Hi all, been a while since my last post! My mini has been a weekend car, or the occasional trip to the shops for the last few years (usually covering about 500 miles a year). I have now moved, and doing 24 miles a day (12 miles there and back) to get to work (mainly cruising at 60). I am now noticing a few issues that i suppose i would not have noticed before.
1st is my mini is using oil, i have covered about 600miles and noticed my oil has gone from max to min (about 3 weeks). I do have a small leak, mind, but that seems fairly excessive? My leak is usually a few drops a day. There is a bit of mayo under my oil cap and bits in the rocker cover (i have an alloy one). Assumed this was due to moisture (but again i would have thought my journeys would remove this). The oil also smells funny, cant really describe it. On start up, i get a few puffs of smoke out the oil filler cap.
2nd) i seem to be topping up the coolant each week, usually i open then radiator cap and the water cant be seen. it only takes a few glugs of coolant to fill up.
The car is running fine, starts well and drives well. Only thing i have noticed is that going up hills, i dont seem to have the power any more (4th gear seems to have no grunt in general). On the flats she's fine.
I have carried out a compression test, and all were about 11bar, but no 1 was 10.5. When running i checked to see if there were any bubbles in the water, and there were none
There is no smoke out the back (blue or white).
any thoughts. I keep thinking its the head gasket?
thanks
Rich
Edited by finch661, 23 March 2019 - 11:31 AM.