2009 mini cooper clubman, timing chain and valve seals

Day 2 of wife driving her mini back and forth to work. Roughly a 30 min one way trip, so an hour round trip.

Still running well. Quiet and smooth.

Good sign.

:)

Good thing too. She filled the mini up from roughly a 1/4 tank and it was a bit over 90 bucks! We can sure use a car that gets 35-40 mpg right now…
 
great white said:
Sunova!!!!!

wife just called and check engine light is back on in the minivan.

I swear to jebus, I’m going to get her a flintstones car to drive and see if she can break that!
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My rule of thumb is run the codes and see if it's anything that's gonna leave us stranded or that needs to be addressed at all. So many times there are codes that don't amount to anything I care about, so on my old cars they just get ignored unless I really think I can "fix" it.

Kinda like putting electrical tape over the flashing clock on your VCR....

John
 
Well, scanned it. #2 misfire again. Cleared it and it stayed gone. But the issue is still there, waiting to pop it's ugly head up again.

Time for valve seals.

When I did the plugs, the top seals on the coils were wet with oil. Wasn't a horrible amount and the spark tubes were only a little wet on the edges, so I figured it wasn't that bad.

Seems I have to relearn the "fix everything you see when it's apart" lesson once again.

Biggest PO is that the intake has to come off again.

Ugh. PITB......but it's my own fault for not addressing it when i saw it was going/gone.

At least it's an easy, lazy one day job.

Putting it off means the oil can roach a coil.

Ignoring fault codes is never a good idea......they're always at least a warning that more expensive repairs are coming if you don't fix the mostly minor issue now.....
 
great white said:
Well, scanned it. #2 misfire again. Cleared it and it stayed gone. But the issue is still there, waiting to pop it's ugly head up again.

Time for valve seals.

When I did the plugs, the top seals on the coils were wet with oil. Wasn't a horrible amount and the spark tubes were only a little wet on the edges, so I figured it wasn't that bad.

Seems I have to relearn the "fix everything you see when it's apart" lesson once again.

Biggest PO is that the intake has to come off again.

Ugh. PITB......but it's my own fault for not addressing it when i saw it was going/gone.

At least it's an easy, lazy one day job.

Putting it off means the oil can roach a coil.

Ignoring fault codes is never a good idea......they're always at least a warning that more expensive repairs are coming if you don't fix the mostly minor issue now.....
Click to expand...
I have a 2004 Cadillac SRX I bought for 2k in Michigan several years back that throws misfire codes. Have dug into it as far as ordering some aftermarket catalytic converters from Canada and having them installed. Mostly it doesn’t give me problems but every now and then it’ll run rough until I give it an oil change and run it down the highway at top speed.

I figure it owes me nothing at this point so if it blows up I’ll scrap it out and move on. My goal is to keep it going at the lowest cost with the least amount of effort I can.

However, it’s not my wife’s car. ;)

Also, I’m not retired yet and rather then working on helicopters I’m a totally qualified small engine mechanic.

Back when I was young we used to talk about the “wrench to ride ratio” of different cars/bikes/etc. Sounds like you wife’s Mini is one of those cars that’s worth extra effort because of how fun it is to drive. Is the minivan a winter car? Living in northern Michigan introduced me to that concept big time.

I’ve been impressed with all the work documented in this thread. I’m sure most of us would have towed it to the dealer and traded it in on a new one long ago given the challenges you’ve overcome. But ultimately this life is about overcoming challenges and making the most of our circumstances.

Thanks for taking us along on the ride:)

John
 
Repairs just keep on coming, one advice i can give you, deal with them first time right and move on. Here is a picture of some french ingenuity of bolts M12x1.0
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Oh man, the pentastar 3.6 in the van is as much a PITA as the N12!

More things in the way of more things in the way of more things!

A single valve cover gasket change is a full day affair! Been working on it now for 5 hrs and I'm just ready to start building it back up.

You can tell this thing was also built on a table somewhere and then slammed into the chassis.

Absolutely no consideration for maintenance and repairs post production. No wonder dealer techs always seem in such a sh!tty mood.

You can tell it's ruled by the economists: put it together as fast and cheaply as possible, make it juuuust good enough to get it out of warranty, and then owners will find it's crazy expensive to repair it out of warranty and look to buy something new.

I soooooo despise the "throw away society" model.......
 
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Well, valve cover gasket changed, including the spark plug “tubes”.

I only did the front valve cover because the rear was not leaking. I’m a big fan of leaving something alone if its not “broken”. The rest of the valve cover gasket set I’ll just put away for later if needed.

Went for a decently long drive and no “#2 misfire” occurrences or pending codes. Can’t pull live data off this vehicle for some reason, but no pending codes is a good sign.

So back to the wife it goes and see what happens next.

For good measure, I swapped the #2 coil with the #4 coil to see if it reoccurs in the new spot. It is possible the coil is breaking down as it was quite wet with oil when first removed. Nothing in the well, but the top of the coil (ie: seal) was dripping wet. I gave it a good shot with electrical contact cleaner and it went back in totally dry, no oil.

We’ll see if the wife can break it again.

Time is limited though, the van goes in for some corrosion repair and a respray mid Aug…
 
Hmmm, a little digging around seems to indicate that #2 misfires in the pentastar 3.6 can mean a head failure.

Apparently, Chrysler extended the warranty to 10 years and 100,000 miles, but only up to MY 2013. Ours is a 2014, which supposedly has redesigned heads.

Fingers crossed that my problem was just the oil leak at the spark tube and not the head itself.
 
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