Mini Cooper Mechanic Los Angeles

A common issue with Mini is carbon buildup. With GDI engines, fuel is injected directly into the combustion chamber instead of hanging out in the air intake manifold. Carbon is released into the engine and as a byproduct of this process; you get carbon build up. Typically what we do is remove the manifold, blast out the carbon with a walnut blasting machine, replace intake gaskets and any hoses that are not salvageable. After reassembly, we clear control module memories and check engine light.

In terms of rebuilding the engine or sending out the head for repair. We send that out to the machine shop. But the machine shop doesn't do diagnostics. So you need to know what you need before sending out to the machine shop. It could be something is wrong in the head, or it could be a piston ring which is not part of the cylinder head. The first step is for us to verify what you're saying. That would be something that we would want to do before we started taking off your cylinder head. If we find out that's the case, then at that point we’d take the head off. Send it out to the machine shop, and they'd verify that the problem lies in the cylinder head. After the machine shop rebuilds the head, we would reinstall the head on to the block and put everything back together. But before we put everything back together it usually makes sense to replace some old parts while we have access to them. The timing chain, timing tensioners, guide rails, etc. If you get everything done instead of waiting for a part to fail, then you avoid paying labor costs twice.  Both valve jobs and timing chain jobs are labor intensive. The labor cost is far greater than cost for the parts.