Trialing a couple different vehicles, we recently traded from a subaru sti and found ourselves in a great MCS r56- we love it, dont miss the sti at all; even with all the tuning and pushing 400whp, the fun factor in our mini has made it a great "date night" car. I continue to be intrigued by some of the idiosyncrasies and sophistication of its operation. I have never seen so many CELs between myself and other mini owners but suspect that my STI was just not that refined to let me in on why it might be having a bad hair day...
In any case, the other morning, I pulled out of the garage and noticed a CEL which after toggling was id'd as the CC-ID 131. I stopped and got out and notices the driverside DRL was not out...I had already read about the FRM was dreading having to troubleshoot.
I went up to the car and "tapped" on the DRL and low/ behold, the little buggar turned back on...it has done this one other time (same code, same solution)and since then (knock on wood) has been working fine.
My question is- wherein lies the problem? is it a bad bulb, foglight/DRL assembly, wiring? any recipe to properly investigate would be appreciated.
any links to other sites or threads would also be helpful Thanks everyone

 

Most likely minor corrosion in the connector. Remove the connector and spray inside it and the bulb contacts with some plastic safe electrical contact cleaner, then plug the connector in and remove it a couple times. That should clean things up so that it doesn't happen again. If it doesn't, time to start looking for loose wires.

 

hey gimmeboost, thanks a bunch. I will try to that remedy...if that doesnt work ,I may look at a replacement foglight/ drl assembly.

 

You could also consider putting some dielectric grease in the connector when you put it back together. I didn't realize the DRLs were part of the foglight assembly. That area sees a ton of road spray and moisture in general.