So, I've been speaking with some MINI buds on the LXM fb page and an F56 owner said he called his dealer about a clutch issue he's been noticing and after telling his symptoms, they tell him that he needs a whole new engine..... WTF? We've had the BMW MINI's since what, 02? Gen 1 had issues, Gen 2 had issues, and now Gen 3 has another MAJOR issue? What the H Bimmer? We love our MINI's, please give us a solid platform! End rant.
Did they give the story about it having a lifetime engine? Did they explain how long lifetime is? So MINI changes engines like earl filters now? Unbelievable.... Simply unbelievable... Maybe the extended warranty on the BMW / MINI engine should be reconsidered.... Oh..... And whut the heck is LXM fb?
One engine has a problem and we have an epidemic? The reason they want to put a whole new engine in is so they can take that one back to the tech center and tear it down to see what happened.
It is NOT one engine-the techs I know at 2 different dealers have told me they are changing engines due to crank end play problems on 15s and 16s-interestingly, the 14s have a different engine according to my contacts-and yes Dave is right they are sending them back complete so engineering can look at them
I've heard of this happening on a few F56 cars. While the engine is replaced can they replace the cars face? This is not a knock against the F56 for I have been told they are great. In 1999 there were a bunch of Miata's that had replacement engines installed due to problems with thrust bearings. I wonder if MINI bought the remaining stock of Mazda thrust bearings.
It aint just one. Calm your britches. One guy posted about what he thought was a clutch issue turned out to be the crank shaft issue, and then a whole bunch of F56 owners chimed in. Some were at 8k or less.
Still friendly here.... Just made up from a bunch of individuals here that are not all the same... There is a good selection of individuality here....
It happens...quite a few stories...Detroit tuned had a description of what is happening with the new motor on witeroof radio... As it has been said before..."avoid first year mini models/generations"...lol Think anybody believes it yet?!
The cars that are having these catastrophic failures or fall into the build date are being fixed under an obvious warranty, but non the less not really the situation you want to be in after spending $28K on a car. Last I heard it was an estimated 20,000 cars affected.
The thing that's always most interesting to me (and the story you rarely hear) is the root cause analysis on HOW this kind of issue makes it into production, and past all the long-term pre-production testing. i.e. Why this didn't show up on the test mules.
I'd guess something was machined out of spec or rather the spec that was specified wasn't good enough. More guessing is it takes miles to have this affect the engines. Enough miles have been run that this is starting to show up. Seems BMW quality isn't any better than Peugeot/Citroen quality. Sure hope this isn't a long lasting issue.