Kansas City MINI Enthusiasts

My sisters 2010 clubman s has recently started to almost choke itself out while idling. It does not do it all of the time and has only started since it has been cold out. It does have an aftermarket air intake on it. I thought maybe it could be a mass air flow sensor, but I don't want to just start throwing parts at it. There are no warning lights on either. It has 82k miles on it, it has had the valves cleaned around 20k miles or so. The radio and clock have also started acting up, every once in a while they will be totally off and they won't come on at all. Has anyone else had this issue?

Check it for codes first before you guess and throw expensive parts at it.....

"Choke" is a misnomer since these cars don't have one, do you mean the idle gets rough and it almost dies?

How old is the battery? Bad batteries can cause all sorts of weirdness in MINIs....

Also, has it ever had a new set of plugs? If so, how long ago?

What Minidave said. Check the battery was my first thought also.

Yes idling rough is what I meant by choking. I do not know how old the battery is but I will put a tester on it and see. I know the battery is not a factory type battery, it looks much bigger than an oem one. Thank you for the info, I will let you know what I find out.

My battery tester shows it at 65%. I am going to take it to a parts store and have them put their checker on it. The battery is marked 12/13, but it is from Wal Mart....enough said right?

Yeah, if the battery is not up to snuff, the car will do weird things - it needs full voltage to work properly. Nothing wrong with a Wal Mart battery as long as it's sized properly for the car - right amount of cold cranking amps.

Based on other issues, I would suspect battery as well.

If it happens below freezing, it could be water in the throttle body as well. This will through some errors around throttle mismatch usually. Fix is to clean the water (from the PCV system) out of the throttle body. The R56 (at least the S model) has 2 different intake manifolds as well. One is for cold weather and was an attempted fix by MINI. I know I get the errors, yellow light, sputtering, etc sometimes when it is cold. Basically the valve is frozen. Didn't think it had been cold enough for this yet though.

http://www.northamericanmotoring.com/fo ... erent.html

Third thought is with the cold temps, you could have cracked a vaccuum line which causes the engine to run rough which affects the alternator voltage and you get electrical fluctuations.

Start with codes and battery though.

The battery checked good at the parts store, checked it under a load too and all was good. Currently peaking the charge on my charger and then I will drive down and get the altenator checked out. I thought of vaccum line too, just a matter of tracking that down.

The alternator checks out, will see what happens over the next few days. Now the drivers window will not go up automatically. The switch has to be held to roll the window up. I think it is a reset of the parameters, hopefully it will be on youtube.

I did not see anything about resetting the power windows for the one touch to work again. The drivers window will go down with the one touch on the switch, it just will not go back up with the one touch. Any suggestions, I did not see anything on youtube.

Programming on first gen cars has to be done at the dealer.......

This is on a 2010 Clubman S. I charged the battery to full capacity, installed it into the car. Took it down to put the tester on it at the parts store. I started the car with the tester hooked up, there was a delay on the tester before it moved over to show the alternator as good and charging. The battery shows good, but I wonder if there is a bad cell in it. My charger showed it at 70% before I charged it. I charged it at 2 amps for about and hour and a half before the battery reached 100% according to my charger. The battery is still under a full warranty, I may have my sister take it in and exchange it for a new one.

dsopoci wrote:I did not see anything about resetting the power windows for the one touch to work again. The drivers window will go down with the one touch on the switch, it just will not go back up with the one touch. Any suggestions, I did not see anything on youtube.

I have had luck with holding the window switch down until it fully opens and then holding for 10-12 seconds and then holding the switch until it fully closes and then holding for another 10-12 seconds. If that does not work, try the reverse (up then down). My 2010 loses its brains sometimes during the winter when the window seal is frozen and I open the door (to heat and defrost it). When it does this it bounces back down (either a few inches or to the halfway 'safe point').

Cool, thank you for the info. For some unknown reason it started working again. I am sure it will happen again, I will give that a try when it does.

This is a good food for thought thread. This seldom happens but it pays to know how to deal with it.

dsopoci wrote:This is on a 2010 Clubman S. I charged the battery to full capacity, installed it into the car. Took it down to put the tester on it at the parts store. I started the car with the tester hooked up, there was a delay on the tester before it moved over to show the alternator as good and charging. The battery shows good, but I wonder if there is a bad cell in it. My charger showed it at 70% before I charged it. I charged it at 2 amps for about and hour and a half before the battery reached 100% according to my charger. The battery is still under a full warranty, I may have my sister take it in and exchange it for a new one.

Put key in ignition, open window, hold switch for 10 seconds once open

remove key

reinsert key, close window, hold switch for 10 seconds once closed

remove key

reinsert key, auto-up function should be restored for 2007-2013 Mini Cooper's.


That's what the service advisors told me to do and NAM as well.




As for your other problem, it sounds similar to what was happening to me one time when I was having trouble starting my Clubman, sometimes it would run and then shut off. This was over last winter. In my situation it turned out to be a bad battery if I remember correctly.