I believe what you are hearing....... MINI made changes to the valve cover in the section that traps and attempts to separate and collect the oil vapor in the PCV system. The earlier design allowed more oil vapor to reach the intake manifold where it is eventually consumed by the engine as part of the emission requirements. By catching more of these oily vapors in the new design valve cover, the oil is able to return back to the oil pan. If you do a search on real OEM you will find the old P/N being replaced by the newer design P/N. As a side note, these PCV passages cannot be serviced to clean out the maze of oil traps. When they get fowled with buildup, there is a pressure relief valve built into the center of the valve cover facing the firewall that opens with pressure. The first signs of a PCV clog is engine oil leaking out of this relief valve.... Time for a new valve cover....
Oh.... MINI does selective recalls.... What works in one country doesn't necessarily applies to all countries.... Just ask Canada....
Wow many thanx, looks like my question on this thread is gonna get covered and im very glad to say the least. Let me make a few more questions cause im no tech and some stuff i don't understand or wanna clarify :wink:
1. My engine oil dip stick level, after 1700km goes from max to min, do you think by making this change to the valve cover (install the newer one) will help me in this issue?
2. Any idea how many liters of oil are consumed when level goes from max to min?
3. If this issue was effecting all minis, how could there be 2008 minis like mine that claimed not to burn any oil at all?
4. Can you please show me where that "pressure relief valve" is, so i can have a look in my car to see if there is any engine oil leaking from there as you say? :wink:
Woah woah woah, am I reading your last post correctly? You are losing a full quart of oil after a hair over 1000 miles? I would venture to say it's going somewhere else. I don't see a fancy new valve cover meant to aid a shitty PCV design solving that kind of oil consumption! On a typical R56, you should normally see about 1/4-1/3 quart lost every 3000 miles(4828km). To lose 3-4 times that in 1/3 of the mileage, something more concerning has got to be going on there.
Before taking any measures regarding this i wanna do a few things first.
Make sure how many oil im loosing, and how do i do that? What is the best way to find out how much oil is lost?
The standard for most every car built is either 1 quart or 1 liter... pretty close in volume so functionally the same.
One tip...
some motors seem to "like" the oil level at a specific volume...some may burn off oil till hits the 1/2 level, then stay pretty constant. That is why the reccomendation in most manuals is to add oil when it hit, or approaches the ADD line/dot/mark, as opposed to mataining it at the FULL mark with small additions.
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