In New England, the gasoline formulation is “tampered with” by government a couple of times each year; in the past this has caused the famous “cold start” issue in MINIs I have owned [note though that the “cold start” issue is named for the cold engine, and has nothing specific to do with air temperature!]
MINI USA has released many engine software updates since sales began in 2002, and none of them have solved the issue – the current software is considered to be “as good as it gets” for the current engine.
There have been many suggestions as to how to resolve the issue, popular ones being:
– turn key to position 2 and wait 5s before starting,
– use a lower octane gasoline.
Last year experimentation determined that the 5s key wait was no help, but GBMINI#3 was very happy with Sunoco 91 gasoline and I’ve been using it ever since.
However, my last tank of Sunoco 91 brought back the cold start issue – not as drastic as before, but noticeable. GBMINI#3 would start but run rough for a couple of seconds, and yesterday evening it stalled for the first time ever, while waiting to pull out of work.
There’s been some discussion about this on MINI2, so I decided to try an ever lower octane – I filled up last night with 89 from a local Mobil station.
This morning, GBMINI#3 started fine, and all day has been driving “more peppy”, seeming keener to pull – hard to say if it’s just my imagination … I’m not yet ready to claim “89 is the way to go” but we’ll see as this tank gets used.
Of more concern is the information online about adding 10% ethanol to USA gas, which is presumed to be the cause of all the recent “cold start” troubles here in New England. For example:
Alcohol fuel blends in MINI vehicles (MINI TSB M130106 from March 2006) includes:
… fuels containing up and including to 10% of ethanol … will not void warranties … usage of such alcohol fuel blends may result in drivability, starting, and stalling problems …
Top Tier detergent gasoline in MINI vehicles (MINI TSB M130206 from April 2006) includes:
… recommends using Top Tier gasoline of minimum octane rating AKI 91 and with alcohol content of less than 10% …
[note this does not say “less than or equal to 10%”!]
EMS2000 Various Software Improvements (MINI TSB M120206 from April 2006) includes:
… cold start problems may also be created by using fuels with a high percentage of ethanol (10% and higher). In such a case the DME is not able to fully adapt to non-conforming fuel volatility …
[here again, 10% ethanol is included in the “bad” range!]
(information on many BMW & MINI TSBs – technical service bulletins – can be found here)
I was talking to someone today that told me of some MINI issues MUCH worse than just poor starting when the engine is cold – apparently a number of MINIs (as well as other car manufacturers) have had fuel pumps destroyed by the new gasoline formulation! It seems that if there is any water or other contamination in the car fuel tank or even in the gas station tank, the resulting mixture can be very corrosive!
It seems crazy that MINI can claim their engine is designed for use world wide, yet by their own admission it’s incapable of working properly with USA gasoline (which is hardly a rare commodity)
Anyway, to summarize: if you are having poor engine start or rough idle issues when your MINI engine is cold, try filling up with 89 gasoline instead of 93; it might help.
M&I / GBMINI 