Chris (SalemMINIdriver) contacted me today about the PW MCS which caught fire and was flat-bedded to MINI of Peabody this weekend – in fact we were still at the dealership after the Spring Rally when the car arrived!
With Chris’ permission, and to help him with any possible warranty disputes, I visited his car and took some pictures … From the outside, there was obviously a fire under the air vent below the windshield on the passenger side, this is the area where the ABS/DSC control module lives, and from under the hood it’s clear that just a small part of that module was the source of the heat:
Slightly worrying is that this happened to his MINI while it was parked – someone saw the smoke and alerted Chris, and he was able to minimize the damage by disconnecting the battery, and by the use of a luckily nearby fire extinguisher!
Perhaps slightly more worrying is that a very similar event happened just over a year ago, to Donna/Mike.
Certainly two of these failures out of all the MINIs sold is not an alarm – hopefully we’ll never hear of another one …
You can read about the original fire here on NAM; you can read about the new fire here on NAM and here on MINI2.
M&I / GBMINI 
