I have not. I don’t know how! I’m knew to this work-on-car stuff. I can learn it though. So far I’ve remained zeroed in on things specific to this misfire-on-one-and-only-one-cylinder situation. Fuel pressure seems like it wouldn’t manifest as just this one cylinder having issues would it?
It's interesting to watch this thread progress and the diagnostic process, but it's a bit of a guilty pleasure as I know that there is a MINI enthusiast out there suffering! Best of luck!
I bought a noid light test kit and hooked up the test light to the electrical connector of the injector plug tonight. A working electrical connection will cause the test light to blink on and off continuously when the engine is started.
I tested all four, and all of them blinked as they should when the engine was cranked and turned over. However, the plug for the injector on problem child cylinder 2 blinked for a brief time, but after the engine idled for maybe 4 or 5 seconds, the blinking light stopped.
So my problem is electrical. Finally, I know something.
But, what I don’t really know is what do I actually do next? I can’t see much of the wiring but what I can see of the two wires going into the connector appear to be visually fine. The big plug and socket under the cover on the right side visually appear okay too. But there’s a few feet of wire between those two ends where anything could be going on and it’s all covered up in a plastic tube.
My first thought is to buy a new wiring harness and replace it. They’re about $360 but what I like even less than that cost is the fact that the entire wiring harness has to be replaced just to put in new fuel injector connectors. Looks like a bit of a job, but if I’ve come this far I’ll dive in and do it if that is the right thing to do.
Am I missing other options to consider and try first?
Odd that the wiring harness/connections would work then not work. Could be a connector problem, hopefully not a wiring harness problem but might it be a ECU problem ?? Is it possible to read the signal straight off the ecu ?? If’n it is then that could save a bunch of time checking out wiring.
Would be interesting to know if’n the ECU is programmed to shut one certain cylinder down if it receives bad signals from a sensor and not just random choice.
I would have to look in the Bentley manual but it may shut off fuel to a cylinder if the ECU thanks that cylinder is not getting spark to keep from washing out a cylinder and causing adverse wear.
Does the trouble shooting section of the Bentley cover this?
Well Thats not good news. You will ether need to replace the motor or do a complete rebuild. Allmeg has a R53 motor with 49K miles and the compression test was 150 all cylinders with a leak down of 20% for $2299.99. You would have to put all your parts on it, it is just a long block. This may be the most economical course.
I am not sure what you would spend rebuilding the motor you would have to price the parts and machine shop work. Doing a rebuild is not extremely hard, these days its getting all the other stuff bolted back in place that is a pain. But when you do a rebuild you must check everything. You have to take you time and check all your clearness before you just slap it together. The up side is you can use it as an excuse to build a killer motor.
Keep in mind all the other stuff you need to fix when making your decision. You have some suspension parts to fix. That wont be bad and can be done while the motor is out. In the south we don't see much rust. If I were to keep that car I would probably clean up that surface rust and pant it so the car will last longer. This wont cost anything just time.
At this point you are not going to get your money out of the car. I guess there are three avenues you can take. From worse to best.
1 Cut your losses. This one hurts the worse.
2 Buy the motor from Allmeg and get it on the road. (this sounds like a good motor)
3 Turn it into a project car you and your son can enjoy working on together.
There may be a forth option, having the dealer do it but that will be expensive.
It's hard to give advise in this case. Do you have room for a project car, do you need the car to be running quickly, how much do you want to spend? These are just a few questions I would have to answer.
I will leave you with this story. When my youngest son was 16 we put a set of long tube headers on his Mustang. We started early on a Saturday morning and stoped at 3 AM Sunday morning. We needed to get a little sleep before church. The next day I saw that around 2 AM before we stopped working, my son had tweeted " Listening to Bob Seger and an old man talk to himself, I love you dad" Time with your son is priceless. Going the Allmeg way is still a good project for you two.
Just got off the phone with the service advisor. Their plan, at $2,260 all-in including tax, is to replace the camshaft and the rocker arm (intake side I believe). Their take is that everything else can wait, with a certain amount of urgent priority of course (suspension, brake lines, and rear main seal and power steering leaks).
So. On the one hand I'm thinking well, okay, I'm not going to do $2200 for the cam and levers (and he was transparent in telling me that price is almost all parts and markup, not many hours of labor which he said surprised him). But I can buy BMW/MINI original camshaft for $592 (already forget where I saw that but will easily find it again, was one of the good sites like MiniMania or ECS or something), or an aftermarket by some company called AE for $297 at Pelican. Not sure a cam is a part I want to save money on... any opnions there? Half price is appealing!!!
Lee, you're saying this is pointing at a complete rebuild, and if so, I totally agree with your idea to just replace the motor. That is almost exciting. But, is the dealer missing something huge here? Really, his demeanor was so positive, saying he knows this sounds bad but in the grand scheme of things we're looking at two parts that are incredibly easy to access and replace. And he didn't bat an eye at me saying I'd probably just save money and buy my own parts and do it at home, he was like Yup, that is completely do-able.
So are you guys coming at this from the perspective that my engine is probably wrecked as a result of this going on so long with a bad camshaft? And that throwing money at the engine I have is a bad idea, and if I want to keep the car (by now you've all correctly guessed that I do) that I'm better off going big and either rebuilding or replacing the whole engine?
Agree x 2
