Still have my engine all apart and had a question - clearly the thrust bearing was chewed up - went over 100k miles on this car, so I can't complain too much, but would prefer making it more robust if I can.

I read on another forum that you can double up the thrust bearing by mounting a second one with a minor modification to the bearing saddle (cut a notch for the tang and replace the central 11211492117 with another 11217829946).

Is anyone actually doing this? Is it just idle talk or something engine builders are really doing to R53 Mini's?

Thanks,

David

 

The problem with this approach is that it assumes that each of the thrust bearings is sharing the load equally. Good in theory, impossible in practice.
Depending on the very precise stack up of tolerances from one main with thrust bearing to the next main with a thrust bearing, you may not gain any benefit whatsoever. One of the thrust bearings can be taking all the load while the other does nothing whatsoever.
IMHO, I wouldn't go grinding away on the block and crank journals Jjust put her back together as good as stock. While this failure mode is known to happen, it certainly isn't typical.