I had a strange happening with my MCS this weekend. I was driving home on the highway, and I downshifted from 6th to 5th to slow down for an approaching speed trap that I'm well aware of. After I passed the trap, the car had slowed to about 55-60mph, so I downshifted again to 4th gear, and started to accelerate away. Except, as soon as I downshifted it looked like Christmas 2 weeks early in my MINI. The SERVICE ENGINE SOON & DSC lights came on, and absolutely nothing happened when I hit the accelerator. I could push it to the floor but nothing would happen. The engine was still running, heat was still on, radio was still playing, but I was dead in the water in terms of drive (and yes, the car was still in gear ).

So, I had to pull my MINI to the side of the highway, and turn her off. After about 30-seconds I turned her back on, and she came to life no problem. Just SERVICE ENGINE SOON light was still on, but otherwise everything was normal. Okay, fine...so I limped home, didn't drive her on Sunday or Monday. Today, I start her up to head into work, and the SES light isn't lit .

So I am in the dark over what happened. I know I have to have the throttle sensor replaced (due to a condition I had a few weeks ago), and I am having that done today, so I am hoping that was the culprit of this issue. But you can bet I'll be telling my MINI Service Mgr. about it this afternoon. Anyone have ideas as to what happened here? Or even had this happen to them?

 

I have had the same thing happen to me, except I did not have the complete lack of accelerator response. I first had the SES light and then the DSC light would come on. Restarting cleared the DSC light but it would come back on again later. The first couple of times this happened, the SES light cleared after three or four restarts. The third time was last Saturday and it has not cleared since then. I have an appointment next Monday to have it looked at and to have the 2 recalls done.

Please post here what they find the problem to be on your car.

Thanks.

 

Sounds like that "Lucas" gremlin has been at it again... Sorry - couldn't resist. Seriously, sorry to hear about these issues....

Chow!

Donna

 

I stopped by the dealership yesterday (just a social call) and my SA
said my problem sounds like a bad "steering angle sensor". That
correlates with the fact that I was driving "aggressively" around some
stationary objects just prior to the light coming on in each case.

 

I took my MCS into the dealer last night and was talking with my Service Consultant, explaining the problem. The complete lack of throttle response was/is due to a bad throttle sensor. Basically, the car's computer doesn't know where the throttle position is at...whether it be wide open or untouched, so it just says "screw this, I ain't doing anything." Restarting the car will clear everything up, but it will come back again. So I'm having the throttle sensor replaced today.

 

This seems more common than we might like - GBMINIs has been replaced, and I know a number of others that have had the same issue.

In truth it probably is not so much a bad sensor as bad software with not enough tolerance - GBMINIs was replaced after a year or more; we might suppose that tolerances drift over time, and suddenly the software decides there is a fault.

 

mine used to do it.

but it was due to a faulty supecharger by pass valve. Mine had also lost a LOT of power...

 

Gotta love the fly by wire technology. Remember when we use to have cables to run things like gas pedals. However, I guess it's better for the computer to say "screw this, I ain't doing anything, intead of, I think I'll stick to floor to see what happens .

 

sdiver anyway you can find out from your dealer what code was thrown?

 

minicoop78, I'll do my best to find out what code was thrown.

So the saga continues . I went to go pick up my MINI last night, they were putting her back together as I was heading over, but she was supposed to be done when I got there. As I'm en-route, I get a call on my cell. It's Adam at Patrick MINI. They replaced the throttle sensor (which as I said before, involves replacing the entire accelerator pedal). But when they got it put back together, it was throwing up another fault code, for another part of this assembly that, quite naturally, they would have to order, and would not be in until Friday at the earliest .

But, on a good note, Adam hooked me up with a loaner. A MINI Convertible CVT loaner, brand spaking new, with only 22 miles on it . Needless to say, I was pretty happy about that...hoping to hold on to it through the weekend , put it throught a nice road test.

 

When MINI Peabody did mine, the first thing Gary said when I booked it in was that they would change the harness too, because quite often that is the issue ...

Excellent - that is a good reply from the dealership
But why isn't the top down!?

 

Oh, don't you worry...there will be pictures of me all bundled up, heat blasting, the top down soon. I get kinda weird like that

 

Any update?

I dropped my car off this afternoon. We'll see what they find.

P.S. they gave me a brand new MCC (15 miles on the clock) as a loaner. Of course they gave it to me on the coldest day of the year.