What is making an abrassive whine in the drivetrain? It's unnoticable with the windows down, accelerating hard(er), braking, or coasting; but audible when accelerating very lightly (even with moderate stereo volumes). The whine was not there two months ago. It whines at slight depressions of the gas pedal – the amount needed to slowly increase or maintain speed – in all gears. The pitch increases as the pedal depresses up to a point (at which point i would guess it goes supersonic).

The car is driven doggedly and sometimes spiritedly, but then so were my other two getrag’d MINIs (Ss). I've not heard this noise from them in their 40+k miles each. My Cooper might reach 20,000 this month.

Any information I might bring with me to the dealership tomorrow would be greatly appreciated. A BMW tech rode in the car and claimed it sounded normal. I was not present, so I'm hoping I don't have to discuss anything even similar to that diagnosis with my Service Advisor. In the likelihood that I will, I greatly appreciate any advice or references you could give.

TIA
GMINIo

NOTES FROM BELOW:
Reverse Gear has always made a noise similar to the lower spectrum of this whine.
Shug the MINI taken into MINI of Fairfield County's care for transmission replacement.
Shug is back. New tranny cuz the old one was worn prematurely. still have no idea what went on in that box.

 

I had one of the rubber boots that protect the bottom of the suspension slip down and it started rubbing on the ground and making a sound like you describe, a weird whine. I found it was present at low speed, gone at normal speeds.
Crawl under and take a look.

 

Nope. I'm inclined to stay warm inside at this point, rastven. This whine is not relevant to any particular speed alone.

Thanks for thinking of me, tho, my nemini bro.

 

That's ok, first thing in the morning is fine with me :-).

 

cheeky bxd.

I've got this to say after a quaint cruise through the unlit neighborhood:

The noise is a groan to a whine with acceleration. The groan is highly remiscent of the one i've grown used to in the reverse of this car only (not my others) since new. again, all reasonable speeds.

Good night, all.

 

If it's as bad as it sounds I'm sure you will be able to get one of those lovely SA's in CT help you out? You know the ones I mean

Good luck with tracking it down, stuff like that annoys the hell out of me.

 

George at mofc was kind enough to loan me a cooper while they have a tear at it. I was told a new tranny has been ordered. To be honest, i've never had a smoother time of it. nor have i ever been more pleasantly suprised at a service call.

did i ask what might make the noise? no. doh.

 

OK if it was my car the first thing I'd check or have checked is the transmission oil level. If it's low that's not good. Could be bearings or gears whining.

If it's OK the next thing I'd do is rotate the tires front to back. Did the noise move or stay the same? If it moved it's the tires. Hope this helps you some.

EDIT.... Man I have to learn to read the whole thread before I post. Glad your car is being fixed.

 

I'll update the first. Thanks for reminding me, Crashton! and it may yet prove helpful, if not to me than someone else down the line...

 

sounds like you bought a r50 and are used to che the r53 you had sounds normal there buddy

 

Maybe if it was the other way around, I could see this as a possibility.

Zip

 

Glad they're taking good care of you at the dealership! Probably a whine like this can be caused by multiple things. In my case, My MINI's clutch went out the other day and, once fixed, I happily drove off...but in the next half-hour or so this whine started...in 3rd and 4th especially. I took my MINI back in the next morning and it turned out to be an alignment problem w/ one of the axles when they reinstalled the tranny. Took them ten minutes (or less) to make the correction. They were glad I brought it right in.

 

Shug is back. New tranny cuz the old one was worn prematurely. still have no idea what went on in that box.

 

Could just have been a box that wasn't built quite right. Glad you have a new one & your MINI is back motoring again.

 

That or someone is thrashing the crap out of thier poor MC trying to get MCS performance like he's used too

 

Same thing happened to my '05 MC. The tranny was replaced at about 5K miles. I'm at 20K now and no problems.

 

and you sport the holeys, too, i see. Don't they just ROCK???

I'm very glad to know of other instances of tranny failure like this.