if you're lowering with springs, but keeping the oem struts/shocks should you be prepared to put a strut bar (at least one that will defend against mushrooming) or strut defenders given the mini's history of mushrooming even with stock springs/struts, etc?

 

I vote yes. Best solution is camber plates.

 

ok wait - at the risk of sounding automotively dumb how do the camber plates protect the strut towers from mushrooming? i thought camber had more to do with tire position...

 

It's not the "purpose" of camber plates - but it's a nice side effect of installing camber plates that it also greatly reduces the likelihood of mushrooming.

What actually happens in a mushrooming incident is that the upper strut mounting plate (which is made out of flimsy stamped steel) deforms, and in turn allows the top of the strut tower to deform. Camber plates replace this OEM mounting plate with something that is both larger (to spread the load over more of the strut tower) and MUCH thicker/stronger (to resist deformation)... mechanically, this is "fixing the problem" versus putting something on top of the tower but leaving the weak strut mounting plate in place.

 

ahhhh1 ingenious! and someone said NAM wasn't technical anymore.