Power steering whine

Foxy (the BMW MINI) has a really loud whine from the power steering, ive been told this is normal but how do you tell how loud it has to be to be normal and when it is broken?!!  It's not just when its on full lock it seems to be most of the time, do i need to take a trip to Westerly or is it nothing to worry about?
   Cheers

It's really nothing to worry about - sadly it's a feature of MINIs of our age. It is a very distinctive noise and is the electric motor. Quite often we are out walking and hear the steering whine of a MINI in traffic or parking and know what it without even seeing the car.

It's a lot quieter on cars made after the 2004 facelift, like Solid Gold Mike's and Rita's old Sparky.

Bumble the diesel's steering is a lot quieter - think it's hydraulic rather than electric - but then you probably couldn't hear it over the diesel rattle or the engine cooling fan! The feature noise of diesels with aircon is that the cooling fan is on almost the whole time. That's another noise that I have heard behind me and known what the car is without looking round.

Thanks, have posted on the MINI2 forums - someone said the same as you but someone else said that it should only make noise when on full lock and not just when normal turning and it was a sign the power steering was on its way out-supposedly there has been a lot of problems with this?

Does yours make the noise all the time?

It does it all the time, whenever the steering wheel is moved from straight ahead.

When you were thinking of a name for Foxy I wanted to suggest Red Red Whine which is what we called Krakatoa when he was red.

I had my power steering pump go a few months ago and be assured you know the difference. Thankfully I was still under warranty.

Quoted from LazyBones

It's a lot quieter on cars made after the 2004 facelift, like Solid Gold Mike's and Rita's old Sparky.

And O-B's Gem, of course!

lol-red red whine would definately have been appropriate! What changed when your pump went? (apart from no steering i mean!) did the sound get worse?
  Sorry for all the questions-i was ok til the other half commented on the noise when i came home earlier

You were probably manouvering when he heard it as I often do in other driving school minis of a similar age purely because the car is less noisy and you can hear the whine.

When Bumble's pump played up I was on my way to pick up a pupil and I could hear a "noise" from the engine bay and a "glugging" noise. I let the pupil drive to the test centre and from the passenger seat I could hear it more and more. We practised bay parking and on full lock it became VERY noisy and steering became HEAVY. Bumble was also leaving a trail of fluid. I put pupil in a cab and drove gently to my local BMW dealer.

When I got home by bus I recognised a similar trail of fluid on my drive and up the road.

The bad news is when Bumble was mended they forgot to put the "plug" back in the cylinder and 3 days later it went wrong again.

nightmare! Another thing to keep an ear out for I suppose. Thanks for the advice both of you