hello. just acquired a mini cooper as a project from someone who bought it new and drove it till they got tired of being gouged by the dealer and had no mechanical knowledge.

i have a bit but none with minis. any help or suggestions greatly appreciated. i will post whatever fixes it if i eventually figure it out.

here is my problem and car: it is a 2007 Mini Cooper S manual transmission. car was running fine for owner and then stopped running one day out of the blue. she had just paid a bunch of money for some kind of transmission repair and she parked it and never touched it again. i got the car to look at under a no pressure deal because she had to move and needed the car gone and swore would never pay a mini place thousands to "look" at it again. car is pretty low mileage like 50k and supposedly ran fine up till when it didnt since last repair.

car has new battery, this was checked by her people and verified by my putting a brand new one in. when you insert the key nothing happens, no door unlock, no dash lights, no windows no anything. i have not found a single thing that acts like it has power. like it is completely unplugged from the battery. the new battery they installed was stone dead when i got the car home today so i put in a known good one as a tester, good strong battery that will fire off VW diesel so definitely a capable one. nothing. but the other one was dead like dead dead and it was a brand new one installed to troubleshoot this a few months back. thought it was odd that it was at complete zero, but didnt think much about it.

i just got it to my place today. didnt really have time to mess with it more than about 5 minutes. in that time, it looked like fuses were good by front of car under hood box. checked all the 50 amp fuses visually, swapped one that looked like it had a key by it. read off the post that the hot 12v comes from battery on and it read 13.6 v to ground so power seems to be reaching hood area. then i put battery to trickle charge just to keep other battery perfect while i troubleshoot.

my hope is someone can point me to where to begin point. i am prepared for a bad ECM and will find a place that can reflash a good one for the car if need be. but wanted to make sure before i go to yanking parts. surely the fact that nothing is working is a good clue and just wanted a diagnostic pathway to follow, not used to cars that are quite this all or nothing with electrical, usually a car will at least turn on parking lights or something even if it wont start. this is the deadest "dead" car i have ever looked at.

any advice is appreciated, i have not seen anyone post one where absolutely nothing works yet in my searches of the threads.

what service manual do you guys use, VW uses the Bentley...pretty good wondering what is available for online purchase for the Mini as well. thanks again for any help

 

ok, found bentley makes a manual for mini so that is definitely one question answered and one manual ordered. meanwhile, if anyone has one already and can point me in the right direction it will be greatly appreciated as to my no start no anything problem.

thanks

 

You have posted in the Gen1 section and unless your car is a convertible this thread should be moved to the Gen2 section.

Let me know.

 

did you test power to the fuse box behind the passenger kick panel?

few years back, I bought a 2012 clubman from the auction with front end collision and it was exactly what you described. not sure if it were due to the accident or not, but the was no power going to that fuse box. I used a wire from the (+) terminal to where the thick red cable plugs into the fuse box, and power was restored.

the moral of the story, use the test light to tap everything and anything to check for power. The other thing is that fuse box might be dead due to possible water intrusion.

Where are you located?

 

update it is fixed.

and yes car is a convertible. weird how it is considered a gen 1 for 2 more years but lots of weird things about this car it seems.

as mentioned previously, owner had transmission work done, i became suspicious when even the hazards would not work since i originally suspected the ECM to be at fault.
had power at the jump terminal with new battery but old "new' battery that they replaced when this first happened was at 0 volts which seemed weird even after sitting a year.
turns out the people that did her transmission work didnt tighten down the engine fuse box lugs right, it was "tight" but wrong, plates of two cables were maladjusted and i guess shorting and intermittantly open. when i went to flip the fuse box over to check main fuses under it it looked wrong and so i took them off noted they were not seating good and so i bent one a bit and made them sit flat and retightened it and voila! car started right up like it was brand new.

i guess it had had synchro trouble in several gears since she bought it and finally got really hard to shift so she took it to a trans shop that opted to a put a new used one in and great cost to her...

despite charging 3 grand to do the job these clowns that did her transmission work had done a really sloppy job, used zip ties to tie the intake hoses back on instead of clamps and one of the grounds was poorly installed as well, most everything else looked ok. i fixed most of the obvious junk used a bunch of my extra VW TDI clamps on it to get it back to right and took it for a drive.

car drives great. first time in a MINI and i like the 6 spd transmission it shifts perfectly (at least) and i was impressed with how quick it will pick up speed and was not as uncomfortable as i expected it to be since i am not a small person. overall kind of neat.

now to send it to body shop since it got dinged right before i picked it up by someone in her parking lot. fortunately they had insurance.

thanks for the reply to my tale of woe. i will be keeping it a while and then probably selling it but figured i would drive it for 5 -10 k or so and make sure it is doing well and get a bit of life out of it. car only has 48k on it.

i live between houston and dallas tx

thanks again for the replies.

now if i can just figure out how to connect my phone to it. it allegedly has bluetooth but my phone will not recognize it as of yet.

 

Check under the back seat, there is a Dixie Cup and String. If you yell loud enough folks in Canada can hear you.

 

haha, well rather than go for the "hi tech" dixie cup option i think i will just put an android stereo in and call it a day. if i am not mistaken the fact that it is a gen 1 mini despite being an 07 means it will be cake to install a new stereo. seems like it gets more complicated on the next gen ones. if any one knows a reason why not speak now please or forever hold your dixie cup and string...

 

so i figured i would check and sure enough first wrench hits the works. while the first gen does indeed look easy to replace i have the HK option in this car so of course it would require everything changed or an adapter. guess i will need to read about the adapter.

i just want to be able to easily stream audio like Pandora and Audible while driving from my Android phone... the sound it has now is fine, I am no audio snob as long as it is decent and this one really is just fine for my needs.

any recommendations? i realize the thread is off topic from its original issue, if you prefer i can start a new one but was just wondering how well the adapter worked to upgrade the head unit so i dont have to buy 4 new speakers and wiring etc when i am already fine with the sound, i just want a radio that likes to use bluetooth and displays things like my pandora track or audible location etc and connects well to my phone and for instance the pioneer decks i have in my VW do that perfectly for cheap.

thanks for any input on that. if i need to i can rewire it and put in new speakers but if the adapter works fine i would probably just go that route...