I haven't posted much. I prefer to read up on what's going on. No news is supposed to be good news for me.

Sadly, I'm posting now again because of a problem I'm having with my 2009 R56.

Picked it up in Nov 2008 and it was love at first drive. No problems the first 3 years. Just regular maintenance and period refilling of engine oil. But it wasn't to last. In Feb 2002 (my last post), the car experienced a skipped timing chain and subsequent damage to the engine. Fortunately, the MINI deities were listening and MINI USA agreed to cover the work under their "goodwill" program.

Almost 2 years later, I'm on an incline on the freeway and the car suddenly loses power. The orange engine light comes on and I pull over. The car idles rough, but I'm able to make it to the dealership. The initial diagnosis is 100% loss of compression in #2 cylinder. Can't know what else is wrong without taking the engine out for an additional $1800. From there, it could be $3000-$6000 of work depending on what else may be going on.

Before I continue, I want to say that the service team at MiniSF has been just fantastic - especially Gilbert. If you have to face a tough situation with your car, you'll definitely appreciate Gilbert's approach. He does whatever he can and gives really good advice.

So here I am, with a 5 year old R56 with 85k (mostly) freeway miles, a skipped timing chain and now a bad cylinder (and who knows what else). I'm regular with my maintenance. I check the oil regularly and top off in between oil changes (as you all know this baby drinks oil). I've never run dry. I'm reasonably aggressive with my driving - why wouldn't you be with this car, but I've never red-lined.

Do I just have the worst luck ever? This is my first MINI. Actually my first non-Japanese car. Previous cars have lasted me 10-15 years, well over 100k miles.

I love my car. It drives like nothing I've ever had. I'm just disappointed in what seems to be fairly severe catastrophic failures I've had with relatively low miles on this car. Am I being unrealistic here? Is this what I should expect for a German/British car?

 

I doubt you have done anything wrong. I would expect more from a car. Sorry to hear of your issue.

 

Cross your fingers the loss of compression is from carbon buildup around the intake valve seats. That would be a cheaper fix. You would be REALLY lucky if it was just this.

I would take it to an independent shop to do the work. The dealer rate is always super high. From that point, start thinking about how much you like the car and the possibility of selling it.

From what I've seen the saying, "Fast, cheap, reliable... pick two," is very true. When a quick relatively cheap Euro car needs a visit from the doctor, it is never cheap. It's also hard to make a generalization on all German cars. Some people have great experiences and some people hate them. Probability is the name of the game.

Look up jokes about British cars on Google... now that's a funny topic.