I did a search and didn't find my issue. I have an 05 JCW Convertible. I have changed the brakes, rotors, and driver front wheel bearing. I get a noise when turning and braking front the front end. I have found that the stabilizer bar has been rubbing the CV Joint and causing the noise.

The photos are with the wheel turn hard left and after the wheel bearing change. I test drove the car and no noise was heard, but will check back if it starts again. Does anyone have any other ideas on what may be the problem? The passenger side has the same wear but not as bad.

 

Howdy, from a general consensus its one of a few things.

- Aftermarket sway bar links which are to big, known to be a problem and rub like this. Do you know if yours are factory or been replaced?
- Sway bar bushings, check for movement fore & aft on the actual sway bar. There should be no movement other then up and down where the links connect in the wheel well.

If the above two are fine i can only assume the following,

- Struts, are you on original struts? have then been replaced before? are you on coilovers? Old worn out struts will cause some unnecessary movement, could even be the strut mounts. If the mounts have mushroomed it would have changed the geometry up front and possibly even lowered the ride height.

Best of luck!

 

As far as I can tell, everything is factory. I'm thinking either the sway bar bushings have worn out or the stabilizer link joints have, or both. The car is 20 years old so it wouldn't surprise me that they have worn out. I will have more information on Friday once I am able to get it on a lift. I'm hoping for bushings to be worn, because I'm not in the position to replace struts.

 

Maybe cracked strut mounts that are very bad and mushroomed?

 

They do look factory, hard to tell at this age really. Usually when the links wear they just get sloppy in movement but don't expand per say and cause play that would cause them to rub in a fore-aft type of way. That doesn't mean its impossible though.

Kind of where I'm leaning to, i would advise to inspect your strut towers based on the image below. The 3 mounting bolts should all be pointing the same parallel direction, any slight variance would indicate mushrooming which is beyond common. However that being said, its easy to align the strut towers again with a block of wood and hammer BUT its going to be the strut top mounts you cannot fix and will need to replace. They aren't overly expensive and can be replaced with the strut in the car using spring compressors, or drop the entire strut and do it that way.

Inspecting the top mounts is rather difficult while in the car, you have a tiny peep hole through the strut tower to see any cracking or mushrooming. It can be hard to tell without a mint one sitting beside you.

 

UPDATE:
Changed the front struts only to find out that the previous work done on the car placed 2 left struts on it. After a few miles driven, the noise came back. I ordered the stabilizer links to replace them, but not real sure that is the problem. I was shown that there is some slack in the control arms, one side more so than the other.

I don't want to keep throwing money at this car only to wind up with a completely new front end suspension. I will have a new mechanic looking at it this week in hopes for a fresh set of eyes and that the previous mechanic is out of ideas as well.

 

Well dang, the control arm bushes are famous for going bad but they must be really bad if there causing the links to rub. The only other thing up there is inner and outer ball joints but they should not wear in a way that would cause that much play to cause rubbing. Parts for these jobs aren't all that expensive its going to be labor that's your overall cost.

 

Yeah, for once the parts a reasonable. I haven't changed the sway bar bushing yet, but I figured if I'm throwing money at this area of the car that it would be a good idea to change those since that's the only thing left that could be bad in this part of the system. Other than a twisted sway bar. I doubt that the wrong strut installed could have caused the sway bar to warp, but who the heck knows?

 

Well, I decided that the control arm bushings were the problem and bought some parts to replace everything with respect to the suspension, except the rear control arm bushings. I gave the parts to my mechanic and they are installing them at this moment. Hopefully this will resolve the problem. I'm thinking that the extra play in the rear control arm bushings was allowing the the weight of the car to push forward and make the stabilizer link rub against the cv axle. Changing the struts was needed but drove home to me that the control arm was the culprit. Hopefully Friday I'll know if my decision was the right one. After everything thing is installed, this rubbing has cost me $4,400 (new brakes all the around, driver left front bearing, struts, suspension rebuild, tires, and alignment). This car has cost e more than my '15 Roadster rebuild from insurance total to on the road (total cost $6400). This car $13,000 total with purchase. For a 20 year old car, that seems high to me, but it is what it is. So I've spent 20k on two cars, but have no car notes, except for my Fiat that I've been hanging on to just in case something happens to these two. Oh the fun of owning a Mini... lol

 

I think the key to affording one of these cars at their age is doing the work yourself. And, of course, diagnosing the problem correctly from the start. I'm surprised your mechanic hasn't been able to diagnose the problem? Hopefully you'll get it sorted soon (time and $).

 

Well, the noise is gone, but another gremlin showed up. It now has complete loss of power. Battery is good, but when you insert the key, no lights anywhere. Completely dead. I'm thinking a wire was grounded when the subframe was dropped to install the rear control arm bushing, but that's a complete guess. I'm looking for confirmation that my suspicion is correct. Are there any critical wires that would give a complete loss of power at the steering column. I haven't checked any fuses or relays since I didn't have the tools available at the time.