That's what Randy, out in Weed, California thinks. He's already gone through two of 'em, after barely 60,000 miles. (You can hear his call on this week's Car Talk right here.) Tom and Ray didn't know if this was a particular weakness with the Mini. But, they wanted to hear from you. Do you drive a Mini, and have you been burning through clutches? Know someone who has?
Or, could it be that Randy is not 'fessing up about his tendency to be a little rough on his ride?
My clutch slave cylinder just went out on my 2005 Mini Cooper S at 29K miles. My boyfriend dissected it and the problem appears to be a seal failure. I have only driven manual transmissions since age 16 (I'm 37), and I find it difficult to believe that I caused this problem given my previous vehicles went 89K and 60K miles with no clutch issues. Fortunately, it took me 15 min to install a new cylinder (3 weeks to get the part online), not counting hydraulic line bleeding which I'm about to do. I would be interested to hear if the root cause of the failure is similar for others.
I have an 07 Cooper S and I'm on my second clutch and still have issues. First clutch was replaced with less than 2K miles and the second clutch was replaced with less than 8K miles. Both these replacements occurred in Germany. Between clutch replacements the car was serviced by a Mini dealer in Towson Maryland. The service rep there said there is a problem with the clutch/transmission and that BMW is aware but could not fix the problem.
I brought the car to the dealer last week because in idle there was a noise from the clutch/transmission. Depress the clutch and the noise went away. The dealer replaced the flywheel and at first the noise was gone but within 5 miles the noise returned. I took the car back to the dealer yesterday, they put it up on the lift heard the noise and said they'd get back to me. Just received a call from the dealer that the noise is normal. I don't buy it, what do I do?
07/17/2008 8:23:51 PM
