I noticed that my belt was slipping this morning as i was driving to work (after 10 minutes of warmup). I can sense that starting at about 3000rpm when boost starts to increases. The temperature this morning was 15F. Has anyone experienced this before in the northeast these couple of weeks?

I have helix 17%, Alta CAI, Borla Race.

Any info. would be very much appreciated. Thanks.

 

How did you know? Did the car stop and go kinnda thing?..or you have boost gauge?

 

I basically had a very good idea since the revs were going up but the car was not hauling to match like it normally does. It is either the belt of the clutch....Does this frigid temperature affect the overall grip of the clutch and belt?

 

It doesnt appear that the clutch is slipping as I was running the car pretty hard last night without any loss of power to the wheels. Could it be that the car was sitting outside all night under 15F and moisture got on the belt plus the belt hardening up from the frigid temperature. As I arrived to the office this morning after 20 minutes of hwy, it appears to be better without much slipperage after some hard accelarations.

 

NYMINIME,

I have noticed the same thing. I have a 15% ALTA pulley on my 04 MCS. In cold weather, (anything below 35 degrees or so), I get supercharge belt slippage when I first start the engine. In my car, I can even hear it!

If I gently blip the throttle after startup on a cold day, I get a slight belt squeal. Next time you start the car on a cold day, blip the throttle a little (like 3500RPM) and then listen. The squeal is actually more noticable right after you lift off the accellerator.

I'm not too worried about it. It only seems to happen in cold weather, and disappears after the car idles for about 5 minutes. As soon as the belt warms up, its gone. And I have been checking the belt for any signs of abnormal wear. Looks good so far.

NTHUSIAST

 

Hi...I had this problem checked out over the weekend and it turned out that the belt is fine. I had the car on the lift and noticed that there was a semi-dried oil spot on the bottom of the transmission (by small opening by drivers side)

What I noticed is that after 30-60 minutes of driving (depending on how many times I shifted "local or hwy"), the clutch slip tends to go away. I have a feeling that a seal inside the tranny is leaking some fluids onto the clutch to cause this slip when i started up the car in the morning. It happened a few mornings here when the temperatures went below 15F degrees and today (38F degrees today) the car drives fine without any clutch slip. Has anyone on this board experienced a similar scenario?

I am scheduled to have the dealer take a look at this on Thurs. Not sure what they will say if they test drive my car without any problems.

 

I am out of the loop, since I sold my mini. Not that I was in when I had one !!

I can't help but notice how much the issue described here sounds like the yo-yo however. Anyone else notice that ? I recall trying to convince Ryephile that belt slippage might be causing the yo-yo, it of course wasn't. It sorta felt like that though.

 

I'm thinking its the belt. I have a 19% reduced pulley with 12,000 miles but it has run without a glitch since it was put on; I have 15+ hard track days on this as well. As it warms I trust it will go away...but just in case I am getting a new belt.

 

On a chilly morning, I once got a fault code P-0300 "Misfire" which caused my car to go into limp mode. The dealership and MINI determined that it was caused by belt slippage. Replaced the belt and no more faults. :smile:

 

Hey NYMINI, if your running the 17% pulley you definitely need the smaller belt. I'm running the Alta 15% pulley, which is a little bigger in diameter than a 17%, and my stock belt fried itself in only 20k miles. The dealer replaced it with a JCW kit belt(unfortunately I had to pay for the install$80.00 including belt) and the only issue is some initial squeaking on really cold mornings, but it goes away as soon as the car reaches temp. So with a smaller 17% pulley, I'd swap to the smaller belt and see how it goes.

 

Actually Helix installed a smaller size belt when i installed the 17% about 10K miles ago. For the past week, the clutch or the belt has not been slipping (maybe due to warmer weather as it was 15F and below when I was experiecing the slippage) and the dealer was not able to determine what the problem was when I had them inspect the car yesterday. I will be going back to Helix in the near future for 19%, new belt, injectors, Giac, and possibly new aftermarket clutch. Hopefully all minor glitches will be fixed by then..