Hi, our car has been having starting issues for some time now. They began in the spring as hard starts and have transitioned into near impossible starts. The car has 60 k and is out of warranty and has several mods/issues that make a trip to the dealer out of the question. Here is a bit of background

*car is an 07 mcs, 6mt
*current moss are catless dp, jcw exhaust, accessport, hks bov, alta bpv spring, k&n filter
*previously had a unichip which damaged a pin on the dme. Car always throws a p0697 code. Has for the last year or more, but ran fine. When I get around to it I will open up the dme and make a jumper but for now I avoid the dealer cause of this and I know that isn't the reason since it ran for months like that and hasn't made a difference
*car has thrown an assortment of other codes including a coolant temp min code which seemed to happen often. Can this cause the fuel mix to lean out and affect cold start?
*I did a fairly decent manual carbon cleaning about 5k ago and it didn't seem to make a.difference in cold start
*car starts ok on ether but when I'm cranking I still smell fuel in the back which leads me to believe I'm getting at least SOME fuel.
After running for a bit the car seems to drive ok
For almost two years, before and after modding we sufferered from intermittent loss of power

So far I have the following ideas to look into and was looking for some other ideas
Hpfp failing
In tank pump weak/clogged
Injector/s
More carbon deposits
Bpv spring sticking
Throttle valve
Coolant temp sensor

As I said, I am trying to avoid the dealer. Is there a way to confirm the Hpfp as the culprit because if it is I am replacing it myself and if not is rather not start with the most expensive part even though I think it most likely. I have a decent amount of shop experience but my area of expertise was mainly old BMW/mb

Thanks in advanve

 

Hmm yea, this is tough to say outright. Your statements on what happened to your ECU are a little scary. I hope everything is OK besides the bent pin and it truly doesn't cause any other problems.

Did you clean out the throttle body when you cleaned your intake manifold & ports? Maybe there is some gunk in there making the flap stick.

If the turbo diverter valve was stuck in the activated position you wouldn't get any boost. If it's stuck in it's neutral state it won't vent boosted air back to the intake when you release the throttle. It doesn't sound like this is the culprit for a hard start.

I noticed you have an HKS SSQV. Why do you own this? Get rid of it! I used to have one for a year and then sold it promptly. If you've ever gotten the P115D code this is the culprit. The ECU's reaction to this code is a massive torque reduction. I wrote a small little excerpt on in my "garage" on my local MINI forum:

Steer Clear of Vent to Atmosphere (VTA) Blow-off Valves (BOVs)
If you’ve got an R56 S, jusy say no to VTA BOVs. I had an HKS blow-off valve for almost a year and after a couple days on the track I knew it had to go. The trouble is that the engine’s ECU is already controlling a stock diverter valve on the turbo and adding another mechanical valve downstream only confuses the ECU. A check engine light will occur when the VTA BOV vents and the stock diverter valve is still closed. I believe the ECU has logic that checks both intake manifold pressure and the mass air flow and if there is a disagreement in this logic, a check engine light will populate. The real bonus is that the engine goes into a torque derate because it thinks there is a boost leak. So in “English,” the engine acts like there is no turbo!! My experience with the HKS SSQV was that when I would slightly lift the throttle at times, the blow-off valve would vent when it really didn’t have to, the stock diverter valve remained closed, the check engine light for a boost leak would populate, and then when it came time to go wide open throttle there was no torque! Lucky for me, I was able to sell the HKS SSQV kit on eBay to some ricer lover with very minimal financial loss.

Maybe the map you're running from the AccessPort is out of whack somewhere. Chances are limited, but shouldn't be excluded.

This is probably obvious to you but I would just review every system that's linked to combustion. Spark, air, & fuel. The first two are easy to check on your own but diagnosing the high pressure pump on your own is a tall order. I don't know if the new Bentley service manual for the R56 S has a diagnosis procedure and special tools listing for the HPFP but that information is crucial. Maybe one of the MINI techs on the forum can chime in here. Maybe Way at Way Motor Works or Chad at Detroit Tuned have checked these HPFPs before? Give 'em a call.

 

The good news is that MINI extended the warranty on the HPFP to 10 years/120k miles; the bad news is if you let them dig into it, and it's not the HPFP, they'll be into you for diagnostic fees, at a minimum...

Carbon build-up should be relatively easy to verify on your own; there are several (and currently-active) threads that will give you insight into that.

Can't comment on the other areas; you'll have to wait for input from others.

 

Thanks guys, I just pulled the manifold off again and noticed a decent sized crack inside right by where the throttle valve is so that's one more thing to add to the growing list of issues. I'm not totally sure its open to the outside of the manifold but i have that on my mental "to do" list. There was a little carbon but nothing too bad, I cleaned everything up a little and did a hard reset on the ecu, drove for a bit, seems to be idling better.

As far as the hks goes, its my girlfriends car (and account) and she's really into the jdm import stuff so she wanted it. I've picked up a few p115d actually but it hasn't been anything too bad, however she had an alta before so I've never driven this car without a bov. I'm sure if I try it may notice a difference so perhaps ill grab something to cap it off next time I visit home depot. It's actually a Chinese hks knock off so at least it was only 60 dollars. I come from a long line of bmws and decided to deviate and get a g35 a couple years back, an experience which made me hate Japanese cars and parts in general so as far as I'm concerned hks parts on a European car are just wrong anyway

Another thing I forgot to mention is that a guy from my local speed shop was recently telling me that husquevarna was having many complaints from people in the area about their chainsaw etc.having issues so they sent a rep to test some of the local gas and the ethanol percentage was WAY over the advertised 10%. In fact several stations we selling 18-20%. If this holds true I could easily see that being an issue

 

The torque derate from the P115D will go away with time, but when it first activates it kills all fun! I would suggest just going back to stock or getting the hard tube from NM-engineering.

Hmm bad gas from too much ethanol could be it. All that water it's absorbing into the fuel is a killer to the innards of a high pressure fuel pump. Gasoline has limited lubrication capabilities as it is and uh... water does not ha ha ha! Thank God we're being kind to the environment with Ethanol

 

I think that I may have found the culprit.

I reflashed my ecu with the accessport the other day since when you uninstall it you can't monitor data (would be nice if it worked on stock tune as well ) and discovered that upon dead cold 50 degree ambient coolant my sensor was giving a reading of 221*

I can easily see it leaning the crap out of the fuel mix and that causing my problem

Hopefully that's it, we will see in a few days

 

LOL-cano!

 

Unhooked the cts, after a couple rotations and a quick tap on the throttle it fired right up. Tried it again a bit after and it was instantaneous. Logged both starts and coolant temp was 56, same as ambient so I'm.assuming its using ambient temp as an alternate measure

 

New cts in, aside from the annoyance of bleeding the system, started perfectly 5x so far. Guess we can check this one off as solved and of anyone is having similar issues hopefully it can save someone some money. I was all set to swap out both fuel pumps myself or bring it to the dealer which I'm sure would have still wound up costing something since I rarely see warranty jobs done without having something else tacked on