Hi guys, first post, i've spent ages on the internet searching and wonder whether anybody can help, or who has had the same happen and what they did. I must warn you, i'm not mechanic-minded, i'm a damsel in distress i'm afraid.
About 2 weeks ago, i pulled up at the lights and the car was juddering. It had been fine on my long journey but this juddering came on suddenly. It has run practically perfectly since owning it (i'm the second owner and have had it since summer 2010 and it's been serviced, looked after and driven well etc).
As well as juddering at idle, the engine light was on (yellow) and had had noticeably less power. The rest of my journey i really did notice loss of power to the car and, on total reflection now, i think it may have been losing power for a while before that but not so noticeably. i have had the engine light come on and off for several months (mostly off but with sporadic on for a day or two each time) but when i took it to the dealer several months ago he recommended
not taking it in to look at and suggested it was most likely due to funny fuel. He said even if they took it in they would not necessarily find the problem and it would be a waste of money for them to not even give me an answer to why the light was coming on. So it was from Mini's own advice not to investigate further.
So, knowing my 2008 Mini One was now out of the 3 yr warranty (it is just under 5 yrs old and has mileage of less than 36,000 miles), we took it to a recommended local garage the next day. They did a diagnostic and found two misfiring cylinders, suspected the actuator but that didn't fix number 1, and he then suspected the vanos. Since he claimed the new actuator fixed one of the cylinders then of course i had to pay for the new actuator part. So had to take it to the Mini cooper garage as was suspected vanos problem. They tell us that it will cost in total over £3000 including labour, parts and VAT to fix cylinder 1. I'm pretty sure paying £3000 is ridiculous for this age and mileage car. I was under the impression a quality car such as Mini would at least last longer before costly work, and so you can imagine i am pretty upset that a major fault has happened already. Fair enough if i'd had it 10 years or clocked up 100000 miles.
Has anyone had this work done once out of the warranty period? Have i got a dud?! Would it actually be cheaper to do a part exchange on another car at trade value! Please help
2008 Mini One cylinder 1 no compression, help 
