Within the last few days, the car (2010 Base, manual) has been running very poorly. For example, at freeway speeds, when I give it gas, the motor chokes and begins to stall. At idle the car often dies after a good several seconds of rough running.

The car is still under MINI's CPO warranty, so I opted to take it in and see what the dealer could make of it. I just got a call from them saying that the car had only 1 quart of oil in it I had just changed the oil a couple months ago, and am uber-strict when it comes to maintaining my cars. I even checked the oil at a gas station a couple weeks ago and oil capacity was well within expectations.

My wife said she noticed a big plume of black/blue smoke billowing from the tailpipe the other day, so I'm left to assume that either a valve stem seal or piston ring is pretty worn. The car only has 56,000 miles on it. Seems premature, especially considering my 5,000 mile oil change intervals. We've only had the car for about a year and a half though, but before that it was maintained by MINI.

Anyway, the dealer called and said all they had to do to stop the rough idling/power loss issue was fill it with oil. I was astonished that they thought that amount of oil consumption was within spec. They told me that MINI considers 1 quart per 1,000 miles to be tolerable! What?! That's ridiculous. I told them that's absurd and to find the reason WHY it's burning that much oil.

So... If I didn't object, they would have simply returned the car to me having only topped off the fluids, not trying to figure out why it lost 3.5 quarts of oil in the last couple weeks. I'm glad it's still under warranty, but would much rather work on the car myself. Catch-22.

Just thought I'd share.

 

Interesting. I'd keep a close eye on the oil level and see if it continues. They do go thru oil, but that does seem very high..

 

The dealer said they'll go ahead and perform some tests over the weekend. I'm sort of concerned for two things...

1. If the engine was really that low on oil, what's the potential for long-term engine damage?
2. Is the catalytic converter toast as a result of the oil being burned and expelled through the exhaust?

 

I easily see you having to replace the engine, something catastrophic occurred when your wife saw that puff of blue/black smoke. The rings or valve seals or probably the oil pump probably gave out, but if your losing that much oil all of a sudden something is seriously wrong. Now if it was an S model burning that much oil that would be different, but a base MC shouldn't be burning half as much oil. For years the base MC's have rated very high (above average) for reliability in many magazines.

 

I'm glad system lord said it, a base should not burn oil...... Really at all (or at least not noticeable amounts). I have a 10 year old Acura with 120,xxxx that doesn't burn a drop! If a service tech said that to me, I would have immediately asked for the service manager. As mentioned, the turbo variant will burn oil, it is the nature of the beast, but even if it burned a quart every 1k, I would be suspicious.

 

Agreed. So, to follow up, the dealer called me today and let me know that nothing is wrong with the car. They insisted that the most likely cause of the loss of 3 quarts over the last two weeks (the last time I checked the oil) is most likely due to my inability to read the dipstick correctly.

Now let's say that's true (it isn't), but let's say that it is. I've had the car for about a year and a half, and in that time have done 4 oil changes. I have always drained as much as I filled, within some immaterial amount. So for this pattern to be broken with out explanation just seems absurd to me. And that, again, is further corroborated by the plume of blue smoke cited by both my wife and I in separate instances last week.

An additional note here: The service advisor did concede after some back and forth that the tech found oil in the spark plug wells, but said that it was most likely caused by driving with the oil cap off (! WHAT?!). Sidenote to the sidenote: When the shop foreman and I finished a road test to verify that my claims of rough running/idling were indeed valid, we opened the hood and immediately he took the oil cap off and then put it back on, then said, there, that's your problem... "What's was the problem?" I asked, noting that all he did was unscrew and re-screw the oil filler cap. He replied by saying that the oil cap was not screwed on. I'm just totally losing my mind at this point, as the oil cap was clearly fastened properly. I'm just totally confused here with what's happening. So there's that.

At this point, it's a he-said-she-said game between the dealer and I. I have no idea what to do now. They claim I'm an idiot and that the car is fine, while I'm asserting (without actually telling them this) that their motive is to avoid making a warranty repair.

I have a phone call with the shop foreman this afternoon.

 

You might consider getting a compression test. Dealers charge a lot, but maybe a little negotiation --- all 4 test OK, you pay --- any test fails, no charge. A leak-down test might be better, but probably costs more.

As for normal oil consumption, my '07 MCS burns virtually no oil, even before I rebuilt it. There was a period of high oil consumption, but that was my fault --- PCV issues.

 

We're thinking the same thing here I asked the dealer to do a compression test and leak down test over the weekend. They did the compression test and said all results were in spec. They didn't do a leak down test though, which is sort of more appropriate given the blue smoke instances.

 

This seems like a bit of an overreaction not to mention misinformation. There is no reason a failed oil pump would cause a car to start burning oil and if the oil pump had failed there would have been a low oil pressure warning light on the dash and the motor would have seized fairly shortly after.

OP: You said your car is under warranty. How much longer is the warranty? Unless the dealer can find something measurably wrong with the car they pretty much have their hands tied. They can't replace anything unless they can find something wrong. If there are no oil leaks and the car isn't smoking from the exhaust while they have it in their possession it's pretty difficult to diagnose and replace something. Get the car back and drive it some more. Either the car will get worse or it won't. If it gets worse take it back and hopefully they can find something to fix. It may take something like taking the car in and having them record the oil level. Then driving it 1k miles and going back and having them record the oil level again to see if oil consumption falls within the 1qt per 1000 miles thing.

 

I think I still have two years or 40,000 miles left. Which ever comes first. So yes, time is definitely on my team here. Agreed with you on the 'no observable symptoms = no opportunity to fix' situation. I'll admit in the most blunt way that I think this dealer is lying about what they've observed to avoid making an expensive warranty repair. But that, I suppose, can't last forever since at some point or another the evidence (car continuing to run poorly or consume too much oil) will stack against them.

 

You need to take it to another dealer, this dealers mentality is in question.

 

I talked to the shop foreman today (nice guy, trustworthy) and he said that he performed a leak down test as well and all was within spec. He couldn't comment on why the engine drank 3.5 quarts of oil over the course of two weeks (which, btw, represents no more than 1500 miles), but said what we can do is measure it's oil consumption rate over two or three 1000-mile intervals and determine if there's more cause for investigation. They marked the oil drain plug and topped off the oil to start the experiment. We'll see. I'm going to pick up the car tomorrow.

Nice thing though, they waived my $50 CPO warranty deductible since they didn't actually make any repairs. Overall, value-wise at least, I'd say I came out ahead. They performed leak-down and compression tests, did a full inspection, and at least gave some insight into the possible cause of the issues, along with providing assurance that there wasn't any lasting damage as a result of running it at 1.5 quarts for a couple weeks. More will remain to be seen.

 

That's pretty much the bottom line of the story so far: all we (you, dealer, forum) know for sure at this point is that car idled like crap, and adding oil fixed that. Nothing more, nothing less.

I would not jump to that conclusion since it is in the dealer's interest to do the most expensive warranty repair imaginable (e.g.: swap the engine) as they will get paid by MINI USA (CPO underwriter) for doing the work.

At this point they just don't have the justification to do that, as MINI USA will not sign-off on any work until their is documented proof that something is broken.

Look at this way - do you know enough to authorize the dealer to do any expensive repairs if you had to pay out of pocket ?

As much as it pains me to write this, but dealer is right.
Both BMW and MINI have long (fpr decades) maintained a policy of 1 qt / 1K miles oil burn being normal. In fact, ///M engines frequently approach that oil burn rate, though that is usually not the case with the lesser engines.

The dealer did most of what you asked of them:
1). Fixed the problem (added oil and the car runs fine)
2). Documented the history of repairs
3). Did a compression test (but not a leak down test)
3). Committed to tracking oil burn rate to collect data to justify further repairs.

If you want to make faster progress with the issue, you can pay someone to do a leak down test, or DIY.

Else, just watch the oil burn rate and allow for the possibility that something went horribly wrong with the last oil change and the car was either under-filled, or oil had leaked out.

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Some Justa owners have commented on higher oil consumption, mine does noticeably more at 60k than it did at 40k. I drive it hard and check the level constantly because those symptoms are exactly what appears when it gets more than a quart low.

 

Just wanted to follow up here with the official MINI memo that the dealer gave me regarding tolerable oil consumption...

http://bephotographs.com/bmw/MINI-oi...ption-memo.pdf

 

Mini says it's normal for oil to pass through the turbos seals, what a load of crap. Mini did improve oil consumption with the N18 learning from the N14, that's a remarkable improvement. The fact that Mini improved the oil consumption rates with the N18 tells you that it's just a bad design on the N14 or why else would they improve on something they say is normal. There's no such thing as normal, it's either a good design or it's not.

Smoke and mirrors.