Cold start with surge up and down 900-1500 with rich fuel mixture and black smoke. The engine light is on and my scan gauge found p1637 Throttle valve position control; Control deviation & p1638 Throttle valve position control; Throttle stuck tempararily. This occured after driving 42 hwy miles that gets my scan gauge water tmp to 220f and sat over night.
I am up in Palmer Alaska and we have no mini dealer but a BMW dealer in Anchorage. Mini paid for slide back tow and no charge from BMW. They did nothing. They said "we had 4 mini's in with same the problem and its because of moisture freezing in throttle body." Its -15F below O and he tells me to park inside. I asked if a block heater would help and he says they dont make one. Yesterday at -2F after letting it run until my water tmp hit 100 I shut off and restarted with no change so I raised the bonnet and pounded on the intake tubing between filter and turbo as well as pushed in on sensor wires. Reset codes restarted and it worked fine. This is a 2009 JCW no mods and 15000 miles. BMW mech says we dont realy get trained on Mini's and have the special tools for anything big. We arent aware of a service buillitin. And that was it.
Does anyone no a fix? Will a pan heater help? The other reality is I dont always have a place to plug it in.

 

At -15F I'd expect a lot more than a frozen throttle from my MINI. Mine didn't even want to start yesterday...

 

I lived in schenectady for a year in 1987 and it snowed 140+ inches in 1988. I forgot that was the ice age. It can get cold here but anchorage is mild and more like Michigan. It would be nice if mini would come up with answeres. I hope maybe I will here of some on this forum.

 

I was up in AK in the 80's. It do get a biy chilly there!

There used to be a in line heater that connected using a heater hose. You cut the heater hose and splice in this little heater, about the size of a 20 oz coke bottle. It had a heating element and a small pump that circulated the heated water. Not "made for MINI" but could work. I haven't seen one in years, but it has been years since I would have looked.

Keep the engine warm and everything under the bonnet will stay warm. At least enough not to freeze.

 

The exact same thing happened to me the other day here in Chicago. It was close to 0 degrees out and the car had been parked for 12 hours or so. I let the car warm up for 5 minutes or so, shut the engine off, restarted it, and it was fine. The codes I got were p1638 and p1639. I have an 09 JCW with 14.5K miles.

 

Im not alone ha. Well the next thing how do we get it to stop. I attempted to drive it at one point and there is no throttle response to accelerate. I did get over 25 mph. my diesel jeep has a limp mode (as in limp home) that wiil only let you get to 45mph. Also there is some throttle response at idle with movement of my throttle position indicator on scangauge. Small however.

 

OP ... if the primary problem is moisture in the throttle body, a fuel additive like Techron might remedy that. Besides cleaning the fuel system, I believe it helps eliminate water from fuel. It may not be Techron, but I know there are other additives that prevent gas line freezing, so it seems reasonable that they would also keep moisture out of the throttle body. Just a thought ...

 

Aren't these direct injection? That would mean no fuel in the throttle body anywhere.

 

Throw an electric blanket under the hood overnight, better than nothing... Just make sure it's not going to get wet!

 

If you have a garage or any off-street parking adjacent to your house, you can put a floodlamp (higher wattage = more heat) beneath the engine or under the hood, aimed wherever you need the heat. I did this in Colorado with my pickup and it worked well.

 

Grab a heater from Canadian Tire:

http://www.canadiantire.ca/AST/browse/4/Auto/AutoAccessories/WinterAutomotive/PRD~0300001P/Polar%2BPad%2BEngine%2BHeater%252C%2B250W.jsp

Super easy to install (stick-on) and it works great. Some people attach them on the oil pan, but lots of people just stick it on the underside of the hood. Keeps the engine above freezing overnight (or brings it from below freezing to above freezing). When I was at UoManitoba everyone had one (if they didn't already have a block heater) whether their car was new or old. :P I'm still convinced that Alberta and Manitoba have the best infrastructure for EV's because of all the plugs in the parking lots!

Worked for me even in -38 weather.

 

I purchased a pan heater and silicone adhesive but just havent installed it yet. I purchased mouths ago Alta intake tubing that replaces the cheap plastic. I'm hoping that will help. I did take an 100 watt halogen work lamp and placed in under the bonnet and put blankets over the hood. After 30 min. it didnt change. That was when I let it run for 30 min. and started tapping my fist all over the intake tubing. I havent looked well enough to identify the actual throttle body butterfly. I would imagin it is attached to the intake manifold around the back toward the passenger side. If you know fill me in. I dont have a plug in at one of my employers so i need to find a fix w/o heat.

 

THis exact thing happened to my 2007 Mini Cooper S. I live in waterloo, IA and it was -20 here today. I am currently stuck in the parking lot at work. I wish Mini would get this sorted out!

 

I have had this problem with other cars that don't have intake heat. Back in the day you had a flexible pipe that took heated air from the exhaust manifold and ducted it into the intake to keep moisture from freezing - we called it carburetor icing back then - this is the same symptom. I doubt heating the engine via block heaters or whatever will actually do the trick - the problem is the temp and moisture of the air going into the intake. You need a preheater...... you may need to fab something up - the preheat pipes are a type of aluminum covered cardboard - auto parts stores should have it in bulk. If you can fab something up to bring the warm air off the manifold to the intake it will do the trick, and help the engine warm up more quickly too. Just remember to take the pipe back off when it's warm out.

Back in the 80's VW sold Rabbits in the southern US states with no preheaters on them, when those folks drove them to Colorado to ski or moved to cold climates all of a sudden their cars wouldn't run. VW developed a kit to install the pre-heaters on those cars- it had a small box with a diverter flap in it that you had to switch from summer to winter and back. I had an 81 VW pickup and moved from Sandy Eggo to KC, most of the time it was no problem, but some winter days it just wouldn't run. One of these fixed it right up....

 

+1

My old Mitsu GSX has a coolant line to the throttle body to prevent this problem. Guys in warm climates would disconnect it because it did nothing for them.

This is also a situation where having an inter-cooler is not so helpful.

 

I had my throttle valve stick in winter 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 both times had it flatbedded to the MINI dealer where they replaced the throttle body and the second winter there was some additional piping that was supposed to help...

Follow up with MINI as you don't seem to have gotten the first fix (which may or may not work)

 

Last year I had the FIRST re-vised intake manifold installed into my MINI but we were just about coming out of winter, so I had to wait till next winter (NOW) to find out if it worked, but I don't think it has. I just moved from Detroit to Chicago and its colder here. Last Saturday night the car sat all night, into and through Sunday and into Monday morning. The temps were in the single digits at night and I don't have somewhere to park my MINI inside, yet but I'm going to this weekend as the single digits are going to be returning.

So when I started the car Monday I got the CEL that looks like a spare in bowling, I call it the "half check engine light". I've seen this only twice in almost 60k on the car, once for the auxillery fuel pump (have had 3 of those so far) and again with the frozen intake, last winter. They did the install of the revised intake and sent me on my way. So I let the car run for about 10 minutes, shut the car off, started it back up and then I only had the "regular" check engine light. The car drove fine down the road, only stubbling once over 5k but that was early on in the journey. I had a 16 mile drive where the light stayed on and I parked the car for about 2hrs. I then let the car warm up for about 45 minutes and drove to Autozone just to see what a scan tool would say and guess what....I went to start the car and the regular CEL didn't come back on, so I continued home where the car sat till the next day. I then let the car warm up and had NO light but when I came out about 10 minutes later the regular CEL was on, so I took the car out for a spin and its strong up to 6k. Today (WED) the light was on all day, so I stopped by the same Autozone and here's what the code reader told us:

P1638...Can link ECM/INSTM circuit, network malfunction
P1639...Vehicle ID block corrupted or not programmed
P0112...Intake Air Temp circuit, low input

I had them clear the code just to see if it would come back on and how long. I also called the dealership in Michigan (Motor City MINI) and the parts guy told me that since last year they've come up with a second revised intake manifold for our car, does anyone have that one on yet.

On an unrelated note, I have Samco boost tubes throught my car along with the DDM race intake, but my revised intake was installed before that. I've had my car in a number of times with this set up and MCM was "mod friendly"
as this had nothing to do with anything I was experiencing with my car. I had my second and third aux fuel pump replaced along with the timing chain and they didn't give me a hard time about my intake set up. I did have a MAF replaced though and that I did have to pay for, $660 dollars worth. I did clean and lightly oil my K&N about 6-7 wks before I had the problem with the MAF, would it really take that long for the oil to get on there, I mean I was on the Dragon about 2 weeks before the MAF reared its head too, WTF! That was a stream of bad luck, 2nd auxillery fuel pump, then 5 miles later the CEL came on and they said I needed a new timing chain, they fixed that but while testing that the 2nd aux fuel pump went bad and number 3 went in and then 3/4 miles down the road the CEL comes on again and they scoped it and it was the MAF. I never over oil any K&N, never have. Are these cars just that sensitive or do I have dumb luck

All this being said, I STILL LOVE MY CAR!

BTW the explanation for the codes was copied from www.helpforcars.com

 

I had a revised intake put on about 3 weeks ago. I can't tell you if it was the second redesigned one or not. It basically has not been above zero since then-it was 18 below when I left for work the other day. I have not had any starting problems or CELS since then. Granted it's only been 3 weeks but it's been damn cold-so if it was going to do it again I kind of figured it would....Knock on wood.

 

AudioGuy, I'd be willing to bet you got the current, or 2nd updated one, keep us posted.

I know you guys might think this is funny, but when the engine is pretty cooled off I've been placing an old, thick Afgan ontop of the motor as I don't have access to a garage right now, it can't hurt....right