The harmonic balancer aka crank damper went on my 2016 4dr hardtop 1.5L Mini Cooper. Has 73,000 miles on it. It has been sitting at a garage now for almost a month waiting for bmw to have the part in stock (tentative date avail. Sept.20, making it 2months wait time) tried every possible 3rd party parts dealer & not 1 harmonic balancer is to be found. I was told this part had already needed to be upgraded & modified making it a faulty part to begin with. Was told by garage it-??s a common part to go on these cars. 1st my warning light came on saying the battery wasn-??t holding a charge. Beings that I was 2 blocks from my house I drove there & as I was getting to my house another warning came on saying -??carefully pull over & let engine cool-?? so I parked it & had it towed to garage to avoid any other issues.

- Mahanoy City , PA, USA

I purchased this MINICooper S on March 16, 2016 and it had 47,282 miles on it. I also bought a limited 90 day warranty offered by buddy's auto sales of springfield, mo. I trailered the car to phoenix where my son was to attend a motorcycle mechanic school in October. On October 07, 2016 we unloaded it from the trailer and parked it at a hotel. The next morning my son (a certified mechanic) went outside to check on the car and the brake light was on. Assuming someone was in the car, he ran to it and found that it was full of smoke and smelled of melting wires/metal. He got a pair of pliers from the hotel and unhooked the battery before the car could burn itself to the ground. As soon as we could get a dealership on the phone, we had it towed there. They informed me that there was a large recall on BMW power steering pumps and they looked it up to see if mine would be covered. It wasn't. it cost $3,823.22 to get the car back and they had the vehicle until October 14, 2016, causing me to miss my flight home. If this is a wide-spread problem, why wasn't my MINIcovered? after having the power steering pump replaced on my MINICooper S and finally receiving the car back after a week, I drove it from tempe to phoenix where I was staying and heard a loud pop noise as soon as I got it home. There was smoke coming out from under the hood and the car wouldn't steer. I called the dealership where I had just had it repaired and they said that I would once again have to pay the tow bill to get it back to them but that if they found that it was their fault for not fixing something, they would reimburse me for the tow bill. After receiving the car for the second time, they claimed that the power steering hose was an unrelated problem to the power steering pump. I had to pay the tow bill as well as the repair bill.

- Leavenworth, KS, USA