I dropped of my 04 MC at Helix this morning for some basic maintenance stuff. I also asked him to take the car for a spin and tell me what he thinks about the engine sounding more rough than normal. In the last 2 or 3 months I had been noticing more vibration/feedback once i got past 3.5K rpm. The powder delivery had also gotten even more erratic with torque slumping every 500rpm.

Eric called me back a couple of hours ago and told me that he saw a lot of oil in my coolant. He is thinking that either the head gasket has blown or something worse is going on inside the block. The situation is sketcy enough that he doesn't recommend even running the car, so the mini will stay there until he can get the minimum amount of parts he needs to get the gasket change started. He was planning on draining the oil from the oil pan to see if there is any cooland in there. I really hope that is not the case.

Has anyone else seen or had this kind of problem on a MINI? Just wondering if this is a semi-known problem or if I am one of the blessed few to have a major engine problem. The car has 54K miles on it. I generally drive it very easy on the road, shifting at 3k, but I do autocross it pretty regularly in the summer. No track days, drag launches or heavy abuse at all.

 

the heat exchanger has been known to fail causing this . hopefully you got it in time . as long as no coolant has hit the bearings . good luck .

 

I blew a head gasket, but only after an overheat. I didn't see oil in the coolant though..... When mine went it wasn't drivable.

Matt

 

i am leaking greenish oil from someplace in the engine bay as we speak. i think i may have a blown head gasket too. i noticed the problem a little while ago when i was meeting a friend somewhere, i looked down and my temp gauge was all the way up. i checked the antifreeze resevior and it was bone dry. got it home and looked under it and there is a lot of liquid dripping down the bottom of the block.
the few days before all this happened i noticed my temp gauge was above normal but only slightly.

 

well that sucks ; pull the dip stick and look for the bad news . plugs too . that's a serious bummer . you'll hope your bearings are good . if so it's not too bad . do get it checked for warpage though . any competant machine shop can do this . hell ; you can too with a good straight edge . if it's straight you're cool . just put another gasket on her .

 

your telling me to check the edge of the cylinder head? what am i checking the plugs for? sorry for the questions

 

Whether it is a head gasket, failed heat exchanger, cracked block, or whatever, the repair should be covered under warranty. Just make sure that the bearings are checked if the engine is not replaced. Personally, if my car had oil in the coolant, and the engine wasn't replaced, I would ask how they were going to prove that the bearings were not damaged. The issue is not limited to the crank bearings; there are all manner of bearings that could be damaged from coolant in the oil.

Edit: Unless the car is out of warranty, which it appears it is (54,000 miles). Sorry for the bad news. Hope it is just a blown head gasket. But be prepared for something worse.

 

The flatness of the cylinder head needs to be checked to confirm that the cylinder head is uniformly flat across its entire length. The plugs can tell you where the cylinder head gasket is failing (if the cylinder head gasket is indeed the source of the problem). But this is something that the dealer should be doing (unless you are out of warranty).

Edit: Which indeed the car is (out of warranty).

Sorry for the confusion.

 

I'm not for sure but, there's a small engine oil cooler. I've seen these get a small hole and the high preasure oil will gladly go into cooling system. Then when you shut engine off, you have preasure in the cooling system. Guess where the coolant goes now.

 

yup, out of warranty. its cool how this stuff starts going wrong after 50k miles

 

Yeah, it almost seems like the manufacturers can engineer stuff to break shotly after warranty.

A little update:
I drove over the see Eric at Helix last night to look at my baby and talk about the next steps. He showed me the problem, put a stick into the coolant overflow and when he pulled it out, it was covered in what looked like melted cheese. Sticky, whiteish/brownish residue sitting at the bottom of my overflow. Eric is convinced it is oil... which makes sense. The good news is, he drained the oil pan, closely inspected the used oil and didn't see a single problem with that. He thinks the leak is one way - oil into coolant. No evidence yet that there is also a coolant into oil leak. Positive news I suppose.

 

definately check the heat exchanger . i sent my old one to a dude in thailand . it was kinda cool to write and send halfway around the world. but yup he had the same problem . and the exchanger was the culprit .

 

I don't know anything about head gasgets but going out at 54K miles is very concerning. Shouldn't the engine be working at its prime at this time. Again, hondas, toyotas, etc. seem to never have these problems at 54K. Maybe a Ford. I don't know anything about cars but why can one car company do so much better in dependability when it seems everybody as the benifit of the same technolgy. Is it a conspiracy. IMO, it appears it makes sense to get the extended warranty for my MCS 07. The work through your dealership being out of warranty even with some good news sounds expense considering a simple oil cange is $120.00. Can someone please give me words of wisdom because I really like this little car but I don't think I have the stomach for these kinds of problems.

 

this woman i know was telling me her head gasket blew on her bmw x5 at 54000 miles. it is definately a conpsiracy.
i also bought the car used so i have no idea what happened before i owned it. this could have been an ongoing problem. i'm going to check the dipstick right now.

 

An extended warranty is definitely the peace of mind solution. While it is rare that a head gasket would fail (absent abuse), if it fails for you, it is a real pain. At that point, the $2,000+ that would have been paid for the extended warranty contract is peanuts in comparison to the cost of a short block engine swap.

 

Well, maybe good news if the heat exchanger is the source of the problem and there is no other damage. But the same scenario (oil into coolant) could occur from a cracked block, and I imagine you can understand that that would not be good news.

 

that would suck. but there is a short block on ebay for short money . i'm no fan of ebay but it may be possible to have a magnefluxing put into the deal . you know return of money pursuent of positive test etc.

 

Unfortunately, the amount of effort you would have to do to completely confirm there are no problems with the eBay short block make it a questionable solution. Barring something simple like the heat exchanger or a blown head gasket (if there is no contamination of the oil), it sounds like a short block is in the immediate future. And I wouldn't use the dipstick as a metric for determining whether or not there is contamination of the oil.

 

checking the dip stick and the filler cap are good off-hand ways to see if water is in the oil .

 

i still say heat exchanger . i haven't seen one cracked block on this forum . with all the modding being done; guys running 600 hp . it's a testiment to the cooper block . (raises glass to cooper poster ) ; amen brother!!!

 

I would be shocked if the block was cracked, the enginer is 100% stock, haven't done anything to it - still 115hp come out of it. But I guess you never know. I trust Eric will carefully inspect all potential failures before putting the motor back together. He hopes to have the parts in tomorrow and get the work started on Tuesday.

I will give him a call and mention the heat exchanger, in case he hasn't already noted it as a potential root cause.

 

I am not saying that the block will be cracked; just that you shouldn't be surprised if it is cracked.

Blocks typically don't crack from heavy modifications to the engine; a block is more likely to crack from a failure of a part that is related to the cooling system and the engine continues to be operated while in cooling system failure mode. If the engine was operated for an extended period of time with no coolant, even a box stock block would crack.

 

Point taken, Eric asked me that same question as soon as he noticed the oil in my coolant... "did you have a major/extended overheat occur with your car?". My answer was no. I am pretty religious at glancing over and checking the coolant temperature. Is there a possibility that the engine overheated badly at some point? Yeah, there is always a chance that during one of my Evo autox classes with the adrenaline from back to back runs I wasn't as observant of the engine temps, but its very unlikely. Also, wouldn't a major overheat, one capable of warping the head and/or cracking my block manifest itself in a more obvious manner?

 

Not necessarily. The fact that your coolant recovery tank was bone dry could indicate that the engine was operated without enough coolant sufficiently long for the block to crack. I don't know if these cars have a low coolant level sensor or not (to warn that the coolant level is low). But even if they did (have a low coolant level sensor) and the sensor failed, you could have had the coolant level get progressively lower and lower until the head gasket blew and with continued operation, the block cracked. If your head gasket is blown, you have had something happen. The path from blown head gasket to cracked block is pretty short.

I don't want to sound pedantic, but I have never been one to completely trust electronic sensors. Which is why at each fill-up, I visually check the engine oil, coolant and brake fluid levels.

 

Yes, they too have early failures! I guess you didn't read about the Toyota engine warranty extension due to problems with sludge in too small oil galleys. A lot of motors cooked.
And really, this is where a course in statistics helps out. Out of almost 1 million cars produced, how many times does a problem need to show up for it to be considered a worry point? One? Ten? A hundred? A Thousand?

In mass manufacturing, there are always a few that are screwy, but not statistically a lot. The cost of making manufacturing perfect isn't worth the effort, and would really drive up the cost of cars a lot.

So rest happy, and know that no matter the car you buy, there's a chance that it could blow tomorrow. But it's not likely. There are so many other things to worry about that this one shouldn't take any metal capital. Not worth the effort.

Matt