Just noticed this today. Crack goes pretty much all the way around. Already ordered a replacement but wondering if its fine to drive like this for the time being? Obviously I'd be avoiding potholes and such.

Thanks

 

I drove about 150 miles on one that had completely failed; the nut and strut shaft were separated completely from the rest of the strut mount. Obviously it's a replace-as-soon-as-possible thing (it led to wandering steering for me), but even if it lets go completely, it isn't going to break much as long as you avoid bumps and fix it soon.

 

Thats what I was thinking, thanks.

This car is so bad to drive right now, no power steering at the moment (which is thankfully under warranty) and now this lol. It never ends with these cars!

 

I just did mine that I drove on like that for about 4000 miles. You should replace soon but my tear only went down about 1/8" the bushing itself is pretty thick...Now that was my situation..yours might be different.

The job only takes 45 minutes per side if your pinch bolt isn't seized in there...if it is seized well buy some drill bits and cutting fluid.

Minimal tools needed for this job.

 

I'm guessing it would be the same procedure as if you were installing springs and/or struts?

 

Yup. The Pelican Technical article on strut replacement is full of good pictures, and I found it more useful than Haynes. I didn't have the Bentley manual at the time, and I haven't checked what it says on strut replacement, so I can't say how that one measures up.

I also just bumped a thread in Stock Problems/Issues on strut mount replacement with the issues I ran into; the first post is the same deal from someone who did the job a while ago on an '06.

 

You'll be okay, but replace it asap.

 

http://www.minicooperspeed.com/mini-...-installation/

I followed those instructions to the letter..

 

Thanks for all the info everyone! Hopefully I can get it taken care of this weekend. All this strut tower stuff had me thinking about getting some strut tower plates. I'd probably go with top mounted ones as opposed to the ones that go underneath due to ease of install.

I'm considering both M7 and Cravenspeed, but leaning towards Cravenspeed as I like the idea of those beefier bolt adapters they include. Thoughts?

 

The undermount will be easy if you already have the strut out for the torn strut mount. So wait if you want to do that.

It will raise the car 1/8 of an inch though at the front which shouldn't really be noticeable.

As for the craven speed the only thing I do not like about them is they use standard measure bolts instead of metric...so I had to buy two non metric deep well sockets for the job.

If you want a strut bar you can't have the craven Speed ones you would need the m7 bar which also would help to protect the towers.

 

I looked into the M7 stb. Really liked the fact that it doubled as a strut bar as well as protecting the strut towers. Just didn't want to pay that much and wasn't crazy about the fact that I'd have to modify my intake a bit for it to fit.

The under plates would be better, agreed. I would definitely go for those if I was replacing both strut bushings, but call me lazy, I'd rather just go with the ones that sit on top. Plus I don't want anymore wheel gap, thats why I lowered my car in the first place

 

I've actually got the Madness Motorworks under-tower plates arriving tomorrow—I've got (or rather, the car came with) enough mushrooming already that I'd need to do some banging to get the Cravenspeed plates on, and it doesn't look like there's too much disassembling involved to get the plates on.