Dynamic MiNi Collective

hello all...i have a friend, i am trying to help out, who also owns a mini, not part of the club...but his windows are acting up, his motors are "shot"...who do you recommend, anybody in town besides the dealership where he could take his car to ?

anyone

I'm guessng you're refferng to the common problem where you have to bang on your door panel to get the wndows to roll up or down? If so the problem is caused by dirt getting into the window motor.

MINI's oficial fix for this is to replace the motor, which requires their special window removal tool. I kind of doubt you're going to find too many other shops with that tool.

What I did with mine is tear the motor apart while it's still in the door and clean it up with some spray electrical contact cleaner. Granted this was not an easy task, the motor's brushes like to pop out when you pull the cover off and they're a real pain to get back in again. I did this almost a year ago and the driver's door is just now starting to give me occasional troubles again, but I figure a once a year cleaning is better than the price of a new motor.

You might be able to get the dirt and gunk out with the spray cleaner without actually tearing the motor apart.

Dealer is the expert on these, they fix them every day. If you take it somewhere else the will spend lots of time troubleshooting the problem.

It'd either the regulator or the motor. If they have been replaced by the dealer they give a 1 year warrenty on the parts.

I've never had to work on one myself, so I don't know what it takes to replace them. Maybe someone who has will speak up. I know you can sometimes make them work for a while by pounding on the lower part of the inside door.

thxs guys...that's what i was looking for..
i appreciate the feedback

Doublecheck with Justin at MINI - I thought he told me that anything done by the dealer had a one or two year warranty.

Hey, Marcus. Within 3 weeks of getting my 2008 MCS, my passenger window started acting up. Whenever I hit the button to put it up, it would go up and then right back down again on its own. I took it to the dealership and dealt with Justin in the service dept. They tried to re-initialize the computer settings, but that did not work. He told me it is a common problem for the window motors to need replacement, and that would be the easiest fix. He didn't have a window motor in stock, and told me I'd need to wait a week or two for it to arrive. The twist was that about 2 weeks later, while the motor was on back order, my window 'fixed' itself. I haven't had any problems. I let Justin know. He said he'd hold onto the window motor for a few weeks, in the event it started acting up again. He should have this one in stock, if yours needs to be replaced.