GBMINI#2

Last night heading home from work, GBMINI suddenly did a strange sort of “engine kick”. Immediately after the “EML” and “Service Engine Soon” lights came on, and there was a very noticeable loss of power 😦
Stopped as soon as safe, then restarted – the “EML” light was off again but the “Check Engine” was still on. The engine sounded fine, and drove fine on the way home.

So today I stopped in at MINI Peabody, since I was meeting Gavin & Chris there for lunch anyway. When I described the symptoms, Gary immediately diagnosed an out-of-spec throttle, and a check of the diagnostic logs confirmed this.
So GBMINI is at the MINI Peabody hospital tonight, having minor surgery – hopefully tomorrow all will be well once more!

Took GBMINI in to MINI Peabody today for an “in between” service; I just can’t let the car go more than 15,000 miles to the next service so we did an oil / filter change.
The driver window motor was also replaced – the window was failing about every other day, refusing to move up or down unless I thumped the door panel just below the door opener handle (the motor is fitted here inside the door). Gary & Bob dismantled the old motor and it appears that the commutator had rubbed against the plastic case, shredding swarf which then jammed one of the commutator brushes so it did not make good contact any more. Cheap quality 😦

I also had the engine “adaptation values” reset in the hope of temporarily curing the cold start issue. In the warmer weather GBMINI stalls almost every day when first started – but the second start is always fine.
My experience suggests that the MINI does this when the initial start conditions (temperature, fuel, whatever) are very different to what the car learned when it was “new” (or when the engine was last updated – which happened to GBMINI in January when the John Cooper Works Upgrade was installed).
I will report later if this cured the cold start issue.

While there, I met Jim, owner of the NIIICE MINI – he had a short-shift kit installed (major amount of disassembly!) and also had the “adaptation values” reset. I installed an auto-up-windows MINI circuit in his car too (tricky because of his satellite radio install occupying most of the space between the downtubes).

Finally, a watched a delivery of three MINIs (I am still very impressed by the delivery trucks – a side benefit of BMW owning MINI is that our cars are protected during transport):