I had the extended warranty and I loved it! It's expired now and I'm bracing! I'm with you though on replacing the sway bar? But you see what I mean.... Keep posting updates! Love to hear this stuff, especially since I'm out of warranty!

 

My car had this until this morning. Was a loose lower engine mount bolt. You can't tell unless you try to tighten it

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I collected my car this afternoon, Mini replaced the front sway bar bushings 31-35-6-772- 844 and a few other parts as well... Hardware - Some self tapping screws, hex nuts, and an exhaust clamp.

On the invoice they said they found the front sway bar sliding side to side... From there they went after the bushings and the bolts, (Not sure which bolts, but "bolts") and replaced them.

The noise IS GONE!

Thankyou MINI Downtown!
E

I guess I still have my factory sway bar!
E.

 

glad you got your problem sorted out. Mine was making a terrible clunk coming in and out of driveways, over rough pavement, and when it was cold...well it was terrible!!! My dealership couldn't "replicate" the problem, so I got handy and found the problem myself

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I spoke too soon. Took the car back out and the noise is back. Ughhhhhh! I'm taking my car to the dealership on Monday to have them look at it once again

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All very interesting.

Now that I have the RFT snow tires on and the temperature has dropped to the low twenties and teens I am able to make mine make the noise at any time by coasting (clutch in) at 15 - 20 mph and turning the steering wheel real quickly from 3 o'clock to 9 o'clock and back again a few times. Best to pick a relatively smooth road/street with no one on it.

Car goes to the dealer on Tuesday.

 

Mine does it clutch in or out. I'm so frustrated with this freakish car. I love it to death, I just don't love the problems.

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I was never able to make mine clunk by moving the wheel back and forth quickly - I did try!

I found mine clunked best at 30 to 40 KPH when just catching the pavement around a sunken manhole or other similar divot that would both move the suspension and pull the suspension to one side. Even big bumps (those hit square on with both wheels) often wouldn't produce the clunk. I also noted that wet roads both hid and diminished the noise. In gear or out made no difference.

All the above makes sense in hindsight now that the source of mine is seemingly gone. I'm pretty confident - the car does handle road irregularities much more silently besides the clunk. I suspect the rear suspension sway bar end links were indeed loose and simply contributed to the symphony in my cabin...

Good luck all who still suffer!
E
i

 

I took my car into the dealer on Tuesday. Really cold and snowy so they didn't look. I had told them that it really didn't make the noise well in the the snow. So Wednesday, really cold again and reasonably dry, they report that the noise was coming from the front sway bar bushing......and had to order the part. Thursday was a down day waiting for the part. Friday it went into the shop. It turns out they have to drop the whole subframe to replace these thing. They also said that when it came into the shop, cold, on Thursday they could make the sway bar move around. But on Friday after sitting in the warm shop overnight, the next morning the sway bar was nice and tight. It took the day to do the replacement because of having to drop the subframe.

Now to the good news...
I picked the car up on Saturday after sitting out all night, in the cold.
Driving out the dealer's lot it seemed different.
No noise going over the curb and out onto the street...good sign.
Head down the street. Again, no noise. And the car seems tighter. And seemed to handle better. Could it have been that loose that it was affecting the handling?
Lets go find some pot holes and railroad track crossings. No noise.

It like a new car again.

Well, it seems to be fixed.
Hope this helps others with this problem.

Happy holidays

 

Thanks for sharing.

 

 

SpiderKinight...I forgot about your earlier note. Thanks for reposting. It may help others now that a few of us have been through this.

You mentioned the control arm bushing, you could also change the swaybar at that time too. I asked my SA about putting in the JCW swaybar. He stuttered, then I said I was joking.

 

Good to see we have a fix on multiple cars with the sway bar bushings. Now the uncomfortable question...

How early did yours fail?

~30,000KM for me.

Fixed now at 40,000KM - does this mean I will be replacing twice under my 100,000KM extended warranty? Yikes!
E

 

I'm hoping that's what's wrong with mine. My car doesn't feel sloppy, at least when compared to other cars I've recently driven, but maybe I'm just getting used to how it feels and when they fix it, it will be like a new car.

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This is an interesting question. Not sure there is a good answer, yet. I believe mine was bad from day one. By this I mean that when it was cold it would softly clunk but it would go away in a short distance and I didn't think much about it. This year it seemed a lot worse and it didn't go away with driving. So, I took it in to get it fixed. As for when it got bad, it was at about 24k miles, but I track the car which means I am pretty hard on things like these bushings. So, I am not sure that my mileage is much of an indicator.

Because there doesn't seem to be a lot of people with this problem (not a lot of posts or the like) and there has been plenty of time for this to come up as a common problem, if that was to be the case. So maybe it was a bad batch of bushings or something like that and maybe replacing them is a permanent fix. Here's to hopeful thinking

I would not say my car felt "sloppy" before the fix, either. Sorry if I gave that impression. Maybe it would have been better described as that it just felt more "snug" afterwards. Or, maybe, just because it wasn't clunking, I felt better about the car. Either way, I am liking it a lot better.