Here is a few more shots.. Ill give you update soon!

 

I had those SPC arms on my old MINI, I think they're the highest quality of any available for the MINI. I had them on for about 50k miles and never had any issue. For a pure race car the type with heim joints may be better, but for a street car car these are superior. Those look slightly different in the shape of the center part from what I remember, they must have updated them since I had mine.

 

The arms I ordered last week got here today. I believe these are also the ones Greg spoke about above. I had this brand(SPC) on my 2009 R55 without issue, 50k miles +.

 

Yes they are!! Btw these are amazing. The nm springs lower the rear too much on my application. By utilizing these arms I can get the spec .5 neg cam!! it raised my mini up a bout .25" as well!! So great news, buy these and never regret!!

Johnjohn how much did u get yours for?

 

eBay $260 free shipping. (searched SPC, mini, cooper, control arms)

edit: I take that back. They were $290 w/free shipping. Here

 

Glad to hear things are working out for you, frstrtdmac. Looks like the SPC ones are the popular choice, with the H-Sports a close second.

Greg, I'm curious why you drew a distinction between a track car and street car when it came to the heim joints? Is it because the helm joints sacrifice quiet-free operation for more performance?

 

Yep, those are the ones I had as well. Too bad they're hidden under the car, those are works of art.

Yes, without the rubber bushings you get a lot of roughness. They also need frequent greasing.

 

What I've learn from my offroad/4x4 building background is the advantage to heims is you can rebuild them. So as Greg pointed out in a situation where you would be stressing/using the joint more, one that is rebuild-able is useful. However in the case of the R60. It might be overkill for most of us.

From what I know, point/counter points for each joint is below

Heims: shorter life span, but rebuild-able so longer life span, generally the most flexible, can be noisy if not maintained regularly, usually more expensive and require maintenance.

Poly: short life span, inexpensive, generally more noisy, little maintenance, other than replacing them every couple years.

Rubber: slight more expensive than poly, but usually not as much as good heims, quieter than the other two, decent life span. On an R60 they should last as long as the Mini.

The SPC arms use rubber so obviously I went with rubber. Mini uses rubber on the stock arms you're going to take off.

 

the R60 is the CM

 

Thanks for the info JohnJohn and MotoGreg. SPCs it is, I guess.

 

That confused me as well, but then I thought maybe he means CM = Clubman.

 

I wanted to write R56, sorry for the confusion.

It looks like the oem control arms are the same for all 2nd gen. I compared the P/N on sewell's website.

 

The stock arms on my old R55 are the same length as the stock arms on my CMS4. I haven't had the CMs arms off yet, so that's about all I can confirm. However they 'look' the same.

 

Yes the Hsport control arms fit the R60 Countryman. These are by far the best adj arm for the MINI.

 

Great!
I will place an order soon.

 

Way Motor.. Can you shed some insight on how they are made? Also they look like a cheaper version of the SPC's?? The SPC are Billet and the Hsport are cast? The concept looks to be the same, but for $50 more I would say go with the SPC. And fyi, the comment: "Far the best adj arm for the mini" are the Hsports, I think that NM are the best, built from Titanium etc.. Now is that needed, not for us street daily driver people thinking we are race car drivers

 

+1 I'd like to hear more, too

frstrtdmac - first of all, why no love for Apple?
I tried going back on all your posts to find out, but how did you end up with the LCA adjustment - did it stop the rubbing you had with your 19's and NM Springs?

I'm curious because my NM springs just arrived today, but I'm nervous to install them now that I have my beefier wheel/tire set up (18x8 et46 235/50/18) and worried about rubbing. Sounds like you'd buy the SPC's again, but saving the $50 would help me put towards finding someone to install the springs/LCA's.

 

Listen guys, for 99.999% of Countryman drivers; arms are arms. I strictly went with SPC because I had them before and I like rubber bushings. Get what you can afford.

As for installing them

- leave your vehicle on the ground, tires on
- use a floor jack to support the frame on the side you're working on, but don't lift the vehicle at all, just support it
- undo the top and bottom bolts
- remove stock arm
- measure the length center to center
- make your new arm that same length center to center
- install new arm and tighten down adjuster nuts (don't blue locktite them yet)
- do the same to the other side
- drive it down to get an alignment right away
- alignment shop will adjust the arms and should blue locktite them

DONE

PS: if you wanna get real brave align it yourself with a tape measure. I use to do that on my Jeeps years ago.

 

I agree with the others, the Hsport have a great price, but I'd rather pay a little more for the SPC which use the OEM MINI rubber bushings rather than the polyurethane ones.

 

Got scheduled for install and alignment on Thursday. Will send out reports after everything's done and I'm on my way home.

 

I agree with everyone LOL.. BTW, Install these yourself. Its super easy like JohnJohn said.. If you have arms, and a few tools.. Your good to go, if not go to harbor freight and pick some cheap ones up.

 

Normally I'd do the install myself, but since I've got to get the alignment done anyway might as well keep the car there a little bit longer. That and free wifi means I get to work while I wait.

 

I actually had someone else do my R55s arms. I went by the local Midas shop to ask about alignment prices. It was about 30 minutes before they closed. Guy said he could do it right now. I told him I didn't have the arms on it yet(they were in a box in the back end). He put them on and aligned it for the price of the alignment.

Maybe I can pull that off again.

 

Hsports are now installed and everything's back in alignment.




They gave me a before/after alignment report, wish I had received one after the previous alignment (so I knew how bad stock was with the lowering springs).

 

WTF? How in the world is negative three degrees the correct spec for the rear camber? That printout is from a Hunter machine, I'm thinking that Hunter may have input the wrong parameters for the R60 in their software. I can't imagine that the spec from MINI is any more negative than about one degree.