Noticed this morning while braking down hill a pretty loud clicking clunking noise then another clunk on acceleration and immediately turned around and drove home about 2 blocks. Checked the tires and noticed that the driver side front one was moving back and forth a LOT.

Also, I've been smelling a burning rubber smell after driving, and thought it was the harmonic balancer but the smell was on the side of the car not the front under the hood. Could this be the reason for the smell?

 

It's quite possible, if they are so wasted that your wheel has movement with it on the ground, chances are it is moving around enough while in motion to cause the smell due to friction. Go powerflex and be happy.

 

If your front crontol arm bushings are so bad your "tires are smoking" and you can smell them...WOW.....
I would fix it ASAP... But I would keep looking...maybe it goes away...
Reality check...
If you have been looking under the car much, and missed this...it is a safety issue...get help.

 

Easy buddy, I just checked the car a couple days ago for the harmonic balancer and then checked my tires this morning after hearing the clunking. I only drive a couple days a week not daily like most people so I have less opportunity to incounter problems

Also just ordered some of the poly bushings from Way Motorsports with them prepressed so I don't have to mess with removing all the bushing stuff from the mount.

Anyways, thank you?

The driver side was like the bad one in this video where I couldn't tell by moving it by hand but after I kicked it the tire giggled a bit like this. Also there was no "smoke" way to make me out to be a complete moron. And I generally don't consider kicking the **** out of my tires as part of a safety check.

 

My powerflex bushings prepressed and new front swaybar bushings came in. I'll install them tomorrow. I'm anticipating most of my day will be lost to dropping the subframe

 

I'll put it the other way around - nice catch and smart to check things out. Let us know how the new bushings work out. I recently had mine done and find that they improve the turn-in and straight line stability. On the downside they do creek and groan a bit.

 

Mine have been absolutely silent with no noticable increased NVH.
Wonder if something else is creaking or if no grease in the proper place at the bushings.

 

Eddie, did you switch the swaybar bushings?

 

I must admit that I made several changes; new front sway bar and bushings, new control arm bushings and a Quaife LSD. So I suppose there are a number of opportunities for a few creaks and groans to work their way into the car.

Glad to hear the Powerflex bushings are normally quiet. They make a nice change to the car's turn in. I had a shop do the work and it is going back later in the month to get checked out.

 

Doing the job right now. Stealing bolt was a total pain in the ***.

 

Alright so the subframe is lowered quite a bit and I'm trying to break the top bushing bracket bolts loose and they won't budge. Any tips?

 

"Stealing" bolt

I assume you are talking about the lower control arm not the sway bar. Can you put a "heat" wrench on the part that it is threaded into? Is it really rusty? Then there is the usual - nut buster or liquid wrench - and let it sit a while. Not sure how much torque you can put on the bolt from where you are working, but BMW tends to use high torque values when assembling things and it takes a lot of effort to "break" things loose.

Different subject - for the sway bar bushings, when I did my rear bar on my previous MINI I wrapped the bar with Teflon tape before putting the bushing on. Never made any noise.

 

At Pep Boys now looking for pb blast or a breaker bar. I'm so close to being done

 

Pb blast wasn't enough to get the 4 front swaybar / control arm bushing mount bolts loose.

 

Alright, so yea, got a cheater bar from lowes and got the bolts off and then couldn't get the bushing off the end of the control arm. Sprayed pb blaster, pryed with a large pry bar and hammered away a bit and they stopped sliding about halfway.

 

I might need to do this soon - snap a few photos if you can.
Thanks

 

Do you think you could use a gear puller to pull it the rest of the way? Another option is to use a slide hammer to pull it off.

 

I literally just did this step by step:

http://www.minicooperspeed.com/mini-cooper-loweringing-sub-frame-r50-r53remov/

 

I don't have either one if those. Maybe I could rent a slide hammer

 

Alright all done. Just sprayed a ton of wd40 and pryed away and the old bushings came off. Installed the power flex and put it all back together.

Everything seems to be driving great. I spilled a little ps fluid on the exhaust manifold so that smells pretty bad.

I'm going to get the wheels aligned next week.

 

Glad it came out ok.

 

Me too. Next up is changing the oil pan gasket and crank position sensor I ring.

 

Congratulations!!
Sounds like you did a good job!! When I needed them done, I had a shop do them(could not get them prepressed a few years ago), but even on a 4 year old car (at the time) the salt/deicing then chemicals made removing the subframe a bit of a pain for the shop.