I have a metallic hissing sound comming from my passenger side. The sound has no real pattern, its comes and goes. It will start when I first fire up the car then slowly fade away. I give it alittle gas and hold it at 2-3000rpm then eventually it will come back. I dont want to buy a new belt tensioner if that is not the problem.

my mini is a 2005 s
44,000 miles
15% pulley since april
new napa belt
original tensioner

any ideas??

thanks

 

My MINI made a similar sound. I too thought it was the tensioner. Since I was under warranty I took it into the dealer & they replaced the power steering fan, noise gone. It was explained to me that the bearing in the fan was starting to go. When ever the fan turned on I heard the noise. Since the fan does not run all of the time the noise was intermittent.

An easy test is to get under the front of the car & spin the fan. It should be smooth not rough. (do the check with the car off)

 

When does the fan turn on?? I doubt that its the fan for 2 reasons.
1. I already replaced it before.2. I hear the noise and the fan isnt running. I hooked up my old fan just to make sure it wasnt suppose to spin at start up. The old one didnt work either.

 

Does the sound seem like it is coming from behind the glove box area ?

Your 05' is prone to passenger side upper engine mount failure. Check the area below the mount for signs of a reddish brown fluid leaking onto it. Just seems a bit premature for the tensioner, but ripe for the engine mount. My 2 cents.

How do you like the Strats Cat Back exhuast ? Was wondering what it sounds like on a 1st Gen MCS.

 

No the sound is definitly coming from the left side where the belt/ac/crank/pulley area. I have the car now in the garage now on ramps and the noise is there. its not the motor mount, the car is not in motion. No sign of a leaky motor mount.

I like my strat exhaust, could be a tad bit louder. I eventually plan on a header....that might do the trick!!

 

Your motor mount can fail with out any leaks.. mine did two months ago. It just got very loose, so loose I could grab the engine and move it back and forth and hear the mount click, but it was totally dry.

I'm guessing it is your tensioner. Pull the RF wheel, pull the liner and get in there and inspect it. It could be one of the two idler wheels going bad. I just replaced my tensioner and the idler wheel at 50K miles. Nothing wrong with my old one, I just would rather replace it in my garage, when I choose than out on the side of the road on a rainy night in Georgia, so to speak.

I'll replace it again when I hit 100K, just part of my PM.

YD

 

Yes check the tensioner and especially the bushings on the shock on the tensioner. If they are the only thing wrong you can replace them with the Powerflex tensioner bushings, otherwise you'd have to get the entire tensioner.

 

any idea were I can purchase the idler pulley? If I do the tensioner I might as well replace the idler too.

 

I keep the idler and the tensioners in stock. We've had a few cars come in needing them so I started stocking them. Just call me at the shop and I'll ship you one.

 

Was it the tensioner or the idler pulley? Or is it the belt

 

wow this is a old thread... well, it was the idler pulley. I was driving home one night. At one point it was consitent metal hissing, then quiet... then next thing i knew it was boom. The belt came off and a number of dash lights came on. I made it home, jacked it up, belt was still in the engine bay. I discovered that the idler pulley was just shot... I think i posted a video after it happened.

 

here's the youtube link

 

Just jumping on an old thread with some additional information... not because this is necessarily the best thread, but because it is the one Google finds towards the top of the list when doing a search on relevant terms.

Our 2005 R53 started getting a kind of ringing noise from the belt side of the motor. Not terrible yet, but enough to hear it over the supercharger and the Dinan exhaust (which isn't loud so much as burbly).

I've done tensioner replacements tons of times on various Saabs and Saturns, so not a big deal.

I made a half hearted attempt to isolate the bad bearing with no dissassembly, but didn't find a good way to do it. So I just jacked it up, removed the wheel, popped out the wheel well cover. Then I got a helper up top with a 1 inch wide 4 foot tube steel scrap piece of square tubing I have laying around. It was left over from a welding project, but you can get them from your local home store, and it gets used a lot around my garage for a lot of things. this was easier than a bar because it was lighter and stronger and the bigger square made it easy to kind of wedge in there and control to keep it from slipping off. I had a helper take the tension off the belt by prying the bottom lip of the tensioner pivoting on the upper bolt of the tensioner. It was a bit fiddly, so you don't want to get your fingers in there while a helper is prying, it may slip. And its better to have somebody below looking to make sure the bar is low enough to catch the lip but high enough not to hang up on the lower pully (crank pulley I think). I think there is a hole in the tensioner I probably could have put a bolt into to help, but this worked fine.

So using a screwdriver and care to make sure my finger wasn't in a "get mashed" position if the tensioner slipped, I worked the belt off from the idler pulley from through the wheel well. Not the pulley on the tensioner, but the pulley directly bolted to the engine case that doesn't do anything except provide a pivot point for the belt to head a different direction.

Once the belt is slipped off, you can then start testing things. If it's an early failure like mine was, then it's a little subtle. You can turn everything except the crank pulley, and feel and listen if it sounds like an unhappy bearing. If I'm honest, I didn't even bother after I turned that static idler pulley and heard the same kind of ringing that was giving me concern. It was the same frequency, but lower volume.

My local advance auto parts had the part in stock, but in plastic instead of metal. $17 I think, and while plastic instead of metal, it had better sealed bearings, so probably gaining some durability at the bearing but loosing a bit on the shell, though the truth is the shell is probably fine forever if the bearings are good, and if the bearings aren't good the whole thing is knackered anyway.

On a whim after I finished the repair, I dove into the parts box for the Saab (2001 9-3 SE turbo 4 cyl hot), and sure enough, the pulley that bolts to that tensioner assembly looked about the same. No promises, I didn't break out the micrometer, and things like bearing width and cover spacing would be wild cards, but if I was in the middle of nowhere and had that part and some time I bet I could have made it work. No reason to do so though, for $17 and a widely available part.

I put it all back together and the noise is gone and it's working great. I didn't replace my serpentine belt, because I had already put in a new one with a new clutch at 90k miles (I am about 120k now).

So anyway, I just wanted to post and say that if you hear a kind of ringing noise of the same note (frequency) as RPM changes, but that is triggered by RPM and not wheel speed, it is probably this pulley. It is fairly easy to get at, and easy to source. On most cars, the one that fails is the one on the spring loaded tensioner assembly, but on the Mini it seems to be this static one that goes first (at least that one is cheaper).

I just did the clutch again, and with all the drivers in my family with various clutch ethics, I expect I'll have to do it again in 50,000 miles or so. At that point I'll probably replace the spring loaded tensioner if it hasn't already let go by then.

Anyway, just another data point to help the next Google victim sent here.

 

Hi - My 2005 S model has been back and forth to the same shop twice now over the serpentine belt going out and them not being able to get the tensioner right (they say - they claim it's hydraulic and are having quite the problem with it). They've had the car THIS TIME for over 4 weeks and I haven't heard a thing. They came highly recommended but I'm not real happy with them right now. They replaced the belt and tensioner the first time and I drove it about 300 miles before the belt went again. Towed back to them.... now 4 weeks there and I'll call them again tomorrow. I love this old car. It has 135,000 miles on it. I've always kept it serviced but the closest dealership was 1-1/2 hours away and they went out of business. Now it's 3 hours away. Trying to find someone local that can successfully work on it. Is replacing the serpentine belt usually such a big deal? Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks!

 

The belt tensioner is a mechanical spring with a gas pressurized shock absorber. Changing out the tensioner and belt is a couple of hours labor at most. Plenty of DIY YouTube videos showing how it's done. Perhaps you need a new mechanic or take up a new hobby of working on your MINI...It's fun and you save money while doing it right. We're here to help.

 

Its not a big deal and a pretty easy job for the home mechanic. Check these vids, they hold a lot of info

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCid...CrugARNdm4PFzA