5 year old BMW virtually worthless!

LMS123

Hi all.
My daughter bought a 2 year old Countryman about 3 years ago so it's about 5 years old now. After 18 months the engine failure message came up and it went in to limp mode. She took it to a local independent garage that she'd used before that has a good reputation. They replaced a sensor and all seemed ok for about 2 months when the same thing happened again. Long story short, this has been a recurring problem for 18 months. 3 independent garages (one of which are ex BMW  technicians) and £900 later she bit the bullet and took it to our local BMW dealership. Another £300 later she picked it up and drove a mile down the road before the same thing happened. They had replaced a sensor which had already been changed, changed the oil and told her the problem was caused by her not driving it long enough or fast enough which had adversely affected the oil and damaged the sensor (!?!)
She returned it to BMW who "looked at it" FOC and has now been told that they don't know what's wrong with it, muttering about solenoid, CO2 emission problem and a few other things. They said it would cost an awful lot of money to try and find the fault/s with no guarantee of success and suggested she "gets rid of it" even telling her to try Webuyanycar.com!
Basically, a car bought for £15,0000 3 years ago is useless! The engine failure light is on all the time and it runs very badly so she can't sell it privately. No doubt someone will give her a pittance on a trade in. So she's stuck with an unreliable car that she can't sell. Thanks BMW!
Any sensible suggestions?

Grumpy_chap

Is it a diesel?
What type of mileage has she done?
Has the car been fully serviced to the BMW-MINI schedule, even though not by BMW-MINI?
When she bought the car, what used-car warranty did it come with?

Sandtree

Sounds like you bought a Mini? 

Unless I can call my VW Polo a Bugatti because they’re sister brands too

Norman_Castle

Try the BMW Mini forums, it might be a known fault.

Money_Grabber13579

wonder is it a possible wiring loom failure? I know someone else who needed to have it all replaced in a similar aged mini as it was throwing up all sorts of random fault lights and it seemed that the design allowed water ingress and rotted the wiring. Not saying it is definitely that but might be worth investigating if nothing else seems obvious.

AdrianC

LMS123 said:

My daughter bought a 2 year old Countryman about 3 years ago so it's about 5 years old now. After 18 months the engine failure message came up and it went in to limp mode. She took it to a local independent garage that she'd used before that has a good reputation. They replaced a sensor and all seemed ok for about 2 months when the same thing happened again. Long story short, this has been a recurring problem for 18 months. 3 independent garages (one of which are ex BMW  technicians) and £900 later she bit the bullet and took it to our local BMW dealership. Another £300 later she picked it up and drove a mile down the road before the same thing happened. They had replaced a sensor which had already been changed, changed the oil and told her the problem was caused by her not driving it long enough or fast enough which had adversely affected the oil and damaged the sensor (!?!)
She returned it to BMW who "looked at it" FOC and has now been told that they don't know what's wrong with it, muttering about solenoid, CO2 emission problem and a few other things. They said it would cost an awful lot of money to try and find the fault/s with no guarantee of success and suggested she "gets rid of it" even telling her to try Webuyanycar.com!
Basically, a car bought for £15,0000 3 years ago is useless! The engine failure light is on all the time and it runs very badly so she can't sell it privately. No doubt someone will give her a pittance on a trade in. So she's stuck with an unreliable car that she can't sell. Thanks BMW!
Any sensible suggestions?

Without any useful information, no.

But I'd be very surprised if this wasn't a low-mileage DPF issue, from what little you have said.

LMS123

Thanks for your comments. It's not diesel and the mileage is well below  average as my daughter only does 4000/year.. One mechanic did say that a mileage reading on his gizmo didn't match that on the clock so we're wondering if there was something dodgy before she bought it which could account for the various fault messages if the electrics were tampered with. Long shot. I'll pass your comments to her. Thanks.

Money_Grabber13579

LMS123 said:

Thanks for your comments. It's not diesel and the mileage is well below  average as my daughter only does 4000/year.. One mechanic did say that a mileage reading on his gizmo didn't match that on the clock so we're wondering if there was something dodgy before she bought it which could account for the various fault messages if the electrics were tampered with. Long shot. I'll pass your comments to her. Thanks.

Could the mileage discrepancy be accounted for by one reading in miles and the other in kilometres?

tacpot12

I would suggest that she needs to gets another BMW garage to look at it. The first BMW garage haven't diagnosed the problem, or even tried to. They do seem to have fairly warned her that the cost of them trying to get to the bottom of it is going to be a lot. However, the fact that the sensor failed again after one mile suggests EITHER that the sensor was faulty (it's not unhear of) or another fault is causing the sensor to fail. The obvious component that might be causing the sensors to fail is the control unit that reads the sensors and drives it with the voltage it needs to work. Swapping the control unit for a known good unit would seem a sensible step. 

It is not impossible that the other sensors fitted by the other garage were not Mini/BMW made parts and therefore of inferior quality. I have more or less stopped buying pattern parts from cheap vendors due to quality issues. But she has now had a Mini/BMW part fitted and that only lasted 1 mile, so she is at least entitled to a refund on that part - either the part is faulty or the car is. It seems incredible that the garage hasn't taken a more proactive approach, but I guess they are unwilling because they know that it is going to cost them money to fix the problem. 
 
I think she should write to Mini and complain and ask them to stump up some of the cost of the investigation, and to subsidise the cost of a new control unit.

Goudy

Your problem is, whoever you are taking it to is getting a fault code from a sensor and believing it's the sensor at fault rather than the sensor just doing it's job and reporting an errent reading due to a fault somewhere else.

It's pretty typical these days, diagnostic skills are left to computers and "technicians" are just parts fitters.

You don't give much to go on, fault and symptom wise, but the engine light, rough running, emissions problems could be the fuel pump, a common issue with these, along with timing chain stretch issues due to lack of oil.

As Money Grabber mentions, these can also suffer from some electrical connector issues, poor connectors allowed moisture to get into them, but I think it was the earlier cars that suffered from this.

I suggest you find someone with a bit more diagnostic skill, usually auto electricians specialise in diagnostics but if they don't, they'll know who does.

AdrianC

LMS123 said:

Thanks for your comments. It's not diesel

This is a great illustration of why guesses arising from inadequate information are not terribly useful...

and the mileage is well below  average as my daughter only does 4000/year.

This is rarely a good thing for a car, although not as bad for a petrol as for a modern diesel. Lots of short journeys, rarely gets properly up to temperature?

Your chances of any goodwill from the manufacturer for a car two years out of warranty, with a history of being serviced outside the dealer chain, are slender.