Let me start off by saying I am the proud owner of a 2009 Mini Cooper Clubman. I love the car, but it has given me so many issues since I bought it. The car has a whopping 19,000 miles on it. Automatic.

Since I bought it about 4 months ago, 2nd owner, it has had a hard time changing into 2nd gear. Going into and coming down into. It jerks so hard. The guy at Mini told me this is normal and to give it a performance feel. I complained about 3 times (when I was in for other issues).

Yesterday when I started the car, while in park it was going from 0-4000 RPMs without me even shifting into gear. This seemed off, so I turned it off, restarted and took off. It drove with a little drag and had a hard time shifting into gear.

Today it drove just fine to work, but when I was going to leave work the following sequence of events occurred.

Turn on -> Brake light shows up -> Engine fail indicator
Turn off
Turn on -> Engine fail indicator -> Transmission fail
Turn off
Turn on -> Engine fail indicator -> Transmission fail -> Wouldn't shift out of Park into Drive


I called Mini roadside assistance and they came to tow my car. Of course, when the tow truck gets there there isn't a single indicator and the car shifts right out of park. My car hadn't been driven in about 8 hours, so to say it overheated is not possible. What could be the issue? I have this terrible feeling Mini is going to tell me that they couldn't find anything wrong tomorrow morning when they check it. Is there a way they can see the history of warning indicators that have come up on the dash?

 

Have them check the electric connections on the wiring pig-tail from the transmission output to the ECU.
There's been a couple of documented cases of bad / poor performing shifting due to an electrical impedance issue.

Also, MAKE SURE the dealer scans the vehicle, and reports back with fault codes that have been stored.

- Erik

 

There was a TSB on an issue with the automatic transmissions, due to wronly torqued bowden cable: The selector in the car is linked with a cable to a switch on driver's side in the engine bay. Over time the cable may get loose and the switch will not move into the correct position, and the ECU locks the engine as it detects the abnormality (i.e. selector in P, but switch stays in R).

Mine did it a couple of times, so I removed the airbox found the cable torqued it and added some lubricant to make it glide more easily.

 

This is the TSB I was talking about:
http://www.mediafire.com/?6nmkn17540q1f4j

 

The dealership called back and told me that my transmission harness is being replaced. They said a seal was leaking and they found liquid inside of it. Time to research what exactly that part is!

 

If by "what part" you mean the "transmission harness", that is a wiring harness that plugs into the transmission. A wiring harness being a number of wires that are all wrapped up together.

A seal internal to the engine on my Justa started seeping, and the oil got inside of one of the engine wiring harnesses. That can eventually lead to the insulation on the wires breaking down and them shorting to each other. So the dealer fixed the leak and replaced the wiring harness.

It sounds like a different wiring harness, though. Definitely a different leak, especially since I have a manual trans and not an auto.

 

Bingo, its what I thought.
And, again, you're not the first... there's been others with fluid contamination issues like you experienced.

- Erik