1st Gen R53 Cooper S Most liked posts in thread: Engine Died - Now it won't start!

Hi everyone, thanks for the replies.
@Batrugger - interesting information on the injector behaviour in your car, this is definitely quite different to the behaviour of mine. I wondered if was some kind of anti-flooding mechanism but it doesnt seem logical to me, to not supply fuel at all when cranking after only one round of injection.

Will post compression test results when I do it later.

The battery is old, not sure how old but not new! I dont think it is the original though. It had more or less run flat from the number of times I tried to start the car, so I got another car and connected it up to effectively jump start it. However, if you say they do weird things with old batteries, is it possible this could still be a cause even with another car jumping it?

I have inspected the timinig chain already and it looks normal, chain doesn't appear loose or anything.

So list of jobs as it stands:

- Compression test
- Measure voltage drop on injectors to see if the ECU is actuating them when cranking
- Close inspection of chain drive/timing
- Squirt easy start in the bores and see if there's any sign of life
- Check earths

Any other suggestions?

Cheers

 

Hello guys. Thanks for all your help so far. Bit more progress yesterday - I carried out a compression test, cylinder 1 was good with around 150psi, but cylinders 2, 3 and 4 all have zero compression.

Three cylinders having no compression sounds a lot like my timing chain has jumped a tooth - I wasnt able to check the timing marks last night but at the weekend i will do this. If it was a head gasket, for 3 cylinders to have no compression I imagine it would have to be a pretty catastrophic failure and I would have imagined I'd have experienced smoke/steam and seen evidence of oil in coolant etc. Seem logical?

As I say I will check timing etc at the weekend and report back after that

 

No dash lights when it broke down whatsoever

Will re-check the compression just incase i messed something up the first time, and will check the timing as its a quick job. If I get no joy the head is coming off :'(

I'll report back at the weekend. Thanks for all of your help guys!

 

Hello Team,

Well I found the problem, I'll let the pics do the talking...



Yep! The Camshaft snapped. Looks like it's due to a manufacturing issue with the casting of the shaft itself - the split that runs into the centre of the material lines up exactly with the casting line that runs along the length of the shaft.

This camshaft is only 5k miles old - it was replaced with the cylinder head 5k miles ago (due to the ejection of a spark plug - unrelated issue).

Definitely one for the x-files, looks like I've been unlucky.

Thanks for all the advice guys.

 

Yeah I've had an endoscope down the bores and we'v not had any contact or anything like that. Can't see any other damage so as you say the valve probs closed up and that was that. Think I've been lucky in that respect. But yeah pretty crazy issue!

 

Cheers guys!!