Rustproofing & fixing oil leaks

We weren’t expecting copious amounts of corrosion on the underside of our 11-year-old MINI, but were quite surprised by what we found around the rear suspension. This is a common potential rot-spot on the first-generation MINIs and doesn’t appear to have been prevented on the next. Surface corrosion was also evident around the backs of the sills, which is yet another issue on earlier MINIs. We also cautiously extracted all the mounting bolts for an exhaust shield and lubricated them.

Confident we could tackle rustproofing techniques ourselves, we weren’t quite so courageous with solving the oil leaks. We booked workshop time in at mad4mini. The plan was to see if the leak was coming from the oil filter housing, but we also suspected the oil sump needed resealing. The list of jobs didn’t end there – a noisy vacuum actuator (noisy after switching-off the engine) to sort, the timing chain assembly to inspect and the inlet ports to de-coke. We’re making a start here, but will complete the jobs next month.

JOBS LIST

Part 2 MAR 21

Part 2