Hello,

I have a 2013 "justa" mini cooper R56 - automatic transmission - with 48,000 KM on it. Bought it used from Mini dealership last August. Love this car and the only thing that troubles me about it is a pronounced delay or hesitation when starting off from a stopped position. It can be a couple of seconds before I feel the power coming on and at times the acceleration is slow. It almost feels like it is trying to push to big of a gear. This is the only car I have ever owned where I regularly have the gas peddle pressed to the floor looking for some acceleration when I am merging. Once the car is up at speed it seems more responsive.

I have done a sea-foam treatment. Wondering what some other options might be. I searched this forum and found some folks replace plugs and coil packs for this type of issue. I guess I could try that as it seems like an easy project.

Thanks for your advice,

- Sean

 

 

Justa = Non turbo. there isnt much stuck on the valve since gas is spied outside the cylinder.

This car without the turbo is like a honda civic. try the "sport mode" if you want a little more response from the car, otherwise get the turbo version

 

 

Absolutely pure uneducated speculation but it sounds like a torque converter issue with your transmission.

I'd definitely put some good plugs and coils in first as Kurtsunn suggested but it might be something to investigate if simpler checks come up nil.

 

Try the plugs and coils - eliminate that first, then move on to more expensive possibilities:

https://www.ecstuning.com/Mini-2009-...gine/Ignition/

 

Don't even have to spend any money on plugs first, just inspect them. If they look like kurtsunn plugs above then change them. Lots of online photo's of plugs and what good and bad ones look like.

First thing I do usually with a used car is check plugs unless they have been proven to be recently changed.

 

I certainly defer to more experienced advice. For me it's a fun hobby of "find the problem" and I've learned a lot doing work on this MINI that I will in turn use on a 328i that I also have. I just realized that i paid close to $600 to replace ONE coil and plugs on my 328i last year that I did on the MINI for about $80 in parts and an hour of my time.

 

Hello - Just to close the loop I have made several modifications of the past few moths and finally solved the issue.

First I put a K&N cold air intake on the car. I like the look of it in the engine bay and love the growl my little mini makes now. No appreciable performance improvement though.

I changed the plugs. For 50K they all looked pretty beat up. Cylinder 1 spark plug was more oil fouled and the spark plug tube had a bit of oil in it. After the new plugs the car did run better (smoother idle) but the hesitation and lack of low end power did not change much.

Finally I changed the ignition coils with the same model of Bosh coils. Wow! What a difference. When I used to go up a hill at low speed (45 KM/HR) the car had no power and would groan like it was going to die. Now it has loads of power at lower RPM and the responsiveness and acceleration are where I would expect them to be. You would not think a coil change at 50,000 KM would be necessary but for me this made a huge difference.

Thanks everyone for your advice.

- Sean

 

happy things worked out in you favor