Hello. My 2007 mini cooper S just stalled on me out of the blue on the traffic light. Tried to start it and no success. Quick inspection showed that exhaust cam doesn't rotate with crankshaft (via oir fill hole). No check engine codes.

During last 2 days i felt that brake pedal is kinda jerky and heavy.

Guess what. It was vacuum pump.
Vacuum pump is driven by exhaust camshaft. Pump should be lubrucated via very small channel in the block. In my case
this channel was blocked by some debris and pump locks up (got all destroyed inside) and locked exhaust camshaft. Probably because of impact and all other forces exhaust cam torx bolt that holds sprocket - snapped off.

Parts are ordered will fix it as soon as ill get pats. Hope there is no damage to valves. If so its going to be another head rebuild for me in last 4 month.

Here is some pics.
Oil channel in vacuum pump. Under 1mm in diameter.
This part of the pump should be well lubricated and it is dry.
Oil channel in the block. Also blocked off by debris. About 2 mm in diameter.
Torx bolt snapped off and hope that this saved valves!!!
Head on the torx bolt and sprocket was likely easily accessible. Nothing get into bottom end. Vanos unit torx bolt have washer. Exhaust can sprocket torx bolt doesn't have washer.
Rest of the bolt inside exhaust canshaft. Lots of WD40 and light counterclockwise tapping with screwdriver worked fine for me to remove it.
Inside of the vacuum pump. No lubricant at all.
Damage.
Seems that exhaust cam is not locked and there is no damage to it.

 

Ouch. Hopefully no damage.
Thanks for posting.

How many miles on that pump?
Is this your 2007 with around 113k?
Good to know to make sure people are changing them well before.

 

yep 113k miles. I'm thinking on swapping something in there. I love mini but this engine is just stupid! Something always failing!

 

This is actually my wife's car, and I love to do mechanics myself, but it went too far So much of investments in engine that could not be any worse. Started to think about taking some prius C and converting MINI into a friend of my 600whp e92 :D

PS: ordered PIERBURG vacuum pump. Same OEM unit, but 110$ instead of 400$ with BMW labeled box.