Sad to say, but our Mini is gone. It was well treated and maintained, but burned one exhaust valve and broke another one. With the reduced engine power light on my daughter calls from 200 miles away and says "What do I do?" With the likelihood that chunks of valve fell into the engine I sold it to the nearest dealer for $1000, got in my BMW and picked up the kid.

Not a good story, to say the least. This car got 7500 mile oil changes with dealership oil or M1 0w40, and got all recommended maintenance or more, top tier premium gas, and all the usual recall services for the timing chain and tensioner, the fuel pump, the water pump for the turbo. It was never abused but not babied either. It always used oil - about a quart every 2000 miles - but was never run more than a quart low. It also had the 100k warranty.

But then, just after the warranty, fatal failure. Not impressed with the quality of the motor. So after two Minis, we are now loving a new Golf TDI. Overall quality seems much higher. Gotta love German cars.

My advice is not to keep your R56 past 100k at most.

 

Sorry to hear you had such a bad experience. I certainly with you the best of luck with your VW. I work at a Toyota/VW Dealer, and I have to say the overall VW reliability is appallingly low. I will say the I do see less Golf vehicles in than Passat or Jetta vehicles. Not sure why, perhaps there less out there? I'm guessing you bought an extended warranty, but if you haven't I'd recommend getting one just to be on the safe side. Of course that doesn't help when you're 7k outside of warranty but still a good idea.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not flaming your choice. They are wonderful vehicles. They look and feel great. If I didn't have first hand experience with these cars on a day to day basis I would have wished you the best of luck with your new purchase. These are just words of warning. You may have left the less then reliable MINI for a less than reliable VW.

 

man i woulda given you 1k for the car =(

sorry for your loss

 

did you break it in according to manual ? Or break it in like you stole it ? I believe that cars that use oil never got their rings seated.

 

no doubt that sucks. I have had 3 Hondas and two Toyotas that all went over 250k miles with never an engine problem. A modern motor that has been taken care of dying at 107k is inexcusable. We doubt we will own either of ours after the extended warranty runs out at 100k.

I would respectfully take issue with your "gotta love German cars" comment though. VW is very close to Mini near the bottom of the 2013 JD Power quality survey, and BMW is right there with both of them in the bottom half. And it's been that way for a few years..I am fully aware that anyone can make numbers work to their side of an argument, it's just interesting seeing all three of them in that area of the survey.

I think all manufacturers, including German, could take a lesson from the likes of Honda and Toyota. As brands, they both have incredible reliability and quality records. Too bad they both design and manufacture horribly boring cars That's the paradox. Minis are so unique(at least right now), and fun to drive, many of us are willing to set aside our normal, intuitive requirements for a high quality, reliable product to take a chance on them.

 

Issue is...
Gen2 motor is FRENCH.....right up there reliability with the Italians........
In a german car....nuff said....but gen3 is BMW made and engineered....
Sorry about your issues.... Good luck!!

 

I don't mind the higher maintenance duty of the BMW, as it is all pretty simple stuff. Mine is a 04 e46 so they had built a million of them by the time they made mine. It has been uber reliable and drives about 1000x better than any Asian car I have driven. If the Golf needs more TLC and even an occasional repair (and yes, we bought the extended warranty) compared to a Honda, that's fine with me. The '14 is the end of the Mk VI so I hope the gremlins have been fixed. I expect it to last a long time, and that's my beef with the Mini: premature death.

 

These exhaust valve failures seem to be a common failure mode for the N14. Carbon buildup certainly doesn't help with combustion chamber heat but nobody but the BMW reliability engineers can tell us... and they won't. Could very well be the valves are made with a sh1tty material that doesn't stand up to the thermal fatigue.

I think carbon cleaning will help a little but that certainly doesn't clean all the black crud out of the combustion chamber I have a feeling even the new BMW engines in the 3rd gen MINIs will still be haunted by this.

 

Just remember..the gen2 "prince" engine was designed by the French... pugoet...and they don't exactly have a great history...basicly a failing car company propped up by government handouts.....the gen3 is a real BMW/German motor....so I have hope.

 

The components are manufactured by PSA/Peugeot, but it was mostly designed by BMW.