We pulled the valve cover off of our R59 JCW with the N14 engine. We had a coolant leak and #4 cylinder misfire. The plan was to do a head gasket replacement as coolant was found in the #4 cylinder. To our surprise we found a large amount of black sludge covering the inside of the valve cover and all of the valve gear. We suspect this was caused by oil changes not being done on a regular basis or the wrong oil was used. The car has 100K kms on it and I am the 3rd owner and the maintenance history appears not to be what I was led to believe. Looks like we will have to clean the sludge manually. We may have to pull the engine or at the least pull the pan, haven't decided yet. Will need to do some more research before we go any further.
My question is has anyone else found this and is there anything else we should be looking at while the engine is out? Thanks in advance.

 

Check the timing chain, valve stem seals, serpentine belt. I have a complete list of repairs that needed to be done on my JCW with an N14, but I decided to trade mine.

I'll look at the report from the dealer later and send you a PM.

 

Thanks look forward to seeing the report.

 

Hi Richieb0y28 can you please send me a copy of this report also. In the middle of a Mini purchase and would like to learn from your report.
Regards,
Lisa

 

Yep, will do.

 

 

Report was several pages, so I took pics of every section. Hope this helps.

 

Thanks there are a lot of things I hadn't thought about.
After reading this report I see why you traded it away.

 

No prob. I had that car for 10 years and it barely had 60k miles on it, but I just couldn't afford it anymore, everything started failing within a 2-month time period.