Got a 2013 Countryman S All4 with 110k miles on it here in the US. Only issue the car has ever had was vanos valves needing cleaned a year ago. Running factory battery.

Car was driven to work and back yesterday without issue. A few hours after returning home, I realized I had the corner lights left on in the manual-on position. To be sure I didn't run the battery dead, I started the car and it started confidently but the serpentine began squealing loudly. I immediately turned off HVAC to remove AC pump load, that didn't change anything. I inspected (from what I could see with my flashlight without disassembling anything) the serpentine belt looks okay. I started the car back up, still squealing, I rev'd it up a bit to see if it would catch and it took a few revs and it did catch and stopped squealing. Lights in the interior then lit up brighter to proper brightness meaning the alternator was now producing power. I started monitoring voltage; 14.3-14.8. I let it run for a bit and looked down at the belt&pulleys again, the belt seems to be turning around the pulleys okay. After a few minutes I began hearing a repeating ticking under the hood and lost alternator power, voltage dropped to 11.8v and red battery icon on the gauge cluster popped up. Car still runs, no more squeaks, belt still turning, alternator produces no power and emits a ticking/tapping noise.


About to order an alternator as it seems to be the failure here. I may as well order a tensioner as well. Looks like mini has a special tensioner tool to release tension, what's a good alternative tool to relieve tension? What do you guys think?

Appreciate for any help, insight, feedback.

 

Well, sometimes I believe I am vehicle smart but last night I have realized that I am also sometimes not very smart.

I now understand that these cars run a friction pulley between the crank pulley and water pump pulley. All of the rest of the Japanese, Korean, and American cars I've worked on didn't have a setup like that. From the top of the engine looking down between the components, I THOUGHT I was seeing the serpentine driving those pulleys, nope! The rubber-wrapped water pump pulley tricked me. Got underneath the car last night poking around a bit more and I found half (half width) of the serpentine belt laying in there. I manually spun the alternator, AC, and idler pulleys and they seem to spin fine. Each of the serpentine pulleys are half shiny and half rusted, who knows how long it's been driven with only half-width of a serpentine belt!

Picking up a belt tonight from advanced auto parts. I will retract the tension on the friction pulley and check its condition before bothering to install it to get it up and running for a minute. I am sure it'd only make sense to replace the friction pulley anyhow, I will get one on order. May as well do water pump and idler pulley too.