Project BMW MINI One
Rob Hawkins gets stuck into servicing the engine on our 2001 MINI One, and discovers that some maintenance aspects have been attended to whereas others have been neglected.
Rob breaks out the spanners and sets to work on servicing the BMW MINI One from 2001. It’s been a long time coming!
It’s often difficult to tell whether a car has actually been looked after, or superficially maintained to look good and tick a box in the service book. In our case there is no service book, but going by looks, the new-looking air filter pointed out in the last issue didn’t tell the full story. Neither did the fresh coat of grease on the two bonnet-release mechanisms, though they can seize, so we’re not ungrateful for them being lubricated. The pollen filter gave the game away as to the thoroughness of any previous servicing because it was filthy. I don’t really know why this was neglected, as it’s accessed via the passenger footwell and only requires a selection of crosshead and hexagonal screws to be undone. It’s a little fiddly to fit, but not that difficult.
I soon discovered much harder jobs that should have been straightforward. The oil filter had me stumped when I drained the engine oil. I knew the filter is accessed from the top of the engine and is contained inside a canister. Access is a little tight, but using a suitable 36mm socket and an extendable ratchet from Rally Design, I managed to undo and remove it. The old
filter seemed to be glued to the canister, so I prised it out, only to discover a selection of parts including a spring, a honeycombshaped insert and some remains of the old filter. I tried to assemble these with the new filter, but found one of them couldn’t be fitted. Assuming it was part of the old oil filter, I bagged up the old parts and put them in my wheelie bin (the engine oil was later taken to my council recycling depot).
After fitting the new oil filter along with a new drain plug and replenishing the oil, I discovered a few days later that once the engine had been run and warmed up, the oil pressure warning light appeared on tickover, but disappeared if I raised the engine revs. I called MINI specialist mad4mini to see if they had come across this problem, and they have. Once they knew I’d changed the oil filter, they asked whether I’d refitted all the components I’d described. One of them helps to maintain oil pressure on tickover, so I delved into my wheelie bin and thanked my lucky stars for fortnightly collections. Once the brakes are fixed, I’ll visit mad4mini and ask them to assemble the oil filter correctly.
Moving on to the ignition, the HT leads are fed a long way down into the top of the camshaft cover, so their ends can easily break off. I carefully prised each one up and avoided pulling on the thinner part of the lead – it helped, and none of them broke. Other potential servicing nightmares concern the spark plugs. These are threaded into the aluminium cylinder head and can seize and strip their threads, especially if
they have been overtightened – they are supposed to be tightened only to 27Nm (20lb.ft). I braced myself when undoing them, but luckily they all unwound without any trouble. Had a thread been damaged, it can be repaired in situ with a Heli- Coil kit.
When it came to initially threading a new spark plug into the cylinder head, I realised a spark plug socket would probably not help because the rubber bung inside would remain stuck on the end of the plug. I’ve been here before on single- and twin- cam engines, so I used a short length of rubber hose with an 8mm inside diameter to initially fit each spark plug, then tightened it with a socket and torque wrench.
After servicing the engine, I turned my attention to some of the minor points that had failed the MoT test back in July 2020. These included a faulty offside front indicator and the headlight aim being incorrect. My local MoT testing station will help me with the headlight aim, but I checked all of the adjusters at the back of the headlights were free – they can be accessed from inside the engine bay.
As for the dodgy indicator, this is easy to access with the bonnet raised. I removed the bulb holder, waggled the bulb with the hazard lights switched on and it started to flash. So I extracted the bulb to look for corrosion (there wasn’t any), then I sprayed a little contact cleaner inside the holder.
The OSF bulb is still a little temperamental at times, but my action seemed to have woken up additional gremlins, because soon afterwards, the nearside rear indicator bulb failed. This wasn’t so easy to fix. The rear light unit needs to be extracted from the outside by undoing a single nut from the inside. Once removed, that’s the easy part and I changed the bulb, but then had to refit the light unit. The long stud for the aforementioned nut wouldn’t locate through a hole whilst I waggled the light unit into position. Eventually, after using screwdrivers and lots of swearing, the stud went through the hole. I’m dreading the next blown rear bulb – it’s not a job you want to do on the roadside in the dark.
Finally, if you are interested in these early BMW MINIs, why not check out the MINI Y- Register Forum at www.facebook.com/ groups/MINIYREGister?