When I pull away from a dead stop my car makes a weird noise. It sounds like the rear breaks are sticking, it is almost a howling sound or a faint break squeak.

This will only happen when the car is at a dead stop and I pull away. It could be pulling away in reverse--first or second gear.

The rub...I am still under warranty and my maintenance expired 3 weeks ago. I brought the car in prior to my maintenance expiration and they told me it was my rear break bushings--the part is being ordered and it will take a week to get it. I picked the car up and the service manager said he will call me when the part came in. He never called me; I left 3 messages over a two week period. I just made a new appointment to drop the car off for an issue that sounds like rear breaks. When I dropped the car off, the service writer (who told me 2 weeks prior it was the rear break bushing cant recall anything about ordering this part or what the issue was (no notes in the computer); he said we will check it out. They call me two days later say they put new pads and sensors in and that I am all set. When I picked up the car, I hear the same noise as I pull out of the stealership... The service department was closed, so I went back the next day and express my frustration that not only is time and gas being waisted back and forth three times, but I don't think anyone road tests the car before they call me.

To shorten up this story the head tech road tests the car with me says its a duel mass fly wheel; they see this all the time, and it will be warrantied. I am posting this because while there is no expense to me other than time and gas, I feel like they are just ripping off BMW/Mini to pay for time and parts that my car probably does not need.
Any feed back would be helpfull??

PS. I'm all for capitalism. I have been a financial advisor for 12 years and enjoying helping peole make money, but I dont enjoy seeing corprations riping people off. I hope that this is not a case where I am allowing the stealership to bill for unnecessary stuff...

 

So they do the work and the noise goes away or it doesn't, what other choice is there? I guess if you want to protect BMW corporate you could offer to pay for it out of the warranty if it doesn't fix the issue.

 

I am not in a place where I have the sound of a bad dual-mass flywheel but it does sound like that is your problem. And you are lucky they said they would cover the costs as when that happened to me I had to take Artoo to another dealership to get it covered. It is an $1800 job and you should consider suggesting that you pay for a new clutch while they are in there depending on how many miles you have on it. I did mine at 40,000 and it looked great but I figured new gets me another 40,000. I think the parts cost me $250 or so and if I had the chance again, I’d have them put in a LSD at the same time too.

The bottom line is that this dealership is doing you a favor. Really. You should be happy rather than concerned as a lot of folks paid for this repair when their dealerships told them it was the clutch and not covered under the maintenance warranty.

Rich

 

I appreciate the info, but why would it not be covered, this is not an abused car, this is not due to abuse if thats the problem. So if it is a flywheel whouldnt my warentee cover it??

 

When this problem first started coming up in 2003 the dealers didn't believe it was the flywheel making the noise but the clutch. They also knew that it was functioning fine and the only problem was the noise so they were inclined to say that it was the clutch and not covered.

For me the dealer where I bought Artoo simply wouldn't cover it and when I called Mini corporate and spoke to my regional tech said "they pay the dealers a lot of money to make these decisions and if they said not covered, it's not covered". I was blown away but I was in the other dealer in my area and they hard the noise and knew exactly what it was and it was repaired the next day.

So, I say your dealer is doing the right thing.

Rich