Hey! Any ideas what this might be? Battery is good. Interior lights on. Insert key & push start. There's a click, the interior shuts down & the orange key symbol lights up in the warning light area. There isn't a slash through the key symbol, just the key. I tried my extra key & it does the same thing. Everything was fine when I pulled into the garage last night. I live three hours away from the dealer so any help/ideas would be most appreciated!!! Thanks

2011 Clubman S

 

Well one nice thing is that living 3 hours away from the dealer you can get MINI Roadside Assistance to pick up the car and take it to the dealer and return it to you once fixed.

As for the symbol you are getting. If it is "just" at key not line or battery with it then then I have no idea, I don't think that is a valid option for display.

Also you may want to put a battery charger on the car battery just to make sure it is fully charged. These cars do some strange things if the battery is weak. And it is common that that the OEM batteries go bad very quickly.

 

Very true, left my lights on over night once for the consecutive nights which drained my battery. Next day when i started my car got a oil warning on my car display, freaked out, and brought it to the dealer. Just to find my battery was really low and sometimes, like stated above, the car does weird things with a low battery. Hope you figure this out and its not a huge headache to deal with.

 

Thanks for your responses! I tried jumping it with a charger & no luck, so I think MINI roadside is my best bet. I looked for the warning symbol in the manual & called the dealer who hadn't heard of it either. My car MAY just be setting precedence once again. A week into owning it in 2011 it had an electrical problem that hadn't been encountered before. I had a loaner for almost a month while they figured it out. Dealer was great, kept me updated & was apoligetic. Hope it wasn't an omen. Other than a few inconveniences I'm really diggin' my MINI. I'll let you know what the outcome is. Cheers

 

are you under warranty still ??

 

Still under warranty

 

I'd love to hear the outcome of this one!

 

It's on it's way via MINI roadside to the dealer. I'll keep you posted on what the scoop is.

 

Jumping with a Charger does not work if the battery is going bad. You need to "Charge" it like in letting it charge for 3+ hours. Read and search here and you will find many instances of battery failure and the strange things is causes.

Again a bad battery that is charged for a number of hours could have shown if that was really the problem and an easy fix.

What were the symptoms?

What did they do to fix it?

Please do let us know the outcome.

 

Ahhh...wise people on the thread. My Clubbie is being loaded at the dealer & headed back home. It was a defective battery. Odd, I had it in a month or so ago to have the thermostat replaced. The excessive running of the fan from the bad thermostat had ran the battery down, but they checked it then & said it was fine. I could have saved the tow & replaced the battery had I known, but the good news is that they did the recall work while it was there, so it saved me a trip and a day from work.

Regarding the early on electrical problem when the car was new - the right front & rear lights were out. Seems simple enough? Not! I cant find the invoice in my file, but will look further & post, but if I remember correctly they ended up taking computer parts from three other other cars & tried them in my car & it still had the same problem. Someone outside of the dealer was brought in from the mothership to look at the problem & I believe an incorrect part somewhere else in the chain had been installed at the factory. It just took a lot of time to trace it down & several thousand miles of driving from when it was new to fail.

I have @24,000 miles on the car now & other than the mentioned issues, had a loud whining in when the A/C was on which was taken care of by the dealer by installing an A/C suction line vibration dampener, some break work & a front end alignment which ate the front tires. I've been very pleased with the dealer(s) in all cases. I've heard we have been approved for a dealer here in Fresno. Can't wait. I'm five minutes from BMW & have a 67 MGB that always gets me around town when I need a second car. I love my MINI, but there is something to be said for a car that just has an engine, transmission & clutch!

 

MINI/BMW's battery test does not seem to always catch a bad battery. Happened to my MINI's battery and at the same dealer they failed to detect a bad new battery (not before spending two weeks replacing thousands of dollars worth of modules) in my father's 645i.

Very glad it got sorted out for you.

 

I had a battery go on me in my Mercedes yesterday. In the morning it was fine, no problems. Then in the afternoon it wouldn't start, just a weak turn of the engine but not enough to start. I got a jump from a guy who had one of those "Boost Packs" in his car (I gotta get me one of those). I immediately went over to Sears. I drove in to the battery check area and they put a computer check on the battery. Sure eough 10.8 volts and even less under load. Dead Battery! I paid $22 and I had a new battery, gotta love Sears.

I spoke with the guy while he was working on the car about how fast the thing died and he said that's the way a lot of the newer batterys go... One minute they seem fine and then a cell inside shorts out and its basiclly dead, over, kaput! Time or a new one. Not like the old days when your battery got weaker and weaker until it finely it couldn't do the job. Nope, seems today's batteries just go dead!

 

It can happen fast. On my old E36 325iC I turned the key and the engine turned over at normal speed but didn't catch right away. I don't like to over tax the starter motor so after cranking for say 3 seconds I turned the key off then after that there was only a click when I tried to start the car. I would have sworn it would have been the starter motor but it was simply a battery. I had the car 10 years after that and never changed it again.

 

Thank you so much. Your info helped me a lot. I was “money” worried that I would have to visit a mini dealer ship, which the closest one to me is 4 hrs. So I could have my key fob reprogrammed or have to buy a new key. Thanks to you all I had to do is get a new battery and my mini started up again.

 

Its a bad ground. Disconnect the negative battery terminal and clean it and connect it again then try to start the car. If that fails then try to boost the car normally first. If that fails then boost your car with the negative booster cable attached to bare metal of your car frame. If it starts by connecting a booster cable to the frame instead of the battery then you need to troubleshoot your neg battery cables connection to the frame for a short.

 

I have the same problem,


new battery, I’ve tried a couple key fobs but nothing. Still no crank, I hear hear everything working... fuel pump etc. Can’t figure it out. When I press the clutch in and hit the start button I get this ...

Does anyone have any ideas?
2007 non turbo, 5 speed

 

A wild guess, but I'm thinking those symbols mean the EWS chip in the key fob has lost touch with the receiver. I'd suspect the receiver first. I'd try charging the car battery well overnight while you check & clean all the ground & battery connections.
Does your '07 have a conventional ignition switch that you can put the key into?
On my '02, I have a spare key with no chip; I can turn the ignition on, but no start. All the dash lights up & everything else works, I'm not sure if the pump runs.

 

Hey, did you find the solution for this?

I have the same problem, it seems: same warning lights; clicks in fuse boxes, the car does not start.