Hey all, I’m just about to the point of pulling my hair out! I will post this in the Gen 2 section as well if mods allow, since this isn’t necessarily specific to an R60 but any N18 Mini I hope.
OK here is the issue:
I have 40mm turbo installed on my 2012 R60 S All4. For a while now and it’s getting more noticeable lately, I have had this weird what I think is a boost leak or vent of some sort.
Im wondering if maybe my pressure converter or vacuum tank may be bad. But I’m not getting the classic kazoo sound at shut off, no odd noise at shut down at all. The car runs great, so it doesn’t seem to have a vacuum leak. But under a light load while building boost, I will sometimes (more often recently) get a brief whistle or hoot almost like a tea kettle whistle of pressure releasing somewhere under the hood. It’s not the diverter. It will happen and I can feel the power drop a bit as it loses a couple psi just before the diverter opens. I have changed the diverter multiple times and now have a GFB DV+, but still get it. Under harder acceleration or higher boost levels it seems to seal up and hold pressure fine. No whistle or power drop.
does anybody have any idea what this may be? I’m getting frustrated! I’ve pressure tested all of the charge pipes and FMIC and no leaks there at all. I keep thinking it’s the pressure converter but don’t want to just throw parts at it blindly. Does anyone have any tips for testing the converter/boost solenoid?
any help here would be tremendously appreciated!
thanks!
Grumps

It likely *is* a vacuum leak. I recommend that you acquire a smoke machine or go to a garage which knows how to use one. That and a stethoscope or remote mic and headphones. My TT leaked a bit under boost and lost that Puh-shuuuusssh! sound when the DV let off excess pressure. The vacuum lines get hard and brittle with age and will crack and split. Might be worth buying a reel of hose and cut it to length and reinstall all of it.

One other less obvious thing to check is the boost control valve. I don’t know if that’s what it’s called on the MINI but that, too, was a notorious issue with the TT and likely easy to replace.

I have been suspecting the boost control solenoid too. I can’t seem to find anything else. I suppose I need to figure out how to do a smoke test, because I don’t like paying others to work on it, maybe I’m old school, maybe I’m just cheap.....maybe a little of both! Lol
thanks for the response. I have been searching but can’t really find much on how to test the solenoid first, because I loathe just throwing parts at a problem. Time to think on it a bit more.

It’s the part between #’s 7 & 8

This thing! Ugh!
Son of a .......
I think I’ve FINALLY tracked it down and found the culprit! It’s the dang coupler in the cold-side boost tube that used to have to noise maker attached to it Mine never had the noise maker, but at least for a time, they used a coupler that is almost identical except for the port for the noisemaker. It’s leaking around the seal on the top. So I ordered up a Forge noisemaker delete pipe that should eliminate that whole piece. Hopefully that will do it! It will be here in a couple days.

what’s the “noisemaker’s” function? Hope you found it. How’d you find the leak?

It’s a dumb design decision. I’m dumb too I suppose, since I had mentally eliminated that part as a suspect for the leak because I took it apart and put it back a few times and never seemed to make a difference, but I never actually pressure tested that part. I’m just glad I finally found the problem! The one piece hose that I ordered will hopefully do the trick.

Yep, you would think that I would know better by now, but.....lol.
Thanks, by the way, I ordered the hose from ECS. You guys had the best price on it. Just waiting for it to arrive.

Still haven’t answered my question? :-)

I apologize, I didn’t notice your post right away. The noisemaker was a contraption that pumped artificial engine noise into the cabin. They stopped using it around the time of the switch to the N18.
I had been hearing it for a good while now, giving me just a brief whistle every now and then. Just enough to be super annoying! And a small flat spot in power when it would happen. I have been looking for it unsuccessfully for a while.
The last time I had it apart there, put a little bit of lube on it to enhance the seal and cleaned it up really good inside and out. Well the last time I had my head in there looking at the vacuum tank and lines, I noticed some dirtiness around the top of the coupler. Then I jiggled it a little and realized it’s not a tight seal there, as it moves quite a bit. So with my super thinking cap on, I decided to wrap it in duct tape and see if the sound changes. Sure enough it did! Now I can see where it’s leaking at. So the one piece delete pipe should solve the problem by eliminating the coupler altogether.

^^ Thanks.