New mini owner!! Did I buy a lemon??
 

Hey Folks.

I sold my 91 Miata and was shopping for a Mustang. I drove a Mini S on a whim and now I own one :D Just today I bought a 2003 S with 73K. I think its a pretty strong car, rides good, shifts good, good power...but with the hood up it is really noisy around the super charger. The other one I drove wasn't. Its not the whinny sound the steering makes, its a chattery metallic sound coming from the passenger side of the motor and I am scared that the super charger has some fan thingy with a bearing that is going bad. Anyone have a super charger go bad? What does it sound like?

Thanks for any info.

PS - I thought long and hard about my user name. Anybody impressed??:rolleyes:

Oh no. Let me answer my own question. After extensive internet research which I should have done ahead of time, this car has a super charger going bad and it will be $2000 to fix.
I'm going to try and get my money back from the guy but that will likely be impossible since he is moving back to South Korea next week.
What a dunce I am.

there are companys that rebuild them for cheaper

FULLY REBUILT FACTORY MINI COOPER S 2002-2007 SUPERCHARGER W/3 YEAR WARRANTY!!! | eBay

After market SCs
 

Do these folks have a good reputation with the forum members? I saw them paned pretty hard on another site.

I installed one for a local 4 years ago/ almost 100K miles and no troubles

I hope I am not to late
 

If you still need help with this email me. I have a 2006 and I was able to purchase a warranty on mine and it covers bumper to bumper as long as you dont have more then 100,000 miles on the car. Only $1,500.00 to get signed up.
Email: picfam1 at yahoo

any update? i think i've got a very similar situation going on. just got an 06 cooper s and from what it sounds like i think im hearing exactly the same thing that you were. i literally just bought this last week monday...

:(

Well, I paid about $850 for a remanufactured supper charger and paid about the same to have it installed. I bought from a place in California that is said to be an Eaton Supercharger specialist but found that the place I order from gets their Mini units from some guy with a foreign accent. Not that there is anything wrong with a foreign accent but when I bought the thing I was told there was a 2 year warranty. When I called cause I thought I may have bought a bum unit I was told I had to talk to the foreign guy who is a different company. I did not have a good feeling in the pit of my stomach about my purchase. So where I am going with this is make sure you buy from someone who is well known and reputable or let your repair shop buy the unit so if its bad it's the shops problem. And get one with a written as the remanufactured units have a high rate of failure...so I read anyway. You can buy a new one I think.

You can have a shop take the belt off and listen to the motor run. If its real quiet without the belt on, probably the Supercharger. I am sorry if you bought a Mini with a bad supercharger. Its an awful feeling. To make matters worse for me, when the engine got quiet because of the new supercharger, I began to hear clutch issues that are developing on my car. If I had a dime for every time I read "its a design flaw" about things on my Cooper S, I would have about $0.80 by now. Good luck to both of us.

thanks for the update. i took my 06 S back to the dealer i bought it from today and voiced how pissed off i am to the salesperson that i dealt with. he brought me over to the service dept and checked out all the paperwork we had done. lucky for me i got the extended warranty, soo now i'm driving a loaner car while they check to see if the supercharger is covered.

this might be something for us to look into... lol
https://www.patelco.org/Loans-And-Cr...hicle/GAP-MBI/