2009 mini cooper clubman, timing chain and valve seals

[great white]

timing set installed. All torqued down and ready to go. I still really don't like TTY bolts, but it is what it is. Now it's just a matter of putting back all the stuff I had to remove just to get to the timing gear and valve seals.

But the hard stuff is over. It's just reassembly now.

 

[great white]

Actually, I think I'm going to pack it in for today. Made some progress and I think I'll stop on that high point and start again fresh in the AM. Might seem like I'm being a little slack, but I like to go from success to success. Especially when the calendar isn't a factor.....

 

[Cadillac]

LOL! You're not far off. We only paid 5500 Cdn for this little ripper.

They wanted significantly more, but the transmission had troubles going into 2nd gear. So I beat them up by several grand pointing out that it's actually a BMW transmission and if anything is wrong, it was going to be thousands upon thousands of dollars to fix. Got it home, took the shifter pivot assembly apart, cleaned lubricated and adjusted and now shifts perfectly fine.

Sometimes it pays to be "handy".....

When I had read the start to this thread I wanted to respond but was always told if you have nothing good to say don’t say anything.
Then you came upon shifting problems in the little cooper.
I bought my wife one of those Mini Cooper S two doors for a gift. She use to drive one when we started dating and she enjoyed it. I did too what a go-kart. Car handled the corners really well had enough pep for what it is. But suspension was like a rock when I say go kart that what the ride felt like and terrible in the snow. Anyways
In two years I Had the balancer on the crank go out that was a bear to get at and replace.
Alternator was ridiculous the front clip and bumper had to come off.
Rotted motor mounts.
The final straw was the trans. It would lag going into gear sometimes and slam downshifting into 2&3. I Read everything I could find and all pointed to the valve body. Car only had 65k on it but it seemed their was a issue with them. Everyone recommended this outfit that rebuilds them. They have a exchange program and a great reputation. So I ordered, replaced and put premo fluid in. It was better but not right. Driving in manual mode it was perfect but in auto it wasn’t.
We traded it in for a Chevy bolt back in 2019 and wouldn’t look back! Good luck!!!

 

[great white]

When I had read the start to this thread I wanted to respond but was always told if you have nothing good to say don’t say anything.
Then you came upon shifting problems in the little cooper.
I bought my wife one of those Mini Cooper S two doors for a gift. She use to drive one when we started dating and she enjoyed it. I did too what a go-kart. Car handled the corners really well had enough pep for what it is. But suspension was like a rock when I say go kart that what the ride felt like and terrible in the snow. Anyways
In two years I Had the balancer on the crank go out that was a bear to get at and replace.
Alternator was ridiculous the front clip and bumper had to come off.
Rotted motor mounts.
The final straw was the trans. It would lag going into gear sometimes and slam downshifting into 2&3. I Read everything I could find and all pointed to the valve body. Car only had 65k on it but it seemed their was a issue with them. Everyone recommended this outfit that rebuilds them. They have a exchange program and a great reputation. So I ordered, replaced and put premo fluid in. It was better but not right. Driving in manual mode it was perfect but in auto it wasn’t.
We traded it in for a Chevy bolt back in 2019 and wouldn’t look back! Good luck!!!

Yeah, the auto minis weren’t the best for performance or reliability. The six speed in this car is a joy to row through the gears, now that the linkage is sorted.

I’ll also agree its not the “plushest” ride, but its not exactly what I would call harsh. Its firm and the travel is limited, so it will bang over something like a pothole, but thats the price you pay for the sharp handling. It handle “normal” road irregularities fine. Doesn’t skate or follow the road grooves, but you do feel very connected to the road. Some might call that “harsh”, I call it “firm”.

I intentionally avoided the S models. Its got planty of pep for its size when NA and the turbo brings a whole host of other issues. Not worth it to me for the 40-odd ho increase. This is the wifes car and she mainly commutes in it. Nice, low stress drive trian is whats called for. To bad BMW chose a French engine design for it, I’ve had lots “WTF” monents when working on it…

And working on it certainly is a pita, everything is tight and requires a special tool or some creative wrenching/ out of the box thinking. But thats pretty much the standard in new cars these days. It has a lot to do with the fact major assemblies are built “off car” and then married together. No problem installing an alternator when the engine is sitting in a cradle, but once the engine assembly has been plugged into the hoke sized just right for it, its near impossible to get something like the alt off again.

Just the way cars are built these days.

Now, a French engine in a German designed car assembled by the British?


*Shudder*……

 

[great white]

Getting there:



Thats an aftermarket aluminum rocker (cam?) cover. The oem ones are plastic and prone to cracking and leaking over time in the hot engine bay. The oem one also has the pcv built into it and the only way to change it is to install a new rocker cover. More franco/german engineering…I mean really, who designs a non-servicable pcv system?



I suppose it might make sense sitting in a cubicle staring at a cad diagram, when your only concern is a design that lasts the warranty period without costing the oem repair charges. But after a couple years when blowby starts to get a little more “energetic”, you’re going to need to service that valve. With the oem, your only choice is a new rocker cover for hundreds of dollars. Gawd help you if you hang on to the little bugger for 10-20 years and have to go looking for that rocker cover if your’s has cracked…

You actually CAN change the diaphram on the oem covers, but it’s not with oem parts. BMW‘s intent was to replace the whole cover if the pcv diaphragm splits or otherwise fails. The aftermarket way involves an aftermarket diaphragm and fooling apart some one-way clips that you can’t even see, let alone get to. What usually happens is you break the clips or crack the valve cover, which means you’re spending around 200 bucks to replace it.

The aftermarket (cast aluminum) cover for an N12 I’ve only seen for sale rarely. The aluminum (Turbo) N18 covers seem to be everywhere, but not the N12. I ran across someone selling a couple on ebay and grabbed it. Wasn’t cheap, but worth it to ditch that stupid plastic one. They’re hard to come by and I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to put this potential weak link behind me.

As an added bonus, the pcv diaphragm is replaceable on this one by simply removing three screws. Thats an important point for me because when the pcv diaphram ruptures, tears, clogs or otherwise fails on these engines, they just start sucking oil out of the rocker area and you get those big blue clouds and fouled spark plugs.

Aftermarket cover makes all these potential issues go away.

I like that!



I also re-locked the crank and cams and changed out the crank TTY bolt. I wasn’t confident in my 180 turn on the previous bolt because my angle gauge stalled in a few spots as I was turning. I believe the ring on the gauge got stuck up against the chassis and the result is an inaccurate reading. So I installed the new bolt the wife oicked up and made sure I got a “clean” 180 turn on it. Sure, I wasted a TTY bolt, but if the timing had slipped or (worse) the bolt snapped off while the missus was driving it, it would trash the entire engine. Having a new bolt on the shelf wouldn’t do me any good at that point, so it only made sense to change it out. I did the witness mark trick to make sure it went 180. Make a paint dot on the bolt head and another next to it on the housing. Crank the bolt down, take the angle gauge off and the dots should be 180 out….

 

[great white]

Almost done:



I made sure the engine would smack the valves by rotating the crank by hand a couple times. Just to prove to myself that I wouldn’t hear expensive noises when I hit the starter. Wasn’t nessesary, but makes my mind a little more at ease.

All thats left to do is reinstall the inner fender liner and the wheel.

Then off the jacks and give ‘er a go.

trying to decide if I push through and finish tonight or rest up and finish in the am.

My brain says to rest up, but I know damned well I’ll probably end up dragging myself back out there. I’m so close, its hard to stop…

 

[great white]

Well, finished it and drove it.

I'm a bit gutted right now.

First off, it still smokes. strangely enough, not consistently. It will burn clean and then out of nowhere it will let go a big blue puff. Not sure what to think of that.

Second, it has misfires and runs like crap under heavy throttle.

Third, when you rev it, you can hear the chain slapping inside the valve cover.

I followed the BMW manual to a T and still problems.

I also deleted all the adaptations and ran all the learning procedures as per the factory manual.

Time for an extended break away from this thing. I'm too frustrated to deal with it right now.....

 

[mattthemuppet2]

That sucks A break is the best solution in time like this, hopefully something will come to you once your brain has had a test

 

[great white]

Alright.

I think my "rattle" is the exhaust v-clamp where the header meets the flex pipe. I drove it up the road and listened a bit more critically this time and it's got that raspy exhaust sound to it.

I believe the banging was the intake piping as I found one of the mounting bolts loose and allowing the plastic resonator section to vibrate on it's aluminum mounting boss.

It only makes the rasp/rattle noise about 3 grand under load. Kinda jives with it being silent at idle and bypassing under more exhaust pressure once pushing it a bit.

Ran the car again with the scanner hooked up. Went live data on the monitor and it's a cyl #1 misfire. It works fine until you get it around 3,000 rpm and then starts accumulating misfire counts. There's no other codes other the the misfires (p0301). Once it hits around 50-60 counts it locks in the misfire code and then into limp/reduced power mode. Clear the codes and it goes back to normal running until you push it under load over about 3 grand and the misfire code starts all over again...

You have to get it up around 5 grand to get misfire in a no load condition. You will eventually get the multiple cylinder misfire code, but you only get counts on the #1 cylinder. I tried a quick and dirty de-snagging procedure of swapping the coil on #1 for the coil on #4 and vice versa. Misfire stayed with #1 cylinder so it's likely not an electrical issue. Remember I said not "likely".....swapped #1 and #4 spark plugs and misfire stayed with #1 cyl.

Compression is good. all with 5% of 160 psi, so at least the rings and valves are still good.

So I'm thinking I somehow messed up the timing procedure and the cams are off juuust enough to kick it into misfire. Stupid way of timing this thing with locking the crank, then the cams and tightening it all down. I miss having timing marks!

I ordered 6 cam bolts(two extra sets just in case I have to do them again) and a new v-band clamp with gasket. Dealer says they should all be in by tomorrow afternoon.

The smoking also seems to be gone. I believe it might have been the aftermarket aluminum rocker cover I had installed. I removed it and installed the factory plastic one and it seems to have abated the tendency for the engine to blow a puff occasionally. I'm guessing the PCV isn't up to snuff on the replacement cover and allowing liquid oil to bypass into the intake. I'll look more deeply into it at a later date, I just want the thing running and driving right now so the platic rocker cover will do.

We really enjoy driving this little bugger, but it's getting harder and harder to like it......

 

[GoceKU]

I 'would suggest you do a leak down check espacily on cylinder 1. They are know to have valve seat issues, or do what everyone else is doing, just drive it til it dies or fixes itself. There is lots of minis here with bad engines, and everybody selling them is saying it needs new spark plugs.