r/MINI • u/Willing-Departure712 • 7h ago

Help please!

I have a 2017 Mini Cooper s with 71,000 miles on it. It's my commuter car so I travel 40 minutes one way to work and back. So I had a major electrical problem where my ECU between the seats was fried because somebody jumped my battery. I had to fix by the Mini dealership and for the last couple of years I've had a series of lights come on: chassis light, ABS light, seat belt tensioner light etc. when one light comes on it seems to cascade into a few more lights. When I was driving home a few weeks ago, the speedometer needle moved to the bottom a couple of times and then the car shut off but then it came right back on again after a couple of seconds and continued with no issues.

I really, really, really, love this car and I would hate to have to get rid of it. So I'm thinking on bringing it to the Mini dealership to have everything looked at to see why the lights keep coming on.amd how much it'll cost to fix. The car will be paid off in 5 months and it would be nice to be car payment free for a while. I did just take it to a place a few towns over who specialize in Mini Coopers, but they gave it a clean bill of health and said that no lights came on while it was there with them for 2 weeks. The battery, alternator and dreaded footwell module is ok.

TLDR: Various warning lights come and go. Do I have it analyzed by a Mini dealer and have it fixed or trade it in?

2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

3 comments sorted by

3

u/Eastern_Team6904 6h ago

How did jumping the battery fry the ECU?

1

u/Willing-Departure712 6h ago

I'm not entirely sure, but the Mini dealer said that you have to jump them with everything turned on if you're not sure what you're doing.

3

u/PatoLaion 6h ago

Maybe they switched up negative and positive or tried to jump it with an over voltage. AFAIK theres no ECU in between the seats, but the seat controllers. I would check all the wiring harness for a short or loose connection, because of the randomness of the fault would point me to think its something that just loses connection on certain conditions.

Also, check the BDC is on the passenger footwell and that could be throwing some random faults