Good morning, i bought a 2003 mini cooper in 2010 and had a few issues with it. most have been fixed including a new coolant resevoir tank, new wheel bearings, new tiers, new brakes/rotors, replaced the half shaft, replaced the transmission shaft seal, replaced the sway bar end links....


and now, i have another problem that stopped me cold...I drove from work to class, about 15 miles, then drove from class to eat and pulled into the parking lot to smell something funny, and be greeted with a HUMONGOUS cloud of white smoke (coolant i'm assuming from teh color/smell). The car was barely warm, i hadn't gone over 2500 rpm, only drove about 1 mile, and POOF, cloud of smoke. I opened the hood and saw where it had sprayed from the rear of the engine all over the bay. this was at 10pm, so i couldnt' exactly look for a source but i was wondering if there was a common area that something like this would be? The car has 130K, 2003 R53 and the dipstick looks to be full of normal oil, no chocolate milk looking stuff. Any ideas? thanks in advance

 

I'm not so great with modern cars on troubleshooting, but back in the day the thermostat failure was the cause of what you describe. Happened all the time, usually 50 miles from home.

 

It didn't overheat, would the failure have caused a hose to rupture or something?