That's another pretty common spot. I've been lucky so far (knock on wood) that it hasn't happened to Rufus. Once I did the oil pan, crank seal and the crank sensor o-ring, the oil has done a pretty good job of staying where it is supposed to be. I did a lot of cleaning on the engine as I did all of my maintenance / refresh service, but I really only got the engine bay SUPER clean until last spring and, well, COVID has curtailed my fun driving a fair bit and Rufus has been pretty still lately. I'm due for an oil change, so I'll have a good excuse to get under the car and check for any leaks that might have sprung up. I've also got a new cooling fan relay to go in... I've got a few days off in April and I might take the time to tackle those issues then.
Now this is the kind of project that I can relate with...where no matter how well guided my intentions were I seemed to create as many problems as I corrected. The good news is that you will get through these trying times and be able tell your story of how you were able to slay the mechanical demons that possessed your R53.
The rebuild info is on the ATI website. I was concerned about the rubber o-rings used in the pulley breaking down over time so I emailed them to clarify their recommendation of inspection/rebuilding after 10 years for a street motor or 5 years for a 5.5” damper or motor under 400 HP. The rebuild/inspection interval is a lot shorter for high hp or competition use. Their response was after 5 years of use it should at least be inspected. A rebuild by ATI is $75 to replace the o-rings if nothing else on the pulley is damaged.
Yes, the ATI damper says right on the front label that recommended rebuild is every 5 years. It uses rubber components that will degrade over time. The good news is that it will not fall apart like the oem unit but it may not dampen the vibrations as well. I like the PRW fluid damper, it cost less, never needs maintenance, and they dampen harmonics across a wider rpm range. However I highly doubt this is causing any of your problems. You know you have a vacuum leak, so I would start with that intake tube and also inspect every connection along the intake system. Also check all the wire connections. Try to fix the lean condition and pressure sensor error. Then you can look at the misfire if it still exists. The low compression readings are concerning. The good news is they were all the same. I would opt for a leak-down test to see whats going on. As for the oil leak, it's not causing your error codes and I'd monitor it until the other problems are fixed. It does look like the rear seal might be bad. Was there any indication of this previously?
Thanks for the research/detail on the ATI. I think if I go to a new crank pulley I'll do the PRW. Seems to be the best compromise for what I'm looking for. I'm going to live with the lightweight non-dampened CS pulley I've put on for now, and focus on my other adventures with vacuum leaks! If I solve all that, and then track down my oil leaks, I'll re-focus on how I feel about dampened/non-dampened crank pulleys.
Thanks - completely agree, I'm tackling one thing at a time. Starting with what I know, as you said - I'll address the obvious issues first. Honestly hoping I find a disconnected vacuum line or wire/plug... I doubt it, but that would actually be great to see something glaring like that. The new intake tube arrived yesterday and I have the car back in service mode already. I'll probably get started with working my way down to removing the current intake tube tonight. Might end up pulling the radiator off all the way to make more space, I forgot just how tucked-in that intake tube until I really looked at it the other night after sliding the radiator forward again. No wasted space in there at all.
forgot to answer this... no, before starting this project, I'm pretty sure I had oil leaks from the crankshaft position sensor and the oil filter housing. Almost certain that there were no leaks from the oil pan itself and certainly not the main seal or the transmission. I'm good to go on the CPS now, no sign of new leaks there. The bottom-most/hardest to reach with any tool bolt on the oil filter housing is wet and clearly leaking after removing the housing to put in a new gasket. I'm going to start by trying to get back there with extensions again and make sure the bolt is tight and properly torqued. Or, confirm if I managed the break the bolt. The oil on the pan itself, and at the main seal area, is very hard for me to tell if it's even oil or if it's actually coming from the main seal mating point of the pan/block and transmission. I don't think it is because I can clearly see and touch seepage from up above that, on the front of the transmission, coming out of a mounting point with a bushing on it. That fluid is running down the front of the bellhousing, forming a droplet on the lowest point of that bracket, and then continuing to run to the oil pan, right at the seam between the pan and the transmission. At that point, maybe the main seal is leaking oil, and that's combining with the leak from the transmission, but maybe it's all from that leak on the transmission higher up. At any rate, I don't think I had that leak before all this. I'm still concerned the raising and lowering the engine stressed the mounting points on the transmission itself to the point of creating new leaks.
Possibly/probably big news... BYPASS VALVE! It was stuck, jammed against a misplaced bracket. Check this out. There is a black metal bracket that hooks over the intake side of the throttle body, two of the four throttle body bolts go through it. When I was doing the work the past several weekends, I didn’t pay attention to that bracket and where it was intended to be. I could have loosened it to get it out of the way, but instead when I pulled back the intake air horn to get the intake manifold out, I was pulling against that bracket. That bent it out of shape. That’s important because when I put everything back together it was very much not in the right place. It didn’t align with the throttle body anymore, it was too high and angled too close to the intake for the throttle body bolts to mount through it. I left it that way because I was taking the car to my mechanic to deal with my broken throttle body bolt. I think it wasn’t causing a problem yet when it got to the shop. When they got to that broken bolt and realized they couldn’t drill it out, they reassembled everything pretty much the way I had, only this time they managed to jam that bracket up into the plastic arm of the bypass valve spring housing. Tonight when I got to the BPV, I couldn’t press the arm in at all. So, wow. This explains everything I think. If the BPV was stuck partially open, then the intake was getting the wrong measurement of air at all times - at idle, low speed and high speed. The way I’m thinking of it, this would be causing my lean condition and intake code. And causing increased fuel consumption as the computer made up for the starvation of air from the choked-off intake. It was suggested at one point in this thread that I consider the Detroit Tuned bypass valve. At that point I didn’t even know what a BPV was, so thank you for suggesting it to begin with! (I think that was MCS02.) after researching what it does and watching ModMini’s video on replacing it, I ordered the stock BPV to just replace what I had because I remembered mine looking pretty scuzzy. Figured why not, trying to get everything back to good shape, may as well. New one just happened to arrive today, then I discovered the jammed up BPV tonight. Something went right again! Tomorrow night I’ll start getting the new intake tube in place and attach the BPV and throttle body. Might get as far as being able to start it up. I bought a compression tester at Harbor Freight today, so I’ll test that when it’s running again and hope for normal compression again. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Are we having fun yet? Yes this could cause a whole host of problem. The BPV dumps boost at idle to save fuel. Then closes when you give it gas. The DT BPV closes faster and all the way. A bad BPV can also cause an uneven idle. My Lotus has an odd idle problem. I just tore apart the pluming for the SC to get to the throttle body to clean it. If that doesn't fix it I will be changing the BPV. Makes me think. I wonder if its the same part.. Make sure when do the compression test you get the car to running temp. I pull all the plugs the turn it over till the gage wont pump up any more. This will give you an accurate reading. Good luck!
Based on that explanation of when the BPV does what, I'm guessing mine was stuck nearly closed to maybe as much halfway open. My idle was the worst, but the car drove okay. Yet it didn't feel quite as good on the power as it did the first night we put it back together. The valve was just not situating itself where it needed to for anything to work quite right. gonna struggle to focus on my work day the rest of the way today, ha. I'll dig in to all the new stuff tonight and maybe get it fired up again to see how it does.
+1,000,000 This has been my first real dive into Mini forums, weirdly, after 17 years of ownership. When I ordered the car back in 2004, I joined NAM right away and was active posting updates for whatever I learned as the car was built and shipped and delivered. I picked up the car in May 2004 and that was that. I just drove it. It's only in the past two or three years I've started messing around mechanically with my cars. Mostly what kicked that off was buying a 2003 BMW 540 MSport in 2019. I bought a really good one but with the expectation and desire to learn how to work on it to keep it good. So I've been in the popular BMW forums quite a bit. They've been extremely helpful, for the most part. For the other part, I will say that community has a tendency to jump pretty quickly to answering posted questions with "That's been asked and answered a thousand times, just search" which is beyond frustrating. Not every issue boils down to the same keywords, plus forum platforms seem less-than-stellar when it comes to search. Case in point... this whole drama! I've had behaviors and codes and new parts, old parts, sporadic results... it sort of took living through it, thinking it out, writing about it, and reading (and re-reading) the replies here to make sense of it all. So I came here for this project not really knowing what to expect, and I have been pretty much amazed. Hugely grateful.
One of the nicest things about Motoring Alliance is that you will never hear the “been asked before go search for it” answer. Your absolutely right that searches don’t always find what you’re looking for because of any number of reasons and it’s just a nice civil approach to a faceless medium.
Minor setback tonight but nothing too terrible considering the road I’ve been on so far. That intake duct I ordered to solve the problem of the broken TB bolt turned out to be for an automatic Cooper S, and that matters... there’s a good three inches of additional tube between the bypass valve and the throttle body. It also places the throttle body lower. Expert that I am, I discovered this after the nightmare of installing it... good lord. I wrestled and twisted and tore up my knuckles to get those vacuum lines attached to the duct and then line up the BPV with the air horn to reattach it to the intake manifold while aligning the duct with the supercharger... finally got it all to go and attached the throttle body and THEN I noticed that the bracket that holds the intake side of the TB down was nowhere near the TB. Laughable, I guess at this point. I can’t get the correct intake duct for the manual here until next Thursday at the soonest. So I tore into that broken bolt in my old duct that was of course out of the car. Actually drilled right through it but the left behind junk of the remains of the bolt seems to be forever fused into the brass threads. So it’s a wreck. But I have a plan to rig this thing up and maybe, hopefully put it back together in “good enough” condition. I’m thinking that if I can get a slightly smaller diameter bolt that is also slightly longer, I can pass it through the opening with the leftover broken bolt junk and out the back where I can thread it into a nut and washer. Then I can have three good bolts holding the TB down the right way and this one corner kinda rigged up. I may add some gasket maker around the outside edge all around too but that feels like it could be overkill. If I can’t get a skinny bolt through that opening I’m going to go with gasket maker and, bear with me here, a zip tie to cinch down that corner into the gasket maker as tight as I can make it. I want to get the car running so I can know if the BPV solves this whole drama. Then if I’m still having intake issues and I know I have this MacGyvered TB mess going on, I’ll order the new intake duct and do it again the right way in a few weeks. Oh and I have some pretty troubling oil leaks going on for sure. Oil pan and oil filter housing are definitely leaking oil currently, and it’s looking like the rear seal probably is too. I don’t even know what to think about that, I just changed the pan and filter housing gaskets so if that didn’t solve the leaks and I just do it all over again, I don’t know that I should expect better results. But this time I won’t go raising and lowering the engine with the Jack under the oil pan and fresh gasket to do other work. Another problem for another day. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
You can see how it looked before in the image a posted a few days ago about the jammed BPV, and now it looks like this after my caveman attack with a drill: I can probably pick out the rest of that hunk of slag in there and clear the hole completely. It doesn’t seem to be enough metal material in the brass fitting to do something like a helicoil but maybe that’s worth a try to get a real fastener through there. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Congrats on finding the issue! That kind of shit drives me crazy! I'll give a +2 on the helpfulness of internet forums and a -1 for the hate and misinformation that is frequently shared. The choosers-bias is strong in the MINI forums (I picked X product, so it's the BEST!) and there are a lot of folks talking out of their ass (at times myself included, though I try to be good most of the time). The folks over here on MA are crusty at times, but they are good folks... that's why I posted my build thread over here. There are lots of forums out there with more posters and posts, but the average quality over here is higher. I collect info from other places, but come back here to hash it out and make a decision.
I agree completely with @agranger! I would get the rest out as you said and use a bolt and nut. If you get the rest out you may be able to use a 10mm nut and bolt. As long as the mating surface is good you should be good to go. Make sure the gaskets are good so you don’t have an air leak.
I use red RTV sparingly but if you want to be on the safe side maybe a little will ensure you don’t have a leak.