Hi all! Hoping to be pointed in the right direction here...rather long story short, I purchased my R55 2008 Clubman S in May 2020, with 54K miles on it. Looked great, ran great, etc. Well--was I sorely mistaken. Since then I've had a cacophony of problems, one right after the other. This past August, the car completely died on me when running. I was mid acceleration and she lost all RPMs, shut off, wouldn't turn over, etc. After $6,000 in repairs I discovered I had a coolant leak, severe oil leak, a belt issue, faulty battery, the list goes on. Whoever owned the car before me had someone work on it who did not know MINI and worked on it incorrectly (wrong parts in places, missing fasteners, stripped block bastion points, etc).

After the $6K in repairs, she is back to running, BUT I'm not out of the woods. The repair shop who worked on this for me mentioned he believes my DME is fried and stuck in default mode. No temperature data is being communicated, the car never knows if it is hot or cold. When I start, there is generally a very erratic idle for about a minute. If I do not let it run for a couple of minutes before taking off, I find myself in predicaments where she will not accelerate. I'll push the pedal, RPMs will slowly creep to 3-4K before the car accelerates and shifts into gear. I get warnings that the car is running hot, even when it is not.

Has anyone experienced anything like this before? Sending my DME off to be cloned and replacing it seems rather easy...but if I'm honest, I'm apprehensive to put too much more work into this without knowing this will work. Any and all advice / help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Anthony

 

I had my DME cloned. I did trouble shooting to make as certain as possible the issue was DME. You should have codes showing up, that you access with a BMW compatible reader. You verify whatever code is showing is is not the sensor or the sensors feedback to the DME. If you clone yours and the issue is real, it won't correct the problem. I suggest you purchase a reader, 35$, and look at codes. Just a clone may be a waste of another $350. However, it may be the issue and I'd endorse Minitobe, follows this site. Hoping this gets through to you.