Hello,
I have an issue with my Mini Cooper Convertible (2014 plate,UK)
The rear spoiler is now stuck in the upright position,up until yesterday I was able to close the spoiler but still have the alarm constantly bleeping,as of this morning I can't close the spoiler (I can still hear the spoiler mechanism attempting to close as soon as I switch on the engine.
I have lubricated the spoiler and the weather has not been cold lately.
I initially thought that it might have been a blown fuse but my local garage says it may be electrical.
Since the spoiler was closing up until recently could it just be a loose wire or is the spoiler motor mechanism faulty?
Any help would be grately appreciated.

 

Hello, you can try to find the guts off an R58 or R59. Or get the spoiler replaced. My guess is it the motor or bad gear in the motor or linkage. This is what it looks like new. The fixed wings are now nla, so unless you find used.

R59 wing active wing

https://www.ecstuning.com/b-genuine-...e/51627400303/





https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...e-spoiler.html

 

Many thanks for the information.

Mike

 

You are welcome.

Mike also here.

 

It could be the motor but before buy a new motor if you're okay removing the inside plastic cover you might want to check the motor condition first. Perhaps test it first.
We had a stuck spoiler on a long trip. Super irritating not to be able to shut off that dam bell !

I'm still not exactly sure what was is the issue that in term caused the car to loose electric power in most of the systems. However they did replace an important module that they say caused problems to the rest of the system which happened to be under some extended warranty. Sadly I don't have the paperwork on hand to give you more details... They also replaced the spoiler motor at the time but that may not have been necessary.

What ever it was it was a very strange series of events.

 

I made an account just to post my fix for this problem. There are two issues I ran across while performing this fix. There is a brown wire in the wiring harness on the right side of the trunk that gets severed, I found some post about it years ago and found I had the same issue. The second is that there are two barrel couplings that are crimped to the linkages for the motor. They get loose over time and it either gets stuck up, or in my case, only one side can try to raise and lower. Makes the car look like Nemo with a little busted fin on one side. I removed the wing and then forced the spoiler into the closed position, and then welded the crimps so they never loosen again. Hopefully this helps someone, it was going to be quite a bit of cash otherwise.

Note on these photos - I tried doing this weld fix while the spoiler was in the car over a year ago. It failed again because I hadn't cleaned anything and it was a terrible weld. I took it out of the car this second time and got a proper bead on it. It has been working flawlessly since, about 2 months now.



Wire bundle location

Busted wire

Weld this

Weld this too

Weld blue spots

 

Nice find, so its was the harness.

 

Nice work and awesome to have this documented for possible issues in the future!

 

WOW! I didn't realize the wing motor was that whole assembly. Still tearing parts off my donor car and couldn't figure out how to get the rods off or out of the motor.

I will say, that area of the R58/R59 is most likely the least documented area of anything.

 

I hope you have resolved this already! The chime bonging nonstop for a year would drive me insane!

For others who find this old thread - I had a somewhat buggy active rear spoiler on a 2013 JCW Roadster (R59) that faulted (Hall Effect Sensor Position Extended Defect - ACTIVE - fault A886 +/- Hall Effect Sensor Motor Defect - ACTIVE fault - A887). Prior to faulting permanently, it started to have issues with either not raising or lowering appropriately or raising uncommanded when the vehicle is started - in all cases the irritating, relentless warning chime and display showed up so long as rear spoiler was misbehaving. For a few weeks, these events would spontaneously resolve. Last week, when I started the vehicle, the rear spoiler immediately rose to the up position (uncommanded - not at speed and not via the manual switch) and the switch above the rearview mirror showed a green light. I am assuming that the fault (see below) made the computer move the spoiler to the upper position and then activated the warning plus recorded the fault codes.

Here are the codes that were recorded....


If cleared, the A886 code would reliably reappear as 'ACTIVE' but the A887 code only occasionally.

After searching for solutions (and finding few) I found various conversations suggesting that wire breakage within the rubber tube carrying the wiring harness from the fender to the boot/trunk lid could be the culprit. Popping loose the upper end of the rubber tube from the boot/trunk lid and the lower end from the inner fender permits the rubber tube to be gently forced down into the hole in the inner fender - this exposes the wiring bundle usually covered by the rubber corrugated tube. Unwinding the applied cloth wrap exposes the wires completely and, in my case, showed a completely severed thin brown wire (20 or 22 ga) and scored insulation on a heavier black wire (from boot/trunk mounted Sirius Sat Antenna, I believe). The brown wire apparently routes the signal from the Hall Effect sensor to the computer system and that gives you the position sensor/motor faults registered above.

Here is what the wire bundle looked like when exposed.....

The brown wire was broken through completely (red arrows) and the black wire (sat radio antenna feed, I believe) had numerous scores through the insulation but conductor was still intact (blue arrows)

Cleaning the break and soldering the brown leads together, followed by adding insulation, fixed the problem (eventually - see below). Electrical tape was used to cover the breaks in the black wire insulation as a precaution.
After fixing the break in the brown wire, the computer continued to register the same A886 fault code through several start/stop cycles and several code clears using my OBDII reader. The car's computer stubbornly refused to believe that the fault had been repaired. So, if you make the repair and don't see an immediate correction to the fault, don't despair - it may just take a while for the system to register the position sensor correctly after repair.

Finally, how this fault showed up is suggestive of the type of repair that is likely needed.

If the spoiler deploys partially and then faults, the motor or linkages to the lift mechanism could be the issue.

However, if previously working spoiler simply lifts itself into the full up position when the car is started, then a wire break from the Hall Effect sensor is most likely the cause as it was in my case. I'm assuming that the computer is coded so that loss of signal from the position sensor on the lift motor automatically commands 'full up' to the motor and then blows a code/chime warning.

There are probably lots of other variations on this issue but after spending a fair bit of time trouble-shooting this fault on my roadster, the simple wire repair has restored full functionality to the spoiler and turned of that F$^^&%$# bonging chime!!

Happy (quiet) motoring!

John

 

I just wanted to say Thank You So Much! for the pictures and description. Our 2012 R59 issue was identical. https://openroadautos.net/ pointed me to the solution and your explanation with images gave me the confidence to dive in. The brown wire inside the trunk lid/body transition conduit was broken AND the connection to the passenger side of the spoiler was loose at the area you pointed out. I don't have access to a welder so used the best epoxy I have. We'll see how long it lasts, but the infernal chiming is gone and the wing is operating normally. Thanks again! You saved both my wallet and my sanity.

 

Say that twice about sanity!
We had ours stuck due to a failure of a footwell module on a long drive down to Florida from PA. We had to drive for a few hours with that horrible sound. It drove me nuts.
Just the fact that there was no way to shut that bell was infuriating.

 

Most welcome! Glad it worked out. Happy motoring!

John

 

I spent months with it blaring before getting my car sorted. I also found it infuriating that every passenger would ask if I'd tried turning it off, as if it was some novel concept I hadn't thought about!