Hey all,

I did a fair amount of searching before starting a new thread, but everything I've found points to issues I've already fixed, so hopefully I can get some advice.

First a little background:

My car has fairly fresh solid motor/trans mounts. I lowered it less than 500 miles ago on Megan coilovers. It's set very low. While installing the coilovers, I noticed that the CV boots were torn and after the car went back together, I noticed a clicking noise from the passenger side axle. I took the car in and had new CVs installed (O'Reillys house brand axles). While the car was in the shop, I had them install a pair of H-Sport camber links as well.

The car seemed to drive nicely after the axle install. About a week goes by and now I notice the car is shaking fairly badly when accelerating in 2nd and 3rd gear. Is it possible that it's the axles again? I don't think I've put more than 250 miles on the car since the axles have been installed. There is no noise, just the shake on acceleration.

I'll likely take the car back in to the shop that installed the axles, but if there's a simple way to diagnose the problem or possibility that something else is wrong, I'd like to explore that first.

Thanks in advance for any help here,

KH

 

It could be the car is lowered too much for the range of the CV joints, or the axles just went bad again. There have been several posts of inexpensive axles not lasting on MINI’s, even on non-lowered ones. Setting the CO’s very low could have been too much for the O’Reilly’s axles to handle. Any pics of how low the car is?

 

You could be right about it being too low. They're nearly bottomed out, but the tire is not tucking or anything. I may raise the car slightly and see if the problem abates. Or do you suppose the axles may already be bad?

Here are some photos for reference. Low but not completely slammed IMO:

 

I have also heard that aftermarket axles and problematic for Mini.

Raise the car and check

If that dos not fix...time to go OEM

 

omg! I am having same problem as you have. I also replaced with Oreilly's brand ($89) twice already but as you mentioned, i think it lasts only few days. I do have megan racing coilovers but didn't lower the car though. i guess it doesn't matter with lowering the car. I do feel shaking when accelerating on 2nd and 3rd (i guess it happens only around 28-33mph)..
did you fix the problem?

 

No luck fixing the problem yet (though I haven't had time to take it to the shop). I suppose it's good to know that you didn't lower the car...I may just invest in better axles. Did you have your car aligned after installing the coilovers? Mine was aligned, but not even close to within spec as the tech didn't want to mess with the camber plates...

 

yes my car aligned after.. i guess the problem is cv axle...

 

did you fix the problem?

 

you know what.. i didn't realized that my car was lowered. today i went to the mini cooper service shop and mechanic said that axle angles different with stock so it causes the problem.

 

It does make me wonder what people with slammed Minis do. Do they run custom axles?

 

I had this problem until this weekend... My strut towers were mushrooming and my lca bushings were toast so I cut out the factory lca bushings and put in some powerflexs, added strut tower reinforcers and changed out the drivers side axle (was leaking). No more vibrations while accelerating in at low rpms, in low gears.

If you're as dead set as I was about maintaining your lowered stance, I would check your lower control arm bushings first and then check your strut tower for mushrooming.

 

I'm planning to adjust them to stock height soon. anybody knows what the stock height is?

Thanks!

 

 

hope it works..Thank you!

 

I've seen most of the parts store brand axles have issues. You're better off rebuilding your stock axles or calling Sneed4Speed and picking up a set of his.