Do you have any consumer reporter/news type service in your area? One of the last things a dealership wants is a bunch of negative publicity (it's even worse than a lawsuit).

 

Update on this.

I got my car back on Saturday. It's still running in the same condition as it was before the CEL came on (and before the overrev occurred). Interesting side note is that the CEL has not returned since it has been cleared out, even though things are obviously amiss.

On the customer copy of the description of service, it says that carbon cleaning has been performed on the engine. I also thought it was interesting that it doesn't list that it was 2 quarts of oil low (as the SA described over the phone).

I tried to obtain a copy of the report that the dealer keeps, but I was quickly denied. I took a few surreptitious photos of some of the interesting pages before signing it. There has been a history of superpinging, and the compression check has the #2 cylinder at 40 (the other 3 are at 160) with a fouled plug, and "all cylinders looked wet on top of pistons with the exception of cyl 1 which is dry". The estimate for the work needed to be done by the dealer has a cylinder head, spark plugs, and some sort of bolt (extremely blurry) for parts, a $700 charge that I can't make out, and an additional 22 hours of labor (at $185/hr, one of which was diagnostic - which they waived for me before picking up the car), with confirmations of the other numbers in my original post.

I'm trying to escalate within corporate, and I'm about to send the details of my contract to some attorneys who would like to review it (hi guys!). I'm trying to work out some of the details, because I've never been specifically told what part of my warranty is void (this claim, the engine, the car?), and how the overrev of the engine contributed to the current state of the engine (it sounds like they saw the code and immediately stopped all investigation - if they could read the timestamps of the code (can they?), they'd see that the CEL came on before the overrev occurred). Why is my car running the same way since well before the CEL came on? I'm trying to think about other issues that I have documented with the car as well, such as the cold start issue, since bad timing could lead to the compression issue that I'm seeing.

Any thoughts?

 

I think that the current dealer might be dishonest, and may have dug themself into a bit of a hole. Whoever said that the oil was 2 qts low right after they serviced it may have been silenced and that disclosure "covered up" (can there be a coverup in Mini warranty claims lol?). The fact that the dealer didn't address the overreving issue in writing, and really didn't give a reason for the engine defects is very suspicious IMO. I can't even tell if they dismantled the engine to inspect it. I would get a second opinion from another dealer. I've read tons of threads like this on NAM, and people who've just taken the car elsewhere have usually done fine. The other option is to lawyer up, because dealers have insurance against damaged cars. I had a rear end go out after service and it was void of fluid. They fixed it and filed an insurance claim. Just my .02.

 

Still working on this.

Side note, I was visually inspecting my engine last night and one of the nuts securing the intake manifold was missing from the bolt. It was obviously there before, just no longer present.

 

When I suggested the dealer may be dishonest I think you understand my reasoning. You're familiar with the HPFP issue. I had one. Car took 2-3 button pushes to start first thing, I put in some Techron, finally it wouldn't start, dealer replaced it. Simple, right? Well some owners got a different message: "we tested your gas, and there was over 10% ethanol, so we won't warranty fix it, so pay us $1200". Some wouldn't even let the owner get the gas tested independantly. Most eventually got it fixed free, but I guarantee my Scottsdale dealer never tested my gas. My point is some dealers are different than others when it comes to warranty fixing your car, and I'm not getting a warm fuzzy feeling with yours.