Hello everybody!

I have a 2007 Mini cooper that is running a bit rough. The hard part about this is that I have not been able to look at the car. My friend has it and she is 500 miles away.

She took it to a repair shop and they gave her the following codes. P0128, P0300, P0301, P0302 and P0303. It looks like its misfiring on all cylinders and has a thermostat problem.

The car has 65000 miles on it. My question is... Would the thermostat cause the car to run rough if the temperature is below what it should be? Or would the CTS cause it to run rough if the engine is seeing the wrong temperature? It has a check engine light on, but not the half reduced power light. Just the regular problem light.

She said it shakes at idle and is lacking power. That's about as far as I have gotten. I am not sure where to start with this, but I have to drive up to fix it. Does anyone have any guesses that could help point my idiot self in the right direction?

Thanks in advance everybody!

 

If the codes are current then start with inspecting the cooling system, any leak in the system can cause problems with undercooling/heating. Fix the problem, whether it's a leaking water pump, thermostat, radiator, etc and clear the codes. The car is extremely dependent on temperatures, it can cause rough starts, no starts, poor MPG, stumbling power.

Has the car ever had spark plugs changed? MINI rates them for 100k on the Coopers but they don't last that long, we see them pretty much destroyed by 45-50k miles.

 

I will second the spark plugs as the likely culprit. I had the same misfiring codes last week with the engine under load. 70,000 km's and the plugs were shot. You probably have a couple things going on as far as the temperature codes but I would definitely check the plugs 1st. My car is a 2010 non s

 

Hmm this is good advice. I do not know if the spark plugs were ever changed. I was also trying to make sure that there were no weirdo parts that would cause this. I had an early 2000's A4 that did something similar one day and it ended up being a very common failure called the Ignition Control Module.... It does not look like the Mini has strange things like this.



Another question... I was looking for a thermostat for the car and there are two versions available for the non-s. One is a Siemens engine, the other I forgot. How do I know which one I have? Sorry for being a dumb dumb.

 

This is the site I use for accurate OEM part #'s. You can enter your vin # and look everything up after that. www.realoem.com
If you're going to change your plugs be aware that you will need a deep, thin walled, 14mm, 12 point socket.
If your plugs are original, they're done....if you drive it like that, the coils will be next.

 

I typed in the VIN and I found out which thermostat I need. Thanks a bunch!

She just sent me a video of her starting it from a cold start and the cooling fans are running at full speed.

If the car were low on coolant and overheating, would it flash a warning light? I don't think that the mini had a conventional temperature gauge... so if it were overheating... would she know?

 

There is a temp light, but it only comes on when the car is truly overheating or there is a large air pocket at the sensor location, any other time you get a CEL some times accompanied by half power, hard starts, no starts, and decreased fuel economy.

The fact that the fans are running on a cold start pretty much indicates a thermostat, short of an electrical gremlin (which we don't see much of).