1st post, just found you guys. My GF has a 3 month old car with just over 3K on it. This past weekend a couple issues popped up. My GF isn't very car saavy, so I am the mechanical guy in the house of course, and get to maintain the cars and the motorcycles. I also by default get the questions from her when stuff isn't acting exactly normal.

1st one is straight forward as the coolant icon came up on the display and when my GF finally got her car over to the dealer, the service manager mumbled something about it being a common issue of some coolant leak? BTW, as a side note, it annoyed me that there was no coolant guage to refer to for to know how hot or alarming this should be, like on most cars.

2nd one is that the fan on the car was now running overtime. Maybe this is tied to the coolant issue possibly? It was running for like 10 mins after the car was shut off at one point, and was almost automatically turning on the minute you turned the car on.

3rd issue, is that the thing was having a no-start issue. Push the starter button and it would crank and crank and crank the starter, but would not catch to save its life. Was almost like a moisture on a coil kind of issue or a bad gas issue. I finally got it to start after just treating it somewhat like a carbureted car when it was sorta kinda starting to catch but not quite. I took it out and more or less "blew out the cobwebs" kind of quick drive and then put in some dry gas for to treat any possible moisture in the tank from the ethanal based fuels that seem to suck *** in seperation. All seemed well for another day and half, and then yesterday morning, it happened again. I was at work, so my GF called roadside assist, and a guy came out and jumped it like it was a bad battery, but I wouldn't have assumed that since it had fire enough to engage the starter and for whatever reason, it started for him.

There seems to be no CEL/MIL light on, and all that, so I am at a loss as to what to assume. I am not even going to get into the drama of the dealership handling of this, as this is a whole other issue in of itself.

Any and all help and comments would be greatly appreciated.

 

So the dealer assessed the Thermostat was in fact bad and replaced it. How that caused all of this, I'll never understand without a CEL/MIL thrown.

 

Out of town dealer first replaced the low pressure fuel pump on mine, but that did not fix it. Second hometown dealer replaced the injectors and the thermostat and now so far so good. I estimated MINI spent $1700 in total on all these fixes. This does not not bode well.

 

I had the same problem about a month ago. I think other people have posted on this issue as well.

 

BrianZooom,

I've had my thermostat replaced 3 times. Keep your fingers crossed...third times a charm. Keep us posted.

 

BrianZooom, There are a couple other ongoing threads w/ the no-start issue that you've probably seen. i'll update the ones I started, but right now I have the same issue and the dealer hasn't been able to get it to 'no-start'. They claim it starts every time, no problem. Yet they are in NO hurry to give me the car back and get their brand new loaner back.

I'm not sure why that is..... I heard from somewhere there is a load of fuel pumps stuck on a cargo ship. that seems stupid given the fact that they could just air freight a couple hundred into the US, but whatever, just repeating (spreading) a rumor.

 

Low Pressure Fuel Pump, Injectors, and Thermostat replaced on mine. I just wish I knew if these will solve the problem or could it reappear.

 

We are picking our car up today and seeing what happens. i'm not going to let it sit there another week or 2 to find out that we had water in the gas or something.

 

yea i feel the thermostat will end up being a recall at some point. i found mine being faulty from my iphone as it has the mini connect and noted the temp readings being warmer than it should and it stalled one cold night after sitting all day. because of the thermostat not working right it tells the engine the wrong temperature and the computer cant start the car as it thinks its hotter than it is.
the car is not over heating but it thinks it is, the thermostat is working but the sensor is not.
thanks to the readings from the mini connected app i was able to be forewarned before the thermostat got to far gone and it was replaced.
if many more minis suffer the same fate i foresee a redesign in the future if not already and I am sure it will be taken care of. i also noted in the right up that they say "replaced the thermostat with a new design." though i cannot confirm that it is the new design, the comments from the tech shows "new designed thermostat."

 

I had the same issues with my Countryman as you minus the no start, although it was listed in their tech notes. They replaced the thermostat and it has been fine since. I have gone almost 2000 miles without any issues since they fixed it. On the repair order they it stated

"Over heating light came on. Flashing red. Read out fault memory and found fault code 2F8E. Performed test plan and found no problems. Vehicle cranks but will not start and cooling fan runs. Viewed status of coolant temp found reading 119*C when vehicle is cold. Performed test plan for coolant temp sensor and determined map thermostat must be replaced. R&R map thermostat. Filled and bled cooling system. Cleared fault memory. Vehicle now runs properly."

I had around 5400 miles on it at the time which seems to be a pretty common number from other threads that I have read.