This is my first post on the forums. I hope to stay on topic..

I am trying to troubleshoot my wife's Mini (Cooper S) and all of my searching online has not turned up the exact scenario that I am seeing. It appears there are a lot of knowledgeable people on this forum so I hoping to find someone who can steer me in the right direction.

We have had the car a little over a year, has around 37k miles on it. It has been great up to a couple days ago when we were starting up to leave and it had a noticeable hesitation and miss. It lasted for maybe 20 seconds and the CEL came on. It smoothed out and ran fine after that. I thought maybe water or contamination in the fuel, I will reset the light and see if it comes back.

Drove it all day, CEL stayed on. Next day, start up, felt the stumble again, but it smoothed out.

Grabbed the scanner (OBDII with torque) and pulled engine codes. They translated to misfire on cylinder 2, random misfire, and another I am forgetting. Tried to clear them, but they would not go away. I cannot detect any misfires after the car is warmed up, it runs fine as far as I can tell.

I did a lot of reading and searching and I discovered the issue with the carbonizing of the intake from direct injection. I think this could be a problem since the mileage is in the ballpark and she takes a lot of short trips. I also have read about the issues with the HPFP, but that seems to cut off after 2009(?). I am thinking about adding "Oil Catch Cans" but I can't find any instance of proof they work.

I dumped a can of Gumout version of Seafoam (they even copied the can) in the tank and drove it some more. I did not detect any loss of power or performance on the road and the idle seems to be smooth. I can detach the power to coil packs one at a time and the car definitely starts missing each time.

Swapping coil packs between 1 and 2 did not change the codes. I pulled the number 2 plug just to check for fouling and it looked normal. That was another new discovery: the 12-point spark plug..

So I did a quick intake treatment with about a half can of (Seafoam) through the intake using suction on the passenger side hose from the valve cover. I am thinking maybe carbon is sticking the valve randomly. Then I took it down the road to "blow it out" a little. It runs good and pulls hard, but the engine codes won't clear with the scanner.

There are two sets of codes on torque, one is codes that are set and others that are "pending". I noticed after my intake treatment, most of my pending codes moved to being set, so now I have a whole new array of codes to work with. It seems to have moved from cylinder 2 to cylinder 3...

Current codes:
P0303 -Cylinder 3 misfire
P0003 - Fuel Volume Regulator Control Circuit Low
P0203 - Injector Circuit/Open - Cylinder 3
P0503 - Vehicle Speed Sensor "A" Intermittent/Erratic/High
P0314 - Single Cylinder Misfire (Cylinder not Specified)
B1703 - Nothing found (might be 1203, can't read my writing)
P03aa - nothing found
B2aaa - nothing found

I would like to test the injector on Cylinder 3 but I have not figured out how to get to it. Are the injectors under the intake manifold? I cannot find a picture or diagram and I cannot see them. Also what should the ohm readings be on the injector normally? Maybe it is just a bad injector? The Fuel volume code hints back to the fuel pump though and the speed sensor code and random unknown codes makes me think the ECU itself may be flaking out.

Any suggestions?

Scott