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McLaren 570S Common Problems: The Sport Series Specialist's Guide
Independent McLaren Service — Foreign Automotive × Thorney Motorsport — Kitchener, Ontario
MCLAREN 570S COUPE • SPIDER
McLaren 570S Common Problems: The Sport Series Specialist's Guide
The Sport Series specialist's guide to every wear pattern, failure mode, and service interval.
The 570S is the car that made McLaren ownership reachable for buyers who would otherwise have been in a 911 Turbo. Built 2015–2020 with the 3.8L M838TE producing 562 hp, lighter and tighter than a 650S, with a daily-usable interior and luggage space that nothing else in its segment offered. It became the volume car for McLaren and it remains the most common McLaren we service. Volume tells the story: we have seen more 570S cars across more conditions than any other McLaren in the lineup, and the failure patterns are clear.
Here is what you should know if you own one or are looking at one.
IRIS 2 infotainment glitches
The 570S shipped with IRIS 2 from the start, which avoided the worst of the original IRIS unit's reliability problems on the 12C. The remaining IRIS 2 failures are more nuisance than catastrophe: dead pixels in specific zones of the display, Bluetooth pairing dropouts on certain phone models, SD card slot read failures, occasional GPS lock loss, and the very occasional reboot during driving. The HVAC interface runs through IRIS so a reboot can leave climate in an awkward state until you reach it again.
Most 570S IRIS faults resolve with software updates or with individual component replacement (display, SD slot, head unit board). Full head unit swaps are rarely justified. We diagnose to the component level before recommending parts.
Battery drain and module wake
The 570S is the most-reported case of "I left the car for three weeks and now it won't start." Parasitic draw on the Sport Series is meaningful, and a factory lead-acid battery will be flat in two weeks of inactivity. A deep discharge does more than require a jump — multiple modules can lose calibration and require dealer or specialist-level re-coding to come back online. Some of those modules are not freely accessible to every shop.
The fix is a smart tender connected at all times when the car is parked. CTEK MXS 5.0 or equivalent. The OEM charging port on the 570S is accessible from outside the bonnet, which makes it easy. We sell tenders and we install the appropriate adapter for the McLaren charge port at no labour cost when a customer purchases one with their service.
Hydraulic accumulator pressure loss
Same hydraulic architecture as the rest of the McLaren range. The accumulator runs the gearbox shifts and the nose lifter. Nitrogen pre-charge bleeds down with age and heat. We are now seven to ten years past the launch of the 570S, and accumulator replacement is firmly in the predictive maintenance window for any 570S that has not had the work done.
Symptoms: pump cycling at idle, slow nose lift, harsh cold-start gear engagement, a chassis warning lamp on rough roads. Replacement is preventive maintenance. The failure mode is sudden — the car shifts until it does not, and then it does not move.
Door strut failure
Dihedral doors, gas struts, five-to-seven-year service life. The 570S's slightly lighter door versus a 650S puts marginally less load on the struts but the design life is the same. We replace as a pair, every time. Single-side jobs come back inside a year.
Door handle motor failure
The pop-out door handles are operated by small electric motors mounted inside the door. Road spray, salt, and temperature cycling fatigue them. Failure modes: handle does not extend (locked out from outside), or handle extends but does not retract (sits proud and looks broken). Replacement requires removing the door card. We check both sides as a pair every time — single-side failure predicts the other side within twelve months.
Coolant hose connector hardening
The 570S uses the same family of quick-connect coolant fittings as the rest of the McLaren range. Early production units used a connector design that hardens and cracks over time. Symptom is slow coolant loss, a faint sweet smell after a drive, a damp patch on the floor. We pressure-test the cooling system at every service. Caught at the test, the repair is a single connector. Caught at the temperature gauge, it is potentially an engine repair.
Diff cooler line weeping
The 7-speed dual-clutch has its own oil cooling circuit with hard lines running through the engine bay. Over years, the fittings at the cooler weep. Symptoms: oily film under the rear bumper, faint burnt-oil smell after spirited driving, occasionally a low-gearbox-oil dash warning. The repair is line replacement and a refill with the correct McLaren-spec DCT fluid. Substituting the fluid causes clutch judder and eventual clutch pack damage. This is not a fluid where "close enough" works.
PPF and front bumper paint damage
Not a mechanical failure, but worth mentioning because we are asked about it constantly. The 570S has a low front bumper and a steep approach angle. Without paint protection film, every Ontario summer of stone strikes turns the front bumper into a constellation of paint chips. We coordinate with PPF installers for customers having other work done; the front clip, hood, mirrors, and headlight covers are the standard installation. The cost is recovered in resale value preservation.
Front splitter scrape damage
The 570S's front splitter is low. Without the nose lifter raising the front end (and the nose lifter takes 12–15 seconds even when working properly), the splitter will catch on driveway entries, parking blocks, and steep approaches. We see chipped, cracked, and structurally compromised front splitters constantly. The fix is splitter replacement, and the genuine part is not inexpensive. Customers who use the nose lifter habitually have intact splitters. Customers who do not, do not.
Track-use suspension wear
The 570S is light enough and stiff enough to be tracked without major preparation, and many of them have been. The suspension shows it after enough sessions. Rear toe link bushings develop play by 40,000–50,000 km on hard-used cars. Front upper control arm ball joints can develop play earlier on cars that have hit kerbs at speed. The check is straightforward and is part of every 570S service we perform.
Carbon ceramic brake wear
The 570S can be ordered with or without carbon ceramic brakes. The carbon ceramic option is durable, but the pads are a wear item that gets forgotten. McLaren-spec pads on carbon ceramics run roughly 25,000 km on road use, much less on track. The replacement procedure is specific: the wrong pad compound can damage the disc surface, and the bedding-in cycle is critical. We use only approved compounds and we run the controlled bedding-in every time.
Why a 570S PPI matters
The 570S is the McLaren most commonly bought by first-time supercar owners, and that means a high percentage of the cars on the used market have learned-the-hard-way damage that an owner has tried to put behind them. Curbed wheels, replaced (or not replaced) front splitters, parking-lot scuffs covered with touch-up paint, and the occasional structural repair on a low-speed front-end strike that did not make it into an insurance claim.
A proper PPI on a 570S takes about four hours and includes: cold-start observation, road test with a McLaren-specific diagnostic interface, hydraulic pressure test, full underbody inspection (including a careful look at the front splitter mounting structure for prior impact damage), leak check on every cooler line, function test on both doors, and a stored-fault audit covering every module. We use SD3 and equivalent tools that read all McLaren modules.
We have inspected 570S cars at $130,000 that needed almost nothing and we have inspected 570S cars at $145,000 that needed $25,000 of cosmetic and mechanical work to be presentable. The listing photo is the least useful piece of information.
Service intervals on a 570S
The McLaren annual service framework, 1st through 15th services:
- 1st Service: Annual or first 10,000 km. Oil and filter, basic consumables.
- 2nd Service: Year two. Oil, filter, brake fluid flush, cabin filter, engine air filters.
- 3rd Service: Minor — oil and filter only.
- 4th Service: Major — oil, filter, brake fluid, cabin filter, air filters.
- 5th Service: Year five. Oil, filter, full coolant flush.
- 6th Service: Major plus fuel filter and charcoal canister.
- 10th and 12th Services: Major plus fuel and charcoal filter, plus brake system bleed.
The 6th-service fuel and charcoal filter is the single most-skipped item we see on used 570S cars. A clogged charcoal canister will throw evaporative codes that drive owners and shops in circles. If the records on a used 570S do not show this work at the 6-year mark, factor it into your offer.
The Foreign Automotive approach
We are the only authorized McLaren independent specialist in Canada outside the dealer network. Our partnership with Thorney Motorsport in the UK gives us the technical documentation, the factory-spec parts pipeline, and the diagnostic tools required to service these cars properly. We have built a customer base of 570S owners across Ontario who used to drive to a dealer because there was no alternative.
If you own a 570S, or you are evaluating one, book a McLaren service or pre-purchase inspection. We will tell you what is wrong, what is right, and what we would do if it were our car.
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The only authorized McLaren independent specialist in Canada outside the dealer network.
Service, repair, pre-purchase inspections — to McLaren factory specification, partnered with Thorney Motorsport in the UK. We will tell you what is wrong, what is right, and what we would do if it were our car.
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