this month's part is the turbo. not sure exactly what is wrong. took it in because my RPMs at idle dropped a little, the engine seemed to be working harder all of a sudden, there was a subtle rhythmic wrongness that I could feel through the steering wheel but couldn't tell if it was engine or tires but it seemed to get worse with the A/C on, the A/C was blowing cool, but not icy cold.

and of course the usual minor stuff falling about that happens every couple of weeks, USB port stopped working, vanity mirror cover fell off, etc.

my SA was out sick all last week and I didn't get as full a report from the other SA as I usually get from Shawn. All I know so far is that they are waiting for approval from MINI USA to replace my turbo.

A couple of months ago the oil feed line fell off. Last month when I was in for service -- first time ever for just routine stuff, nothing broken! they replaced the spark plugs, did an alignment, and a couple of other things and I asked them to check my oil because I thought it looked very dark the last couple of times I checked it and I wanted to make sure it was just discolored from heat and not dirty.

I have to wonder if the dead (or dying) turbo is related to either the oil feed line problem or the darkness of the oil.

 

Oh yeah, there would DEFINITELY be a correlation of a turbocharger bearing failure due to low / excessively burnt oil.

- Erik

 

I know that my oil is not and have never been low. I have always been a little OCD about my cars, since I have been driving this crazy lemon girl I am in full OCD mode at all time. Literally, every single month for the last 1.5 years I have taken her in to the dealership in panic mode because something felt or sounded weird and every time it has been a major component failure that I felt before it was bad enough to throw a code, either on the on board computer or my own OBDII.

The only time that I have ever brought my car in and it was not something far worse than I thought was the first time my clutch slipped and they said that they couldn't reproduce the problem.

The reason that I asked them about the color of my oil a month ago -- and just a few thousand miles after my last oil change -- is that I check my oil every single week. And I was worried about the color of it.

I actually have a blackstone oil test collection kit in the boot, but I forgot to tell my SA it was there and ask him to have the tech collect the used oil for me at my last oil change so I was waiting to get to 6-7K to test.

I don't think it was a turbo bearing because I did not hear any sort of whining/screeching sound like a bearing going, I thought it was an exhaust leak.