Hey guys, I just recently noticed that if I let my R56 S with the N18 engine idle for more than a couple mins, when I go to leave I get a nice plume of smoke out the back that definitely smells like oil. I change oil every 5k miles and am ~3/4 of a quart low at that point so I'm not using excessive oil. I took it in for an inspection but the Mini/British Specialty shop here is clearly useless, told them what was going on suspecting a failing turbo as the last oil change I checked the shaft play and it does have a bit although it doesn't smoke at all under boost. They said they didn't see any oil in the intake side of the turbo so proceeded to tell me they think I need a new engine...no other diagnostics were performed.

The car has 99k miles on it and is not driven excessively hard, I recently added a P3 gauge and have now noticed that on cold start I have 15-18inhg of vacuum but once I move the car or it begins to warm up the most vacuum I see is 1.5-3inhg. Never goes higher so now I'm suspecting I have a vacuum leak somewhere, possibly the PCV valve as I know those tend to go bad on these things.

My machinist has already mentioned that these things like to eat valve guides for some reason, and the various threads on here support that theory, but can anyone confirm what kind of vacuum I should be seeing at idle when warm? Or have thoughts on the smoking at idle issue?

 

That is normal on the vacuum for the N18 engine.

The smoke could be from a bad PCV diaphragm in the valve cover.

 

^ yep. Once the engine warms up a bit the variable intake valve lift takes over and the vacuum is near 0.