I found out my Passenger strut mount is broken. Is it safe to drive the MINI with this? I don't really want to have to drive the MINI 160 miles (roundtrip) to the dealership to get this fixed when I am going to be heading back anyways in 2000 miles for 25K service....



Thanks!

 

Welcome to the club, dude! There's lots of company in here.

I went in for my broken strut mount a month ago. Mine was only on the passenger side, cracked about an inch and a half long. Luckily I didn't have any mushrooming tower issues. Check your strut towers out carefully for any signs of mushrooming. There are many posts on this issue, in the "Beneath The Bonnet" forum. By the way, what size tires are you running? 17" rims w/runflats? That combo seems to cause the most cracks. My mount cracked and I had 16" runflats .

 

Both of mine were cracked for a long time. I discovered that both my towers were mushroomed and both mounts were cracked about 6 months ago. I have a feeling that they were cracked for a long time! I drove it for about 1 month after I discovered it before I fixed it. I figured that I had probably been driving very spirited for possibly over a year before I discovered NAM and decided to check out my mounts. Also, what tipped me off of issues was the fact that I went through a front passenger tire in about 3 months while the other 3 were still almost new!

IMO, if it is just the rubber at the center of the mount cracked and rubber in the center has not been raised more than 1/8" over the surrounding rubber, you are probably ok to drive it for a while longer. I also suggest to pretty much any MINI owner, after my experience, to get aftermarket mounts...ie camber plates. The Ireland -1.25 plates are great and "only" $180 compared to the $400+ of adjustable ones. Although if you still have a warranty, I would hold off until it is up. Just check your mounts every couple of weeks after they get fixed.

One more thing, before you actually drive to your dealership, call them and find out whether it will be covered under the warranty! I've heard of many dealerships considering this "wear and tear" caused by an accident (they consider any impact, whether with a wall or a pothole, an accident). I was out of warranty so it was a no-brainer for me. If I'm going to put in any labor or money, I want to ensure that it doesn't happen again. The Ireland plates are basically beefed up mounts very similar to stock, but much tougher and offset to give negative camber. If you have to pay to fix this, I would strongly suggest that you get these instead of stock mounts!