[mini-is-4-me]

I have a recently purchased 2011 Mini Cooper at 65,000 miles and that sounds like it is roughly getting the same oil use displacement. So far -- I'm at about a 1/2 quart for every 600 miles. I carry a quart of oil in the boot. It is new-used for me; so, I may have problems that I'm not aware of. However, car is very responsive, starts easy, idles well, and runs great.

You question with symptoms I don't yet see is causing me now to want to go and check my car.

I have recently cleaned the engine compartment. I don't see any oil leaking around the value cover or timing chain area and I don't see any oil drips under the car. I've heard that a common first oil seal failure point of these cars is the oil pump. There are a bunch of sealed compartments there. I believe it is "conveniently" located in the front of the engine with no access. Did you check there? I need to check mine as well. So if you car was leaking oil there, then when you put the oil pump under "high demand" and thus "high pressure" it might exaggerate an oil leak right at the oil pump causing a loss of oil pressure, resulting in the light. Then when you get back to normal driving, the oil pressure is down enough that the oil pump can keep the pressure up high enough to compensate for the leak.

 

[mini-is-4-me]

My 2010 Mini Cooper S Countryman ALL4 is one of the cars that uses oil - OK, I'm fine with that, I plan to get it fixed, my mechanic tells me that he will replace the complete top cover, which includes the PCV (there is slight oil seepage around the cover, also on the tube to the turbo). I'm adding a quarter to half a litre every 800 kilometres, the car has done 89,000 kilometres, oil change done 3,000 kilometres ago. There is absolutely no oil leakage under the car, at any time.

However, the big current concern for me is that I took it for a drive yesterday and when under heavy acceleration, the red oil pressure light came on - just for a second, then went off, so I drove normally, no re-appearance, then decided to accelerate heavily again, and the red light momentarily reappeared. So, I drove normally home, about 15 minutes, all OK, I checked the oil, about 1/2 way up the dipstick, I topped it up to nearly full, and this morning, tried it again - same issue, under heavy acceleration, the red oil light appeared briefly. The oil light doesn't appear when driving under normal conditions.

Any thoughts?

I may be way off here, but I have seen a few low battery warnings recently, and will be changing that soon - is there a link to this issue there?

Look at this video. It tends to diagnose your exact issue starting with the oil filter housing and then going to the timing chain and oil pump chain.

 

[mini-is-4-me]

Well I wasn't speaking specifically to pulling your entire oil pump out. That video 'builds to that point' There are thousands of threads that say that the oil seals that make up the oil filter housing are a common failure point for the Mini N14, N18 engines.

7:00 min

I've heard that a common first oil seal failure point of these cars is the oil pump. There are a bunch of sealed compartments there. I believe it is "conveniently" located in the front of the engine with no access.

SHOULD BE. I've heard that a common first oil seal failure point of these cars is the oil Filter housing.

Remember his issue is that he sees an oil pressure warning when he puts a heavy load on the engine?