Stop start issue

[MiniMotoR56]

Evening all. Picked my car up earlier after a timing chain change and a replaced gearbox drive shaft seal.

My stop start now isn't working, any ideas?

After I got home, opened the bonnet to investigate the burning oil smell and VTA dump valve noise I had on the way home. I spent half an hour cleaning up the oil from the disconnected crank case/turbo hose, reconnecting the air intake pipe and patching up the cracked intake, reconnecting and rerouting all the electrical cables the grease monkey that worked on my car hadn't plugged back into their hangers. With this level of incompetence I'm guessing he didn't reconnect something properly (Christ knows what job he made of the timing belt change!) Any pointers on where I should start to look?

Thanks in advance!

[S8RAH]

It is likely that either the battery needs a bit more charge or it's just too cold for it to operate.
My car only gets out a couple of times a month and it takes a good long run before the stop/start works as the battery is low.
I'm pretty sure it will turn out that it not a reassembly problem.

[MiniMotoR56]

Hi S8rah and thanks, the battery is possible but the engine was plenty warm and it was 10 deg last night. Honestly with the shocking level of care Id not be surprised if they had omitted to plug something back in. I'll put a voltmeter on the battery today, any idea what the min reading to operate should be?

Thanks

[The Nun]

If the garage has had the car in for repairs they tend to leave the ignition on for long times and off they go for a tea break, thus the battery has probably drained a fair bit.
As the stop start senses low battery/demand before coming on it might just need a jolly good drive and some time to bring the battery state back up before it starts working normally again?

[Angib]

Yes, my previous car gradually lost its stop-start over a period of two years, starting only 12 month after it was new. It was definitely the battery in my case as charging it up made the stop-start reappear.

But at no time did the car ever suffer from a lack of battery power for any other purpose - it would happily put the hood up and down without the engine running and that sort of thing. So I think the Mini threshold for battery condition is set really high.