- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
Mini Cooper CVT making a whining noise and hesitating when pulling away. Is it toast?
My wife’s 2013 Mini Cooper has been making this increasingly loud whining sound from the transmission area especially when you first start it up cold and pull away from a stop. It’s that classic CVT drone that gets higher pitched as the revs climb and it’s accompanied by a hesitation where you put your foot down and the engine revs but the car takes a second to actually start moving, like the belt is slipping inside the gearbox. I’ve read all the horror stories about these early CVT units basically being made of glass and failing catastrophically around this mileage but I’m really hoping it’s just low on fluid or maybe the filter is clogged and a proper service could buy us another year or two before we have to make a decision about replacing the whole car. The dealer obviously just recommends a new transmission which costs more than the car is worth at this point. I’ve been trying to locate a Mini Cooper Transmission Workshop Sharjah that actually knows these CVT units well enough to do a fluid and filter change with the correct ZF fluid and maybe reset the adaptations before condemning the whole thing. Anyone managed to nurse one of these problematic CVTs back to acceptable behavior with just a proper service or is the writing already on the wall when the whine starts? Just trying to figure out if it’s worth spending a few hundred dirhams on a fluid change or if I should just start browsing Dubizzle for a replacement car.
