Please help. Tensioner, now timing chain.

[oldtrek]

Hello all. I recently had the tensioner replaced and the the decarbonization on my 07 S. The rough idle started again about 100 miles later. They stated the chan was within spec on my recipt. Now they are trying to charge me 2k+ to replace the timing chain. Wtf? It goes from within spec to out of spec after there part is installed. I shouldn't be responsible for these costs. Anybody use a lawyer for these types of thi gs with sucess? Worst of all I bought the car with 49000 the and now has 61000 on it.

[Nathan]

MINI knows this an issue. Make an appointment with the service manger and discuss in a calm manner that this should be a warranty issue. MINI has covered more of a few of these beyond the warranty end date if it was pointed out before hand as yours has. Mention a "Good will" repair as well.

[grodenglaive]

mine was repaired for free about 5k past the warranty - chain, tensioner, and carbon build up - over $4,000 worth of repairs. It took a very fine service advisor and a visit from the MINI Canada rep to make it happen though. YMMV

[iautox]

After writing this post I decided to move the last part to the top so that everyone can cut to the chase for some useful information. Then if they want they can read the rest to see how I came to my opinions. Here’s to better luck with your Mini than I’ve had with mine. As much as I’ve enjoyed driving it I’ve hated owning it. I’m getting rid of it with no remorse and I don’t see another MINI or BMW in my future at any point.
I’ve learned that:
When a Mini dealer says something is caused by ‘bad gas’ that what they actually mean is “we think you are an idiot and you’ll believe this”.
When a Mini dealer says it is a “normal noise” that they actually mean, you guessed it, “we think you are an idiot and you’ll believe this”. (If my technically advanced Mini/Bmw sounds like it has a bag of rocks bouncing around in the engine when it starts up then I, for one, really don’t want a Mini or a BMW!)
When your Mini dealer says “we can’t replicate the noise” It means either “you are lying” or “we really don’t want to hear about it unless it breaks and we have to do something. Maybe it will hang in there until your warranty expires.” However when you do bring it in after the warranty has expired and they can hear the sound then they look at you like an idiot for continuing to drive something that sounds so bad. Even when you tell them that the noise is still intermittent and it was totally quiet on the way in they react in a way that lets you know, you guessed it, “you are lying”.
If you are having the death rattle and you are still under warranty you need to “bitch your head off” to get it fixed under warranty. Apparently being very assertive multiple times over 3 years just doesn’t do the trick.
The engine death rattle can lead to the timing chain jumping or breaking and then the valves running into the pistons which in turn leads to a repair bill for $8,000 for a new engine. I supposed I would have had to pick up 30% (or 40% if they learn how to do math right. Read the whole story to see what this means). I did not know that death rattle could lead to complete engine failure until very recently when I started reading several forums.
MINI USA really doesn’t give a ****, but apparently some dealers are better than mine.
If you own or are going to buy a Mini or a BMW you need to budget to replace it often enough to keep it under warranty. These cars are not especially reliable (as many independent ratings now show), they are very expensive to fix (you’ve seen your warranty invoices or worse you’ve paid to have the dealer fix something so you know how painful that is), and finally these are fragile cars in the sense that their sophistication leads to one small problem leading to a big one, i.e. the vacuum pump problem can also cause an engine to be destroyed. Also unless you are lucky enough to live close to your dealer you have to deal with long trips for service and the inconvenience of dropping off your car during normal hours if you want a loaner. Once you are out of warranty then of course you have no loaner. So in my case I’ve been without my MINI this time for 2 weeks due to waiting to get in for service and then it taking the dealer an inordinate amount of time to fix it even though they didn’t need to order parts. This inconvenience turned out to be a much greater irritation than I expected when I bought the car. Of course one reason for this was that the Mini had to go back to the dealer multiple times under warranty where the last two new cars I bought only when back to dealer for warranty work one time EACH. I kept my 99 Isuzu Trooper for 160,000 miles and the only non-maintenance items it has needed were a radiator at over 120,000 and a starter at 150,000. At that kind of mileage and age of over 10 years even those could be viewed as maintenance. I still own my 2004 Chevy Tracker (Suzuki Grand Vitara) with 103,000 miles. I had to replace the alternator at about 95,000.
Since MINI won’t even admit to the death rattle problem they cannot really come out and advertise that the problem is fixed for current models. In my review of various forums I only see reports for 07, 08, 09, and 10. However the 11’s and 12’s may simply not have enough miles on them to have had this problem yet. There are also forums for other brands that use this engine in Europe and there are lots of reports of the death rattle there too. Since I haven’t read every post on every forum there may be reports from 11 and 12 models. Therefore I’m relatively certain the death rattle is still a concern.
I had test driven an 11 MCS to see what more horsepower felt like and especially to try out the electronic limited slip. The electronic limited slip eliminated torque steer and made the MCS more like the first generation, which is a good thing. However, even now if I could resign myself to buying a new car every four years (I usually keep mine 8 to 10 years) I wouldn’t get a MINI or BMW knowing what I know now.
So here’s the story:
Thought I’d post this so others could decide what to do. I have a 07 MCS that I purchased in March of 2007. The timing chain tensioner completely failed at 20,000 with no warning in June of 08. There were no morning rattles or anything. I just driving the car, came down from speed to idle and the engine sounded like a bag of rocks. If I ran the revs up to 3,000 rpms the centrifugal force took up the slack and the engine quieted down except for the light rubbing of the chain on the case. The chain, tensioner, etc. was replaced under warranty.
A few months and a few thousand miles later the dieseling death rattle began. It was very random with no discernable ‘triggers’ as others have found. The outside temperature could be hot or cold. I could park it level in the garage or nose up in the driveway. It could sit a short time or for a week. Nothing seems to make a difference. It rattles on start up whenever it feels like it for varying lengths of time from 30 seconds to a few minutes.
I complained about the noise at every service and even took it into service just for the noise. One time I took it in for just the rattle and left it for several days. At various times we were told that it was “bad gas” and a “normal noise”, but we were always told “that they could not replicate the noise”.
Now, December of 2011, after the car is out of warranty it made the death rattle so loud it trippedf the ‘half yellow engine’ warning so I took it and dropped it off on a Sunday evening.
I called the dealer on Monday morning and asked if they were able to hear the noise. The service adviser said yes, of course it was very loud. I told him it was quiet as could be on the way down. From his reaction he obviously didn’t believe me. He said the replacement of the tensioner/chain would cost $1,550, but he’d call MINI and see if they would do anything.
I told him it had been intermittently rattling for over 3 years and if he looked back at the service records he’d see that we complained about it at every service, took it in specifically just for the noise, and even took it in and left it for several days. I told him I expected MINI to cover EVERYTHING since it should have been replaced under warranty at one of the many times we complained. I should note here that after not hearing from the service adviser I had to call him back to see what they had found out.
The next day at 5:30, after I had left work, the service advisor called and left a message to let me know that MINI would cover 40%, the dealer would cover 20%, and I was to pick up 30%. I listened to it twice to make sure I was hearing it right since you will note that the numbers only add up to 90%. (Apparently that can’t even do that right).
I called back the next day and before I could say anything the service adviser said he knew the numbers he had given me didn’t add up to 100%, but that I’d only have to cover 30% (very smart move on his part) and that also the work would be at warranty rate so that the total would be much less than $1,550.
So I had to wait nearly a week until I could take the car in, they had it beginning on a Monday, had the parts in stock and promised it for Wednesday. Late Wednesday they called to say they could not have it done, but were pretty sure they could have it done on Thursday. I told them it was OK if they finished Friday because I couldn’t get all the way to the dealer until Saturday. Of course they called late Friday to let me know that it wouldn’t be ready until Monday and “was that OK”. I replied that “I really don’t have any choice do I?”
Hopefully it is done tomorrow.
Hopefully it doesn’t rattle anymore.
Hopefully someone else owns it when the latest tensioner/chain wears out.
Hopefully ‘someone’ can get MINI to fix it again.

[Nathan]

Ot would be helpful to know what dealership is working on the MINI in the post jsut above.

Dealership quality is all over the map, some a re great, some want to charge you for calling with a question while giving the wrong answer. The only way we as consumers can bring them up to a better level is by identifying both the good and bad. Then pointing the bad to what the good ones do. Dealers spend a ton of money to keep an eye on their on their online reputations and this site does a lot of a work in making sure the search engines find them.

[Gil-galad]

Suggestion to iautox: better to just rant in one thread and post links to it in the related threads, rather than just post multiple iterations of your long saga. It's more byte efficient.

Stories like this one bring me back to '08 when the so called "death rattle" was first coming to light in the online forums, and it still wasn't clear if the root cause was associated with the timing mechanism, ECU, or HLAs. Since MINI had no clue at the time, the "it's normal" response was almost universal. And a large percentage of the online posters accepted that response, and accused the few of us who were skeptics and tried to keep the issue socialized as blowing things out of proportion, or suffering from hypochondria. The usual claim was made that the affected audience represented online--the "squeaky wheels"--represented only a small fraction of the total population and thus distorted the perception of the problem being prevalent. Even when news of engines grenading started to pop up shortly thereafter, and sites like MF ran feature articles discussing the problem, the general refusal to accept this as a chronic flaw in the N14 engine was mind boggling. I remember feeling very sad at the time, thinking about the likelihood of future used car buyers of the R56 S coming into the community with great enthusiasm and leaving with a bitter taste in their mouth, analogous to the previous poster.

The one shred of good news, and a correction to the unsupported claim by iautox, is that the N18 engine seems to be unaffected. I have not seen a single, credible reported case of the chain tensioner "death rattle" in the N18 (and believe me, I keep my eye out for them).

[Crashton]

I'm very glad to hear what is happening with the iautox MINI problem. It would help if he'd tell us what dealer is being so helpful....

I'm too am hoping they finally have the problem fixed with the introduction for the N18. Unfortunately many folks who buy a used R56 MCS are going to be stung. You'd think MINI/BMW would want to show some good will here.

seems to be unaffected

Too early to tell at this stage. My fingers are crossed for all N14 & N18 MINI owners.

[Redbeard]

Originally Posted by Crashton

I'm too am hoping they finally have the problem fixed with the introduction for the N18. Unfortunately many folks who buy a used R56 MCS are going to be stung. You'd think MINI/BMW would want to show some good will here.


Too early to tell at this stage. My fingers are crossed for all N14 & N18 MINI owners.

I haven't had any chain/tensioner issues with my 2010...

[Gil-galad]

Originally Posted by Crashton

Too early to tell at this stage. My fingers are crossed for all N14 & N18 MINI owners.

Perhaps, but as I recall there were reported cases (including YT videos) of '07 and '08 MCS vehicles that had the "death rattle" right out of the box (i.e., in the first 5K miles). There are beaucoup reports accessible from '07 - '10 owners who became afflicted with less than 30K. I've gotta believe there are plenty of N18s out there now with these kinds of mileages on the clock.

In any event, I share your with all sincerity.

[Crashton]

Good luck to all!