Hello North American Motoring,

Last year a finally bought myself a used MINI Cooper S to do some track time and loving it. Since I bought the car I had a few issues, but these are mainly the known R56 issues and were fixed by the garage I bought the car from and other issues were more due to lack of good communication (I recently moved to Switzerland and I don't yet speak good German).

At first the car was leaking gearbox/transmission oil only during track days and not under normal (including some sustained high speed drive through German autobahns ) conditions. Took the car to the garage and the issue was fixed, but after a few thousand km on the clock (no track as the fix was between the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014 track season) the MINI was leaking again. After some disagreements with the garage i took the car to a BMW/MINI dealer in Germany where I was told that the gearbox/transmission cover plate was removed at one time (apparently the previous owner open this without reason to install the LSD). The problem is that there is no replacement part nor seal for this cover plate thus the only repair is to seal with Loctite, but there is no guarantee as it could leak from immediately to never. the only more secure and permanent solution is a new/used gearbox/transmission.

Has anyone had any issues regarding this cover plate? What is behind this cover plate? has anyone sealed this successfully?

I've attached two pics of the MINI and a picture of the BMW Parts catalog of the gearbox/transmission highlighting the metal cover plat (square).

In advance, thank you for all your help!!

 

You should be able to clean that plate and use a black RTV sealant or something like Hondabond to seal it. Honda transmissions are similar, and I took mine apart and assembled with no leaks.

 

Thanks for the input zrickety. Unfortunately I don't have access here to a garage to do it myself and I am relying on what the garages say or are willing to do. BMW in Germany wanted to charge me 1k Euro for sealing it with Loctite. Regards

 

Find another garage, that sounds too high.

 

You don't want to seal it with Loctite. You want to seal it with some sort of sealant that is resistant to oil. RTV Ultrablack is what I've used to seal up two mini transmissions now and no leaks so far. You can buy a little tube on Amazon for cheap. The transmission isn't pressurized or anything so a little bead of sealant should have no problem sealing that cover.

Also, $1k seems way too high. I think you could replace that cover without removing anything. Seems like something that should just be like an hour of labor.