*Update day 3 Friday

I phoned and left a voicemail for Mike the service advisor to give him the extra information if he needed regarding the water pump.

30 Seconds later he called me back and said I was spot on with the diagnosis and his technician said we need to order X parts. My car *should be ready Monday. I'm impressed with New Country's service. I hope it remains fixed. Thanks Crumbolst

 

Great! Glad I could help. I think it was Ian who first brought up the water pump/pulley problem. I was just adding to his wisdom.

Nice thing is that they'll order your parts from a New Jersey warehouse, so they will get there fast. One great advantage to being in the New York tri-state area is that we have 6 Mini dealers within 100 miles. So we get parts relatively fast.

 

I didn't know that - That's wayy nice!

 

There are three counter rotating pulleys involved in the operation of the electric water pump and access to them is quite restricted making proper torquing a difficult task. This may in turn result in the generation of the noise plaguing us.

The lack of a service manual for the R56 is not doing us any favors but I will take mine in and work with the dealer to have all three pulleys loosened and then torqued in the proper sequence and to the middle value of the torque spec. I think that the correct tightening sequence may be critical to provide the correct alignment of the pulleys to each other.

I will report back in a few days.

 

Cheers Ian Venieri - I appreciate your input. I will report on Monday if it has been fixed and remains fixed.

 

Forgot to state that one or more of the pulleys are friction driven allowing the water pump to be activated only after the engine has reached normal operating temperature. Good engineering to keep parasitic losses to a minimum.

Friction equals squeaking noises if improperly aligned and torqued. It also explains the intermittent nature of the oftentimes phantom noise since it is only audible when the engine has reached the temperature that requires the water pump to be activated. Same applies to that last squeak when turning the engine off.

Well that is at least the theory, now lets see if we can make it work in practice.

 

*Update day 4 Morning

Rich called me this morning to let me know that the parts have been ordered and should be in today. Once they receive they'll try to get it done ASAP.

I hope everything goes smoothly and I can get driving again! He mentioned a 'friction wheel' (may not be exact wording)- which is most probable has a connection to Ian Venieri's last post.

So I'll have to wait and see if all the parts ordered are the correct ones and installed properly.

Almost 11am here - Less than 6 hours to go!

 

Friction wheel sounds right.

Just make sure they tighten the pulleys in the correct sequence and to the correct torque specifications.

 

Maybe the turbos are winding down

 

*Update day 5 - Got the car back

Hey folks, this issue is not over! Towards the end of last night I started to hear the same squeak, whine but not as strong. This morning the same but more apparent. I voicemailed Rich and he called me right back and suggested driving it for the rest of the week to see how it turns out - if it's still there then we'll set something up.

I can scan in my work order later.

 

So now my engine is making a howling sound
I had the whistle, but the water pump fixed it (that was months ago), but just yesterday and today I noticed that its howling after warming up. It has been extremely humid out these past 2 days and it only seems to be howling when its humid enough at night (windows fog up and everything). I opened the hood and it is coming from the tensioner/water pump side.
Will see how it goes when its not so humid out

 

I tried driving it for the week now, unfortunately the sound hadn't left, the whistle is still loud as ever. I'll be taking the car back 8/11/08.

Tom

 

Hey same day mine goes in to have the tranny looked at

 

mine is still whining at idle. waiting on one of you guys to get a fix before i bring the car in...........

 

so the whining has stopped for me the last 2 days. the whining stopped after i drove the mini into upper triple digit speeds. and i did that about 2-3 times.

i honestly don't think that its what fixed it, but if it did, thats cool. i made those straightaway runs in a very open & safe area. so i'm not recommending that you guys with the same issue to do what i did, but the whining did cease afterwards....

 

Ok, had the whine, brought it to the dealer and they replaced the water pump. Had it a week so far and the whine is gone, hopefully for good.

 

Lucky you! I hope my second visit works for good.

 

I had the water pump whine on my first long trip in the car during the break-in period. I just got back from another trip and no noise. I am close t0 3000 mi now. My normal commute is short (good and bad - quick trip but sometimes it would be nice if ti was longer so I could drive more I find myself taking the long way more often now) so it never happened on a daily basis. Seems like it just needed to work itself out. I think I saw another post on this thread that said the same thing.

 

Just learned that the US cars have a different water pump arrangement and not the "electric on demand" water pump of the European cars.

In the US cars the water pump is driven by a pulley and friction wheel on an arm apparatus and any problems associated with that assembly would only surface in US cars while the European engineers would have no database of reported problems to investigate and issue correction guidelines.

According to the factory trained technician performing surgery on mine, Mini USA is officially unaware of this problem and has issued no service advisories on it.

Mine is still at the dealer's chicken coop awaiting its second water pump and friction wheel-pulley-arm assembly. Since delivery on June 6 the car has spent 26 nights and counting with the dealer. If it were a girlfriend .....

 

Just received a call from the dealer and despite earlier assurances of a delivery today, 08/08/08, I got the message that the situation will extend to next week waiting for parts that they ordered yesterday.

Out of 66 days since I took delivery, the car will have spent 31 days at the dealership assuming that they deliver it on Tuesday. Out of a total of 2000 miles driven, 1200 miles were for trips to the dealer.

All that is left to say is caveat emptor.

 

Also european cars have this problem, read through these posts:


http://www.mini2.com/forum/2nd-gen-m...ot-her-15.html

http://www.mini2.com/forum/2nd-gen-f...oise-idle.html

http://www.mini2.com/forum/2nd-gen-f...ng-engine.html

It seems that several water pumps have this problem. Have you got a part number for the updated ones?

 

It appears this has popped up on my MINI as well. 2400 miles and when I stop, I'll hear it, as well as a final squeak when I turn it off. Intermittent right now, but I'll probably make mention of it when the replacement arches get in for my MINI. No need for yet ANOTHER trip to the service dept.

 

Sorry haven't looked at my work order yet. But I just brought the car in for a 2nd visit for same problem yesterday. I should be getting an update this afternoon, if not tomorrow.

 

The whistle's go WOOOOOO
wooo wooOOOo yaddadamean
its just for decoration mang just for decoration

 

drat.

the whine came back today. it kinda talks in morse code now.
it goes "eeeet-et-et-eeeeeeeeet-eeet-eeet-eeeeeeeeeet...etc..."

quite annoying. needs to be fixed. sigh...