Hampton Roads Club Mini

Good to hear you're making forward progress with the repair.   

For what its worth. I bought my used '09 Clubman S at a Nissan dealer in Staunton. Car sounded great,. Then it developed the "diesel sound". Took it to Crown and they told me it was "normal". I told them if it blew, they were buying a new engine.

We went to MITM and were at the carwash. I was talking to a young guy from Nebraska and he told me that he had the same noise. They put on a new tensioner. On my way home, I stopped at MINI of Loveland, CO and they said, "Yep its the tensioner, we have a bulletin on it, but we don't have the part to repair it." They did put a note on my repair order of an oil change.

When I got home, I called Crown and told them all this stuff.  The told me to bring it in, which I did. They replaced the tensioner and the noise disappeared!  I think its your tensioner that causing your timing chain to slap around in there.

Just my $0.02 worth. Hope you have a good resolution to this matter.

ive heard the sam thing recently, looking into it, but also i talked to some1 who imho is a genious!. my buddy mark is a retired benz tech who now has his own service truck business working on diesels, but he loves his german cars and was filled with insight on some of our common mini issues.
the issue with the vacuum pump- vacuum side doesnt have lubrication system and wears out, the solution... at every oil change remove the vacuum line at idle and put some silicone grease in there, let the pump suck it up and lubricate itself, be liberal, u wont hurt it.
carbon problem- catch can helps but doing away with castrol oil is the biggest issue, castrol oil is nasty stuff, only reason mini recommends it is because its owned by BP oil. british petroleum and mini was a british car, till bmw got ahold of it.
putting some dielectric grease in each coil pack boot will prevent misfires, when we checked mine 1 of my boots smelled burnt because it had misfired so much.