Pooh. Leif got me a set of Craven's reinforcement plates and, while I was installing them, I was unable to fit the pass. side plate to the bolts. Upon closer inspection, I realized that I was slightly 'shroomed.

:impatient

I fixed it (if whacking something back to level can ever really be called "fixing") and installed the plates. Better than nothing, I suppose.

 

My car does not have a cracked strut tower, but the seam is split apart. Does anyone else have this particular problem? and yes, both sides are mushroomed

 

please post a photo...

Thanks...

Matt

 

I'm not sure if I should be happy I'm not the only one with the problem, or if I am really angry that this is a default. I have less than 12,000 on JLLYBNR, and I have already had to replace 2 run flat tires at $462 a pop and now a $1200 fix for mushrooming strut caps....so frustrating...but I still love my Mini.

 

LOL , I AM FURIOUS THAT THIS IS NOT COVER UNDER WARRANTY. I COMPLAIN TO MINI-BMW HEADQUARTEDS & NOTHING BUT I STILL LOVE MY MINI ALSO

 

I've put 12,000 miles on mine, since putting on the SRP's. (My MINI now has 13,400 miles). No shroomage to date.... 17" RFT's. though I plan to dump the RFT's at 20K. (06 MCS RG/RG)

Like others, I'm surprised this isn't a bulletin or warranty replacement. But at $1,400 a pop, that could really set them back for each car.

 

It certainly should be under warranty. BMW should have a pair of strut plates installed for everyone (at least within warranty period). I am sure there are enough people with oem equipment to support the fact that without any owner modification, the strut towers of our Minis have been poorly engineered for mass production. However, that costs too much, and they don't want to look stoopit

 

I just purchased a 2007 S Convertible but am a bit confused as to whether or not the M7 plates will fit, and whether or not this issue was resolved w/ the 2007 model year vehicles.

 

We will have a strut tower brace and plates for the 07's shortly . None of the R-53 series will fit the 07. I will have a more exact time frame in the next day or so.

Randy
M7 tuning

 

As a 'vert though, isn't bbqhog's an R53? I would think the current plates would fit it?

 

You know I think you are correct . I didn't pick up on the convert notation. Thanks for the correction

Randy
M7 Tuning

 

I have the M7 Strut Tower Brace in my 2005 Cabrio and I love it!

One thing they didn't mention in the instructions, but I found here at NAM.
Before you close the hood, wet the liner down where it makes contact with the bar (to soften the foam inserts) then close it and let it sit over night.

The hood liner will form itself to the bar and stay looking great. DO NOT cut it apart!

 

My MINI went in for it's free scheduled oil change today and due to a slight incident with a road side curb (ugh) I went into the back with the tech to look for hidden evil damage. He opened the hood to check the condition of the upper radiator mount and saw my M7 strut top reenforcing plates. His immediate comment was these were a good idea , we (they) see a lot of cars with 'puffed' strut tops (I think that was his word) but none when those plates were on the car.

So for what it's worth, an actual MINI tech admitted seeing a lot of mushroomed cars but seemed to feel those plates made a difference. He said the new cars were 'completely redesigned' (hmm), smaller (diameter?) and further back in the chassis... I did not check out a new car on the showroom to see what he meant...

So yeah.. the curbage .. I didn't do it but it did result in me buying a new lower piece of bumper trim. Grr...Lucky for me the black lower trim piece is separate on the 06 cars or something so it was less than $50 damage there.

 

It's been some time since I posted on this thread. However, I've made an attempt to keep up with the discussion.

Over that time, I've tried to maintain some sort of record of my car's own strut tower "health." A disclaimer: my record is not an exact science. I've made no attempt to maintain a similar lens height, focal length, focal distance, angle of perspective, etc.

With that said, I think the attached pdf appears to cast some doubt in my mind that this issue is consistent with all Mini Coopers. My car is an '05 S with 17" runflats. It is a Los Angeles car. Those who live in LA know that it isn't exactly like driving on glass. I'm a good driver but not a great driver. I avoid pot holes when possible, but in this town you'll never escape them all.

Anyway, if anyone would care to take a look at these images and offer commentary or opinion on what they see . . . I'd appreciate it.

Thanks

 

Another factor in the mushrooming may be the shocks used and their setting. If you have lowered the car, and/or have shocks set to the harder settings to reduce bottoming out, then the shock is going to transmit a lot more impact to the mounting.

Far worse, if you EVER bottom out the shock with larger wheels, it would be amazing if it did NOT stretch the shock towers, as there is nowhere else for the force to go except to bend the shock...

Use of Koni FSD's or softer shock settings might well reduce the mushrooming, assuming that you have enough spring to prevent bottoming out.

In the end analysis, this issue is all about poor choices of wheels, springs, and shocks, for the road conditions where you drive. The real world does have potholes, folks, and if you drive a slammed car on poor roads, you can expect that something's gonna give.

Should MINI be liable for this issue? Not in my opinion: you are responsible for the choices of options you make, and if that doesn't work very well on the roads where you drive, that's not their problem.

 

True. Trivially obvious, but still true, I guess.

I can only agree with you if you expand the definition of "poor choices" to include certain *factory-available* suspension/wheel combinations as well. There are simply too many cases of bone-stock MINIs being driven with reasonable care on average roads that are still affected by the mushrooming problem to ignore.


Somewhere in the middle of your post, you went from pointing out that poor choices in aftermarket parts and setup could exacerbate the problem to claiming that the problem is "all about" such poor choices. This is where I disagree. My wife and I have been driving on the same roads for the past 12 years, in a variety of different cars, with no resulting suspension/sheetmetal damage to any of the cars. But her completely-stock MINI had a mushroomed passenger-side strut tower after 6,000 miles (no reinforcement plates). After adding the plates, hers has had no further mushrooming in the subsequent 25,000 miles. My MINI has had the plates installed from the first day (30,000 miles ago), and has never had any mushrooming, even lowered on very stiff coilovers.

In fact, I can't think of anyone that has had significant mushrooming with reinforcement plates installed, regardless of their wheel/suspension setup or driving habits, whereas there are quite a few people with mushroomed towers on stock cars. That alone seems like pretty good evidence that the design of the towers is marginal, at best.

 

and if you get out of the Mini sand box, other BMWs have had the issue as well. (I think the Z8 did, at least.) Really, it's underdesigned. Maybe all the Germans thought that all the roads in the world market this was designed for are as smooth as the Autobahns. Whatever.

At least it's not that bad a problem, changes ride height a bit, not so much camber or toe, looks bad but there are worse things that could happen.

Matt

 

Didn't notice it being mentioned. But does mushrooming ever happen at the rear shock towers?

 

It's not a problem at the rears, for several reasons:

The top of the rear strut is fastened into a thick diamond-shaped plate, and this plate is what's bolted to the car's body. This factory plate in the rear spreads the forces over a larger area, much like installing aftermarket camber plates in the front does.

Also, the flat portion of the car's unibody that the top of the rear strut mounts to is fairly narrow - barely wider than the strut's mounting plate itself. This doesn't give the strut as much leverage to deform the panel (in much the same way that it's harder to bend a short piece of metal compared to a long piece of the same thickness).

Lastly, I think the rear struts have more compression travel before "bottoming out" than the front struts, so it's probably less common to get a strong jarring "jolt" transferred from the rear struts to the car's body. From a design standpoint, I can see why the engineers do this - the amount of static weight supported by the front struts is fairly constant. (The biggest thing that changes it is whether or not you have a front passenger, and even that weight isn't solely supported by the front struts). For the rear struts, you might have no rear passengers, one rear passenger, or two rear passengers, and the hatch could be empty, partially full, or totally full. Plus, you might or might not be towing something behind the car. So, the rear struts have to have a good amount of compression travel so that you can drive around with the car fully-loaded (within allowable limits) and not have the rear struts constantly bottomed-out.

 

Hey guys,

So our 04 m50 cooper was just diagnosed with severe mushrooming from a local dealership. Unsure of the specifics I delayed the extremely high dealer quote and went for a consult at a local BMW/Mini tuning shop (local and recommended via another local mini forum). I wanted to get this looked at ASAP

Unfortunately, after un-hanging my front suspension, and giving it a few raps ala the 2x4 method (in an attempt to straighten them out enough to fiit the m7 plates), The mounts didn't budge.

The independent tech disclosed to me that this is probably the worst case he has seen and that they will most likely require cutting and re-welding new shock mounts at some point.

I have already contacted both the dealer who diagnosed the problem and BMW North America. I should have more info by wed, It will most likely include inspection from a BMWNA engineer. I will be fighting to have this issue resolved via the manufacturer parts warranty or along the basis of a good faith agreement for the following 3 reasons.

(A) The car is an '04 M50 w/30k on the clock (low mileage grocery getter). Equipped with 16" sport pack stock wheels, factory style runflat tires and stock sport suspension. The car is babied and no major road hazard impacts that I can think of/remember.

(B) The extent of the damage is similar on both left and right shock towers. (lending more evidence pointing to the fact that this is an inherent design flaw and under the responsibility of the manufacturer to resolve)

(B) Based on the fact that I have strictly adhered to the BMW/Mini service interval recommendation and have only had the car serviced via the mini dealership network, I feel it was the responsibility of my dealer/service dept to diagnose and recognize this problem at the earlier stages (When tapping out would have only required a few hundred dollar repair. Rather than waiting (in what I consider) their best interest for the damage to become so severe (when I was finally informed) that it now requires welding in new mounts (A repair that I consider a serious chassis modification that will, in addition to cost me a considerable amount of money to facilitate also devalue my vehicle).

Finally, in some instances Mini service departments are using the out that if your strut tower guide bushing is torn or damaged that it is in indication of some sort of road hazard impact. I for one think this is a weak argument as I believe that the cracking may also be generated when the shock tower mounts bulge, they create additional stress on the bushing vertically via the splaying of the strut bolts. (thus shortening the factory spec spacing between the shock mount and the upper bracket.

So there you have it. More info to come. I will keep you updated as to my progress,difficulties, etc.

Sorry for the rant! I just want this resolved ASAP

 

I note that approximately 95% of the reported issues are associated with wheels having a diameter of 17" or more

Is that important? I cannot tell because I do not know what the distribution of wheel sizes is across the total numbers of minis sold.

I would observer though that the 1st gen minis (like my '04) came with 16" wheels, so i'd be surprised of 95% of the product sold was 17" or greater.

It is tempting to suggest a correlation between short sidewalls and greater force at the top of the shock tower when getting slammed on a bad piece or road.

 

I've got an 2006 MCS with 23K on the block. About 2/3 of that is running with 17"s, and the rest with 16"s (winter boots). Both sets are run-flat.

I had an M7 SRB installed at AMVIV last week (Thanks Way Motor Works!), and Waylen remarked on the fact that I was lucky to not have any mushrooming.

The funny thing is that I took quite a hard impact last summer. A paving crew was scraping off old pavement in anticipation of new asphalt, but failed to put a transition where they stopped scraping, nor put up a "bump" sign. The result was a hard 1" lip that I hit at around 40mph. As it turned out, only one of my S-lites was bent, and no suspension damage (dealer inspected). I thought for sure I'd have some mushrooming going on with that incident and other, smaller pot holes. I'm a careful driver, but you can't dodge them all.

 

and that tragedy happened when the car was wearing the summer 17" rims, right? and /40 or /45 rubber? oh you must have cursed! i know I have...

 

Yup, 17"s and /45 rubber. Good thing the boys weren't in the car, some of the stuff coming out of my mouth would have made a sailor blush.

 

Denied warranty coverage without explanation or further recommended recourse.

Absolutely livid at this point. BMW NA customer reps were essentially uncooperative and/or borderline argumentative to my grievance. I was unable to have any information provided to me in regard to how this diagnosis is made by the dealer. And no explanation to why a BMW NA Technical engineer will not physically inspect the vehicle (contrary to what was told to me by Dealer Service Manager and the first BMW NA Sales rep.)

I have currently filed grievance with the dealership. I am in the process of writing a letter to The BMW NA President and will be cc'ing the following:
Better Business Bureau
American Automobile Manufacturers Association
State Attorney General
Local Department of Motor Vehicles
State Consumer Protection Office
Federal Trade Commission
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (The EPA is particularly interested in any evidence of a pattern failure)
The Bureau of Consumer Protections Office of Consumer & Business Education

I will be maintaining my mini in the garage until this is resolved/repaired for fear of exacerbation of the damage. BMW will have to have the vehicle towed to its service center for any further inspection.
In addition I have decided to sell my 2007 e92 BMW and will be selling the mini once the issue is resolved. I will not be buying BMW again.

I cannot in good conscience recommend the purchase of a used or new BMW mini cooper to anyone.

BMWNA handling of this and its dealer network diagnosis has been a disgrace and a letdown.
Not something I would expect to this point. But margins seem better than brand loyalty these days.


16" oem sports 5 spoke with oem runflat and oem sport suspension.

I will be coordinating a mass email complaint to the President and aforemaentioned agencies shortly.