I am considering these plates and have read pro and con about them. Just would like to hear from anyone who actually has them installed if they have experienced any mushrooming or any problems associated with the installation such as the bolt/nut interface. I would hate to solve one problem and create another! Thanks for any feedback.

 

I have installed a ton of these plates and there are no down sides to them. They will reinforce the strut towers and keep them from mushrooming and causing alignment problems. They are super easy to install too. I just got a new shipment in today.

 

Does M7 warranty the strut towers from mushrooming if the plates are installed? I doubt it. The plates will resist mushrooming; but prevent mushrooming???? Don't think so. Of course, M7 can provide clarity if they desire.

 

110% great product and an ideal upgrade.

 

Easy install. About 5 mins if you have to use hand tools.
No problem with fit on an '04.

 

A no-brainer to install and got some bling as well.

Paul

 

Yep, unbolt, plop down, bolt back on.

Cheap insurance if you ask me. I bought the strut tower bar and leave it off except for track days, but I leave the SRP on all the time.

 

Better with than without.

 

I installed M7 USS a few weeks ago. Had a problem on one bolt. It seems that the bolt that was in the top of the hole was too long. A couple washers fixed the problem.
It is a "must have" for anybody that doesn't drive like my mother. I can turn the car with the gas pedal, just like a rear wheel drive vehicle. To sum it up in one word, FUN.

 

Let me see here, 350 sold SRP's with absolutly no issues, problems or other anomalies.....

And how can you say that it doesn't prevent Mushrooming we have run extensive FEA analysis proving that you are wrong. Have you.....

I'm surprised your having such a problem with us solving a problem (in many threads) that MINI/BMW obviously couldn't care less about.

Sample SRP FEA map.

Without SRP:


With SRP:


peter
Team m7
562-608-8123

 

I have them on BOTH my MINIs and swear by them. Ohio roads are bad enough to drive without constantly worrying about the unforeseen potholes in the middle of the night or during a cloudburst. And then, there are the ever-present rough railroad crossings, entrances to businesses, treks across shopping center parking lots filled with potholes, etc. The STRPs are a cheap and sensible peace-of-mind solution.

 

Don't ust buy the SRP, go for the Stress bar from M7!
Mine is beautiful and accomplishes the anti-mushrooming as well as support for the shock towers during hard cornering - and who doesn't corner hard in a MINI?

It's just a few more bucks and I believe well worth it.

Paul

 

I think all he was saying is that if you take the impact force to infinity, the towers will still mushroom (duh, of course they will with an infinite load). The plates, from my understanding, will prevent the towers from mushrooming though under any stresses that you'd see in normal and even strenuous driving. Drop the car 30 feet though, and they'd probably still mushroom. You'd have a lot worse problems at that point though. . .

Any bracing can only reinforce, it cannot prevent deformation altogether, as to do so would be to say that it could handle an infinite load and thus must have infinite strength. These plates though handle any reasonable loads that the car might see, unlike the strut towers without them in place which seem to be bending under loads that many people didn't even notice (people usually don't know WHEN the mushrooming happened).

Its just a question of vocabulary that he's bringing up, nothing more. I don't think anyone doubts the benefits of this product, I know I certainly don't, I've got a set on order!

Out of curiousity, what are your thoughts on using different nuts/longer studs as has been proposed in other threads here on NAM, necessary? or overkill?

 

Interesting thread thus far...

 

I was responding to a perception that the plates would stop any further chance of mushrooming of the sheetmetal. I don't think that Peter sells the plates in that context (that they will stop any further possibility of mushrooming of the sheetmetal). And it doesn't have to be under extremes (such as the 30 foot drop); the condition of the roads in the S.F. bay area is so bad that the wheel & tire and suspension shops have been making money hand over fist. How about the scenario where the driver hits a pothole and bends a wheel (Polizei, is this resonating for you?), but because they have the reinforcing plates on, they don't bother to check the condition of the mounts (because they believe that the plates will prevent any mushrooming from happening).... Peter, are you stating that the plates will prevent mushrooming after the integrity of the mounts have been compromised? I tend to doubt it; I certainly wouldn't. Once the mount is toast, you basically have an impact hammer condition. Based on the aluminum construction, if hammered long enough, the reinforcing plates will either bend or crack, leading to mushrooming. The best way to think of the utility of any re-inforcing plate (whether you buy them from Peter or someone else), is as a further protection but not absolute protection. Kind of like bullet-resistant (as opposed to proof) vests....

 

I like to know what rubyred is asking.

On this site and as well as others. It seems the nuts on the reinforcement plates are not showing enough threads on the bolt. Do we need longer bolts.

I was wondering if M7 could thin out the braces just enough to have enough threads showing. I was taught that you need at least two threads showing to make a proper fit.

Just a thought..

 

caminifan, fact is, that you don't know what load would be required to bend them, and haven't quantitatively analyzed the situation. M7 has done very quantitative analysis (FEA is well established as a viable stress analysis tool, although some scale data as to what colors mean what would be nice on the FEA plots). They also have yet to hear any reports of mushrooming from a customer who has the plates installed. You theorize that the roads in the SF area might still cause mushrooming without any evidence whatsoever. From all the evidence that we have so far, there is nothing to disprove the claim that in all reasonable driving conditions (and the loads encountered in such driving) that mini owners have encountered, the plates PREVENT mushrooming. Sure it won't prevent it in all cases (as stated before, infinite resistance to mushrooming implies infinite strength, and I'm sure he's not trying to claim that), but your claim that SF roads or whatever might cause it is entirely unsupported, and nobody appreciates unsubstantiated claims that attempt to undermine what appears to be a very solid, well designed product.

If your shock towers are already mushroomed, thats a totally different story, you are correct, and things might be slightly different, although in that case, they will still help.

 

Peter, notwithstanding the color representations (which look pretty, but I'm not sure they actually prove anything), I don't think you are selling your strut reinforcing plates as the cure for strut tower mushrooming.

And your claims to the contrary, I am not bashing M7. As Skiploder said in an earlier thread, you are at risk of developing a complex.

 

do you understand what FEA (Stands for Finite Element Analysis) is? He's taken the situation and analyzed the shock towers resistance to stress with and without the plates. Its only a model, yes, but a valid and applicable model (which some clarification would be nice on, I'm interested, but not skeptical yet). All he's doing is defending a product that he invested time and money in developing and selling it, and has made no invalid claims about it yet. If this were some shady reverse engineering ebay-only vendor making these claims I'd understand your skepticism, but M7's reputation need not be proven to you time and time again. You're fighting him over the semantics of the word "prevent" and "resist", when for the loads our car encounters, in this case they are the same thing, and until evidence is presented to the counter, any other opinions is just that, opinion. . .

 

Peter (or you) don't need to prove anything to me. I am expressing my opinion that there is nothing that can absolutely prevent strut tower mushrooming (not just at the extreme, but even on "normal" bad roads such as exist in the S.F. bay area). Maybe I would be a bit more trusting if I hadn't had to replace a strut mount (and a wheel & tire) myself due to an encounter with a pothole at night. I saw what one pothole hit at ~25 mph did to the strut mount after a single hit. For anyone to believe that a reinforcing plate will give them protection for the life of the car from all damage is wishful thinking at best. Again, just my opinion....

 

One consideration to thinning out something, is that you reduce the strength of the item; so there would be less protection from impacts than before the thinning....

 

Thank you Rubyred3.....

We never stated anywhere that the SRP's are a able to withstand a huge
impact load that would most likely break all of the suspension parts making
the theory of it withstanding infinit load just that....Theory.
Bottom line, we did our homework, tested it, found it doing exactly what we set it out to do.......Solve a problem, that was neglected by MINI.

peter
Team M7
562-608-8123

 

Slight shift in topic, but seems like a good place to ask. Any definitive information on whether the installation of the plates voids the warranty? My understanding from reading the many posts about this topic (strut damage/mushrooming) is that some dealers make the repair under warranty and some do not. I'm trying to decide whether to put these on my 1-week old MCS.

Thanks.

 

Probably not, but it would be best to confirm this with your dealer.

 

if you suspect that the dealer will give you **** about them, take them off before you go into the dealer, its only 6 bolts. . .

problem solved