Hi All

Following on from the thread I posted about the cold start rattle, my girlfriend's 56-plate MCS has just come back from a service and Mini have said there is an oil leak between the engine and gearbox - and want £632 to investigate!

Is there a common issue here (can't find anything by searching) and what are the likely causes?

Not sure if it's relevant, but she had a new clutch and dual mass flywheel fitted by the same dealer about 18 months ago.

She bought the car just under 2 years ago from the dealer in question, it's always been serviced on the dot by them and to date it has still only done 26k miles.

Many thanks :)

ouch! that sounds like a ripoff! This will be either of 2 things:

1. Rear main seal, which requires the gearbox to come off and is a lot of labour
2. Can also be the Sump gasket that sometimes looks like its coming from that gap and is a much cheaper fix.

I would get under the car wipe the area of the oil leak clean and then check every few days to see how bad the leak is.

In Australia I was quoted between $2000 - $3000 if its point number 1 and around $600 if point number 2.

ouch! that sounds like a ripoff! This will be either of 2 things:

1. Rear main seal, which requires the gearbox to come off and is a lot of labour
2. Can also be the Sump gasket that sometimes looks like its coming from that gap and is a much cheaper fix.

I would get under the car wipe the area of the oil leak clean and then check every few days to see how bad the leak is.

In Australia I was quoted between $2000 - $3000 if its point number 1 and around $600 if point number 2.
Thanks for the reply.

I can only assume that it is coming from between the engine and 'box as they had it up on the ramp - the service notes do say it's coming from there but I don't know how bad it is tbh. I can only say though that it does use a bit of oil but nothing serious - probably less than 1 litre every 6 months