Hello Everyone,

My other half's 57 plate Clubman Cooper D has got issues, which are at the moment stumping the BMW engineers, so I thought I would come here.

Last week the ABS warning light and the tyre pressure light came on at the same time while driving. We stopped at the garage, checked the tyre pressures and everything was as expected. Upon restarting the car the lights were gone so it wasn't given a second thought.

The next day we had the same issue. And over the next day or so we saw a plethora of different lights, from those above, steering lock, power steering pump, airbag warnings and a bunch I can't even remember or didn't recognise.

The car then wouldn't start, pressing the start/stop button gave nothing. Pop the key out and back in and it would sometimes kick into life no problem, sometimes with random lights, sometimes without.

BMW have taken the car this morning, plugged it into the diagnosis machine and are apparently getting a huge list of error codes, but are unable to identify the core problem that is generating all of them. They have escalated the issue to the BMW UK engineering team.

Has anyone else seen similar issues to this?

Thanks,

Robert

Issues with warning lights come on and going off at random with no obvious cause is normally down to an earth fault, maybe a lead had come loose or a wire in the loom has been rubbing and lost its outer sheath and bared wire touches occassionally and causes the errors you see, I suppose if it gets bad enough a fuse will eventually blow, if its a fused circuit its on of course.
Need to trace few a few wires and look for anything obvious, if its intermittant they are often difficult to find until its gives up completely.
Oh also water ingress into a component can do this too.

I would suspect an earth fault.
The reason is, many items are earthed at one point
around the car.
So, if there is a problem at that particular earth point,
it will result in multiple items connected to that point
showing a fault.

Thanks so much guys - I expect to hear from the garage this afternoon with an update, if they're not made much progress then I'll pass this information along to them

Much appreciated.

Agree earth issue it may be , But remeber the earth can be lost inside the Battery

Fish

Hello Everyone,

Update from BMW on this. The engineers at BMW think the problem relates to something in the steering column. They have dispatched a special loom to connect the steering column in the car to the column from another as a quick and cheap way to test before replacing the part.

Hopefully the loom will arrive first part of next week and they can get cracking with it.

I'll be sure to keep everything posted on here.

Thanks,

Robert

Robert, does your car only do this when it's raining outside?

I've been told by several people that the problem is a low battery as that has happened to others before.

I ended up shooting video of my problems and need to upload the video to YouTube for all to see. The German dealership couldn't diagnose it either. They had my car for a week and told me it was a bad fuse box. 2500 Euros later it was replaced and I got the car back. Within 5 minutes the problems were back and in full force. I have pages upon pages of error codes. The best part? The dealership and the extended warranty company in Germany (MENEKS) refused to cover the car under the extended warranty anymore. I was at about 54000 miles on a 2010 Clubman S (bought in December 2009). I took the car in once under the factory warranty and was told there was no problem. Codes were cleared and apparently deleted as the next dealer I went to told me they couldn't find any other codes.

My wife and I realized that my problems went away when it was dry, but within minutes of it raining the problems were back. I have now moved stateside with my Clubman S and the problems haven't resurfaced. I'll update if they do.

HI Eagle,

It's hard to say as it's raining so often over here at the moment.

Sorry to hear you've had such a nightmare with yours, I hope this doesn't take the same path.

Everything at the moment that they're investigating under the warranty. We only bought the car about 3 months ago from a main dealer, so I would hope that we won't be picking up any bills at all.

I shall keep you posted.

Robert

Update for you guys.

The car has now been with BMW for 2 weeks, and we still have no solution, despite the fact they have their engineer that all the other guys in the dealership call 'Gandalf' working on it.

They have replaced the steering column as recommended by BMW UK along with various other parts and it hasn't made a lick of difference.

They still don't even know in what area the problem might be.

We have a loan car, but unlike the actual clubman we're not allowed to take dogs in it etc etc so for the run to work it's fine, but the rest of life completely useless.

I dread to think what the service bill has come to already, but surely a time comes where they just call it a write off?

We paid £11k for the car about 3 months ago.

Robert

O.k guys,

Another call from the dealer today. They've now decided to replace the entire central control computer in the hope this will solve the issue.

Because the thing apparently has to be configured for the given car we have to wait a few days before it's delivered.

Hoping to have it installed and tested by the middle of next week.

I shall keep you posted.

Probably a silly question but has anyone tested the battery? Low voltage on my battery had all kinds of lights going off when there was nothing wrong other than a lower than normal voltage. Alternator could be an issue if it isn't charging the battery properly.

I am currently experiencing a similar problem with my 55 plate Cooper S and have been told by a well qualified friend its likely to be an earthing problem and may well be hard to trace. His advice was to work my way around the negative side of the electrical system looking for poor connections etc.

I am currently experiencing a similar problem with my 55 plate Cooper S and have been told by a well qualified friend its likely to be an earthing problem and may well be hard to trace. His advice was to work my way around the negative side of the electrical system looking for poor connections etc.

On 1st Gen/Mk1 Minis it is also worth checking the BC1 is dry, more here:
The BC1 (Body Control Unit) - Forums (http://forum.minicooper.org/showthread.php?t=9924)

Hi Guys,

Thanks for all your suggestions. The dealer has phoned today and the have at long last found the root cause of the problem.

I turns out that the DSC unit is full of water!?!

Now - I can say, without doubt that we have not been through any standing water in the car. We have owned it for 3 or 4 months and it is our pride and joy, it would not have been taken through water in any circumstance.

Can anyone guess at how water may have gotten in? I'm told by the dealer that the unit is located at the bottom of the engine, so I would guess that it comes with at least some simple form of water protection or seal? Could this have failed?

Thanks,

Robert

o.k

So we are off to collect the car this afternoon, a little over 3 weeks in the workshop.

Everything has been covered under the warranty to get it back into working order, which is great news.

Parts over £2k and 40 hours of labour. More than half the value of the car.

Thanks,

Robert