So, back a few months ago I reported that I had a wonderful little gremlin living in the automatic climate control unit. Occasionally when I started my car, the automatic climate control unit would not get any power. I brought it in back in December and I thought this issue had been fixed, but it turns out it was just wishful thinking.

Well, I just went to my friendly MINI dealer this morning to have it checked out again (along with a couple other issues) and there is actually a service bulletin out for this specific problem. I was elated to hear this and that there is an actual remedy to repair it. There seems to be a ground issue so they put in an additional ground wire, from what I understand.

 

That's good to know. Mine has had this problem maybe 1/2 a dozen times in 2 years and I've just ignored it. Maybe I can actually get it fixed now!

 

Well, that's strange.


My wife lives up in Arlington, VA because of her job. When did they move it to Mass.?



Oh, and glad you got you baby fixed.

 

you need to have a dedicated ground wire running from the IHKA (climate control head) to a ground point in the driver door sill area. this should resolve the issue. it is covered by 4/50 warranty too.

 

Well, I'm hoping it's finally fixed! Time will tell, although the service bulletin certainly makes it seem more plausible.

 

Another reason to get manual control

 

I got this fix done because I saw the problem occasionally. A side effect of the fix is the interior fan seems to run faster/noisier at every setting. Even one bar is now quite audible when it used to be quiet.

 

Question to you Auto A/C folks....

Can you get decent outside air flow (say when moving >50mph) through dash vents if your fan is turned off? I tried turning the fan off on a dealer demo on the highway and it killed the airflow completely... don't know if he had the recirc button pushed, though.

 

I very often leave the fan on the lowest setting (one bar showing), the A/C off and temp at 68. Seems to be good airflow. If you shut it off, the car is sealed up like Tupperware!

 

Thanks, that's what I thought, it's just like every other auto A/C I've ever had.

I ordered the Prem package a-la-carte, just to get the manual A/C. With manual, you do get fresh outside air (heated even) with the fan/system turned off... I really missed that from the old manual A/C cars.

 

I thought it was "Microsoft electronics". Just reboot it, everything is fine... for a while.

Bob

 

It would be great if someone could acquire and post the details of this
service bulletin so that those of us that are out of warranty could
perform this change ourselves.

 

service bulletin would be nice. mine is acting up -maybe i'll have my car stereo guy mess with it.

 

On '04 and earlier you could. If you just wanted a 'vent' setting with no fan, you could set the A/C to 'LO', turn the fan off, and have recirc turned off. I got a nice breeze at highway speeds.

On '05 and '06's, you can't. There doesn't seem to be any way to turn the fan off without turning the whole unit off, witch as noted above, causes the whole system to seal up.


-Paul!