Looking for some help. I bought my wife an 07 cooper in Dec had a ton of problems with some body work from damage the dealer did but that aside. we are driving down the freeway Saturday night about 75 mph (clean air, no a/c running, 78 degrees outside according to obc) and of a sudden we get the yellow overheating warning light. We get off the freeway and by this point the light has gone off. Around the corner from the house the light kicks on again. We park in the garage, the fan runs for a while and 2 hours later I check and the coolant level is low, so i figured I'd get some coolant the next day on the way home from church. Well, on the way home the next day, not even a mile from the church, the yellow light comes on again!?! I make sure a/c isn't running etc. and next thing i know light goes off a min later but this time it's red!? So we stop to let it cool. At this point we are less then 2 miles from the house, so I continue driving home and half way there red light comes on again!! We get home, park it, pop the hood and the fan is running but there's no coolant in reservoir at all. I called mini and got car towed on tuesday morning to Crevier Mini where we bought the car. They call me back today the only problem they found was a blown fuse for the cooling fan??? (ok so why was the fan running when i popped the hood?) When asked this question the dealer rep doesn't answer, just says that was the problem and the coolant in the radiator was fine so we refilled the reservoir??? They said pressure test was fine, water pump fine, and seals are fine so the car is ready to be picked up. Completely puzzled i hang up.

This evening i call back tell them i just don't feel comfortable with picking the car up, the fan was working fine, the car was overheating driving down the freeway (dealer responds that because it was low on coolant) but you said the coolant level was fine earlier? The other thing I tried was when the car was hot i kicked on the heater and it wouldn't blow hot air. This is when i decided to have the car towed. With that the dealer decided to "do some more work on it"

At this point i am frustrated and really concerned because coolant doesn't just disappear, it goes somewhere but there were no visible leaks outside the engine. it seems the mechanics are contradicting themselves about there being enough coolant, but overheating because there isn't enough coolant. the fuse was blow on a fan that was working just fine when we had it. . Any ideas or suggestions on things to ask the dealer to test?

 

It sounds like an interrupted chain of custody at the service department in evaluating, testing and correcting the problem.

Meet the service manager and share your dissatisfaction with the service you got. Demand a pressure test of the system in your presence and let the car run for at least 15 minutes while observing the pressure gauge.

 

some people have been having Head Gasket issues on 07 and newer......it may be time to have them do a compression test. If there are no visible leaks, then maybe the coolent is exiting out of the exhaust.

 

I believe they were blowing smoke, If you say the fan was running when you stopped then something else must have caused the hi temp. Keep a close eye on it.

 

well they just called and said they found a "pin hole" in the radiator. so they replaced it and say everything is fine. we will pick up the car tonight and see what happens. we will be driving it about a 100 miles this weekend so we should be able to test is fairly well, thanks for the help.

 

Bad Mechanic! Bad Mechanic! You'd have to be blind not to see a pin hole leak in the radiator! Even if you couldn't see the leak itself, you'd see the resulting discoloration (especially based on the amount of fluid you'd lost). This is overheating 1-A -- it's a sealed system, it clearly has to be going SOMEWHERE. If they can't figure the easy parts out, what are they going to do with something more complicated? Time to shop for a different service department! I'd certainly voice my concerns to the service mgr!