here I am, deeper into this project.

 

they WHAT? Claimed they changed the chain and didnt?

 

Oh yeah. Claimed a bunch of things had been done. Best I can tell, they maybe did a thermostat and 2 of the turbo banjo bolts. That's it.

 

Thats vile.

 

Sadly, it's par for the course with the service manager for my local dealer. Every club meet up there is an exchange of horror stories about that guy. If your car is more than a couple years old, the automatic response to all problems is $8-13k for a new engine. Need a valve cover? New engine. Don't want to spend that? There's the door.

 

Yup and when mechanics are hungry they invent problems to repair. That's true anywhere and in this case FROM THE MOUTH of a Mini mechanic, at a dealer I will not name.

But we digress...RTV is your friend...

 

I'd like to add to this.. I'm on my 3rd felpro pan gasket in 6x months. They're JUUUUUUNK ! I'm going to try a different brand this time but IF it begins to leak again , I'm just coating the whole Pan in rtv.
I ALSO ordered a new oilpan just encase the old one was cracked and I noticed a difference between the 2x pans. 1x is made for gaskets ( the new non oem pan ) and my old oem pan mating surface has a groove running in the middle of it aND non oem doesn't. SO this leads me to believe that the grooved oem pan will leak when using a gasket with it and i think only rtv should be used with that style mating surface. The felpto gasket actually starts to fold into its self as it tried to seal on the oem grooved pan , thats probably been my reasoning for the persistent leaking..

 

Yeah, MINI came to the same conclusion years ago and released a service bulletin saying to remove the gasket all together and just use RTV. They prefer the grey loctite kind.

 

I have seen those pans bend when removed and they will not seal up right. Not a flat level surface. Hence the RTV fixes that is their is a slight bend removal. The have the dirko grey stuff / Loctite as the newest revision.

 

The failure is in the use of steel against aluminum. These things will never seal for the long term. My friend who sold me my car had 2 dealers try to fix the oil pan leak 3 times and all 3 attempts failed. DEALERS!

That engine grenaded itself so I was relieved of the issue after a couple of thousand miles of ownership. (The brand new engine then leaked from the valve cover almost immediately.)

RTV seems a better solution than a solid gasket given the 2 different material types expanding and contracting at different rates.

Either way...blame Peugeot for this crap design. If the pan was aluminum no one would ever be having this issue.

 

When the dealer removed my oil pan they used RTV per the updated factory procedure. It hasn't leaked in ten years.

If it's leaking make sure it's the gasket and not the wiring. There was an issue with some of the electronics (not sure if it's a sensor or a variable volume oil pump or something) where oil could leak out of the wiring at the rear of the oil pan. This might seep down and trick you into thinking it's the gasket.

It's a common failure; I had it fixed under warranty.

 

Not sure what sensor you're referring (VANOS maybe?) to but that also brings to mind the crank seal (front main seal). If thats it leaking it will make the oil pan wet. If you plugged the PCV ports it can cause pressure to be relieved at the crankcase seal too, among other places.

 

Went back and checked my notes, it's the oil pump solenoid. Down low, just above the oil pan towards the rear of the car. The original solenoids frequently leaked through the wiring. This would start by making a mess on the floor and oil pan, but oil can eventually work its way up through the wiring harness and start causing connectivity problems. In my case it was a 2012 CS.

If you do a search you'll find a lot of examples:

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...id-issues.html

The most recent rev of the part was released June 2013 and incorporates a better seal to keep the oil in, apparently.

 

Interesting. That's the one place my old engine didn't leak...