I had the wheels off my car today and notice the arraingment of the rear sway bar. It's the black bent bar that wraps around the rear strut (see below). On my Jetta, changing to a stiffer rear sway bar helped a lot, and it was pretty easy to install. On the MINI though, it looks quite a bit more involved. Can someone who has swapped out the rear sway please post some feedback on the installation?





Here are the aftermarket bars I have found so far.

 

>>I had the wheels off my car today and notice the arraingment of the rear sway bar. It's the black bent bar that wraps around the rear strut (see below). On my Jetta, changing to a stiffer rear sway bar helped a lot, and it was pretty easy to install. On the MINI though, it looks quite a bit more involved. Can someone who has swapped out the rear sway please post some feedback on the installation?
>>

You know Dave, you really should try to post something detailed and complete!

Great post... I'd also like to know how you wiggle the old one out.

Also, one looks to be just about identical in construction but ~60.00 more.

-Jim

 

Hey clean up that MagChloride all over your car will ya! :smile:

I haven't heard of anyone doing this mod yet. You'll have to swing by the dealership and run it by our good friend/MINI Tech extrodinair...I'm sure he'll know.

_________________
Chili Red/white Cooper S

 

jayoung: yeah, the only difference I see from the above two pics is that the cheaper one is red with blue bushings, while the other is silver with red bushings. They are the same size, and look to have the same adjustment.

BTW, I'm kicking myself for not measuring the diameter of the Stock Rear Sway while I had the chance earlier today. The stock Rear Sway (sport plus) doesn't look all that much smaller than 0.75".

ficcion: my MINI hasn't been spotless in every picture I have ever posted (see some of the Canada pix in my sig)

And you're right. Anthony would totally know what is involved. I'm just trying to figure out what little projects to do over the winter.

 

Dave,

I say keep it the way it is... the stock suspension (especially the Sport Plus which I have) should be more than adequate for pretty much anything you can throw against it. Except for maybe rockcrawling.

 

I remember reading that the sway bars were either 15mm or 25mm depending on if you have the SS or SS+. Can anyone verify this?

A little wd40 in clean wheel wells will make 'em look nice and dark !

 

SarcuxKSU: yeah, I am just exploring a curiousity for now. After seeing the bar, I'm just interested in the process one would have to undergo to swap it out. But I do agree, the suspension is very nice stock.

6f7: there's the rub, getting enough good weather for long enough to make it worthwhile to clean the wheel wells.

 

>>6f7: there's the rub, getting enough good weather for long enough to make it worthwhile to clean the wheel wells.

Hate to make you feel bad DID but I was riding the old motorcycle
in a tee shirt tonight. Not my MCOL tee shirt though. I save that
for when I get dressed for church on Sunday.

 

I'm waiting for a morning that the frost warning chime in the MINI doesn't go off when I start the car. I'm just happy it was warm enough today that the car didn't chime at me at lunch.

 

BTW Dave, for my 2 cents I'd pull those puny rear brakes
before I'd worry about a sway bar .

 

Well, time to bring this thread back to life.

R

 

Davbret:

RandyBMC and I installed the MINI Madness rear swaybar on my MINI yesterday.

1st: be careful removing the struts as there isn't much room for the spring compressor and you also have to remove the ABS sensor cable and the brake line (another thing not mentioned in the directions).

2nd: this is a two person job

3rd: You don't "slip" the sway bar in. It's more a matter of prying the subframe down and then being careful with fishing the swaybar through, as there is a wire bundle in the path of the bar (again, not noted in the instructions).

Ok, with that said, here are some pictures from the installation.

NOTE: pictures show my MINI with H&R Springs





_________________

 

You DON'T need the spring compressor. Just took a look at the system. The spring is fully extended when jacked up, so you can pull the bottom bolt and the strut won't expand. How much frustration would that have saved )

Randy

 

How well do the holes line up with the connection link to the wheel? the inside hole (for more anti-twist effect) looks like it will take the link back at 60 degrees and that the link might be too short?

 

Yeah, one day in the spring I'll take the wheels off and clean off all the mag chloride (not much point doing it now since it's bound to snow again).

jlm: that forward bolt position is the stiffer position. I actually just followed the MINI Madness suggestion to start at the back, get comfortable with that and then move to the front position later. There is quite a bit of length to that drop link, so I'm not too worried about the angle on that forward position.

 

Ugh. That's not the info I wanted to hear. May have to sweet talk George into helping, as this sounds far nastier than he made it out to sound. That whole "subframe shift" is downright scary. Could you elaborate more on that??

R

 

Davbret: I'm not sure if the subframe shifted from just being unbolted (4 bolts) or from when we were prying the subframe to have enough space to fish the sway bars out and in. In either case, the end result was the holes in the subframe were about 1" further to the rear of the car than the bolt holes in the frame. So, we used a crowbar to leverage the subframe back into place (braced against one of the struts). For this part, two people would be extremely helpful as one person can work the crowbar and the second person to insert the bolts. Actually, once you get two of the 4 in, the others will be pretty easy.

Also, another word of caution: when trying to open the gap with the subframe and moving it back into place, keep an eye on the jack stands, because of the need to apply some decent force to the subframe.

 

So you have to really shove it thru, eh? My, this is quickly becoming a NASTY install that I could do without. I've never installed springs and am going to do them this weekend. Figured I'd do this bar while I had the car tore apart. But this is going beyond what I expected and what I was told. I am a part time shade tree mechanic, and that's being generous. Nuts.

R

 

The rear springs should be relatively easy, since you wouldn't have to deal with the subframe. That said, I'm with you, do both at the same time. Actually, we'll be doing exactly that (springs and rear sway) again this friday, only this time on Randy's MINI.

This install becomes much easier with two people. In retrospect the 2-3 hour estimate is probably close to correct (with two people). Mine took a little longer because we got sidetracked trying to hunt down a spring compressor, that in the end wasn't required (to do just the bar).

I'll shoot you a PM after this.

Dave

 

Good to see some other people doing the difficult install's and figuring out all the problems before I start doing anything to the MINI. I saw some pictures of an MCS going around a pretty tight autocross track with the inside rear in the air. After seeing that, first thing I thought was it needed a bigger rear anti-roll bar. Not sure if I would go for the modification, since it would take me out of GStock in autox.

 

Bruno:

There are a few of us in Denver who will be running our MINIs in the BMWCCA autocross series. The Rocky Mountain BMWCCA has a system which assesses you points for each mod. You can rack up X number of points before being bumped to the next class. Thus, we can modify the suspension (sport springs and rear-sway) and still stay in "CS" class (C-Stock). But it's up to each person which mods they do to stay within the point limitations.

Dave

 

Dave,
We put one of the M-M bars one an S recently. However, we did it while changing the springs as well. It's not obvious how to get the bar in the car short of removing the rear suspension. As such, we decided to put a set of springs in as well.
What motivated the purchase of the bar was inside front tire lift in hard cornering. Unfortunately, since we put both the springs and barin at the same time, I can't determine which one accounts for all four tires staying on the groud now.
Since you have the springs, and assuming your car stays flat, perhaps you can pass on the bar.
Having said that, the car not only stays flat, it seems to be more neutral in the corners. Perhaps the result of the stiffer bar...

Good Luck

 

1275mini: welcome to MCO. Actually I'm surprized that with 4500 members on the site, your username was still availble. Cool. Glad to see a new face on the site.

I had the springs first, and now with the bar, it does corner flatter. Another major improvement is that with the bar, there is less DSC interference. I really like the Mini Madness bar, now that it's in.

One thing of note. If you take a close look at the picture below you can see just to the left of the rubber mount, there is a metal ridge on the bar. That disk helps to keep the bar centered. From what I understand, without that disk, the bar would have a tendency to wander side to side. If the bar were to slide too far to one side, it could possibly even cause the drop link or the bar itself to make contact with the spring. You can see how on the stock bar there is a bent area right next to the rubber mount to prevent this same motion. The MINI Madness design thus appears to be pretty well thought out.

 

 

sorry to be a pest, but how exactly does the longer arm via the bolt hole choice work to increase bar stiffness? my understanding is that the way the bar works is that when cornering, due to weight shift and resultant roll. the springs push down on the inside wheel and that force is transferred through the bar to the overly compressed outside wheel, offsetting the roll by applying the extra spring force in proportion to the roll. Since the wheels will not be compressing the springs an equal amount, the difference produces a twist in the bar; the stiffer the bar, the less wind-up, and the more the wheel compression tries to match inside to outside, offsetting roll. The torque applied to the bar by the inside wheel spring is a product of the lever arm and the force- a longer arm would apply more torque given the same spring downforce. but isn't the effect just the opposite on the outside wheel, where the idea is to transfer more downforce to the outside wheel? Given that the torque is already set by the inside condition, the force delivered to the outside wheel would be increased by a lessened lever arm. i'm going to conclude that the lever arm length isn't a factor except for fitment reasons.

by the way, both the books by Adams "Chassis Engineering" and Alexander "High Performance Handling Handbook" state that shorter lever arms increase stiffness, in contradiction to my conclusion and the reply above by dave (if I understand in right): "jlm: that forward bolt position is the stiffer position."

???