2009 base Mini Cooper codes galore and bizarre behavior
 

My daughters '09 Mini (114,000 miles) has been giving her fits for months. It runs perfectly sometimes for days; then dies at a stop light or starts sputtering and surging with corresponding smoky exhaust. Or it can happen at high speeds too. I drove it 14 straight hours from Missouri to Texas without a single incident. The next day, it started shuddering and smoking while driving down the freeway at 70mph. It just comes and goes. I've never driven one before but was very impressed with its performance and handling until it goes into "crap" mode. It also uses more oil than I am used to seeing but I have seen some posts that suggest it is common for Minis.

The cam sensors have all been replaced. And I just replaced the downstream O2 sensor after codes pointed me in that direction. If anything, it got worse.

Current codes: P15E8, P0420, P0141, P0136, P2096, P115C

I would appreciate any insight or advice. Thank you.

Dealer told me that the Mini can use up to a quart of oil every 700-1000 miles so that’s “normal.”

What are those codes?

Low oil will cause issues with the vanos that throw up a ton of fault codes.