After reading lots of online material and watching youtube videos, I have done my first major suspension work on the MINI.

Although all the information has been mentioned previously, I feel the need to make my contribution and hopefully it may be of some help for others.

It's a 2003 R53 MINI Cooper S (and sport suspension) with 98K miles. There were previous work done by shops on front sway bar end links, front control arm bushings, front and rear sway bar bushings. However, struts are never touched, and so are the rear endlinks.

The car started to feel losing its dampening capability a year ago and produce rattling noise when going up and down on bumps. I finally pulled the trigger and collected all the parts to tackle them myself.

Parts:
Koni Sports Yellows (front and rear)
MINI strut mounts and strut associated parts (front and rear)
H-Sport Rear Adjustable Control arms (bought 4, only replaced 2, and sold 2)
MINI rear sway bar end links

Tools:
Makita Compressor
Dewalt 1/2 airgun
Dewalt hammer drill
Bench vice
Spring compressor
Sockets, wrenches, hammer, WD40, ...

 

I used the method of putting a wood block right beside the front pucks and jacking the car up. Once it was up, I put 4 jack stands under all four pucks.

 

I don't want to repeat the process here.

Here're my observations:

- Use 1/2" and 3/8" air impact wrenches to save significant labor effort when taking things apart.

Front:
- Spray WD40 into the front steering knucles before starting the work.
- No drilling is required.
- Knocking struts out of the steering knucle was really a challenge on the driver side. Hammer and earplugs were my friend to get them out.
- Spring compressor is not needed to disassemble the struts. Just aim the struts away, and use impact wrench to unbolt the top nut, the springs will only fly a few inches on the ground.

Rear:
- Drill the OEM shock parts #9 and #12 and enlarge the center hole. Do this on a bench vise and it only takes a minute for each.
http://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/show...diagId=33_1083

 

- Make sure to install the washers properly according to Koni's instruction and reuse washer #12.

- Make sure to have the springs seat in the perch properly.

- Make sure to tighten the strut top nut by hand and wiggle it. There has to be NO looseness felt, but only tight rubber squeezing. I did not tighten them strong enough during the first time and had to redo them. Front ones can be tighten directly on the car. Rear ones have to be taken off to be tightened.

- However, second time taking the rear struts off was really fast (learning curve), probably only 10 mintues on each side.

- Installing front struts involved more efforts because of the need to seat the shocks into the steering knucles. I used a jack to help push up the steering knucle.

- I adjusted the rear to 1 full turn from soft. Front is currently at full soft for street driving. It matches with my 2003 OEM sport springs. I also have H-sport 22mm rear sway bar and M7 front strut plates and bar.

 

- New rear endlinks do not look the same as the old ones. The new ones have one end longer than the old one. Make sure the longer one goes to the top (the sway bar). Otherwise, it won't fit onto the lower holes.

- Counter hold the endlinks to replace them.

- Use jack to lift the strut slightly up to help fit the endlink bolt into the shock's mounting hole.

- Make sure to torque them properly, do not just hand tight them! I had the endlinks rattling after putting things together and had to re-torque them.

 

- Adjust the new control arms to the same length as OEM if you want to keep the alignment setting.

- The lower nuts are very easy to access.

- The top nuts are not. I fit a wrench inside to counter hold the bolt, and socket onto the nut from the outside. I did have to bent the heat shield in order to fit the socket onto the nut outside.

- Make sure to use torque wrench on the nuts. Again, I had rattles from the lower control arms after installation and went back to torque them.

- Handbrake cable has to be tied back to the control arms. I found it a bit shaky here because there is no solid bracket on the H-sport control arm for the handbrake cable. I used two zip-ties on each side to make sure it doesn't get loosened.

 

My test drive did not go smoothly at the beginning and was full of rattles. I had to:

- Tighten up all end-links to spec.
- Tighten up rear lower control arms to spec.
- Tighten up front top nuts on the car.
- Remove rear struts, tighten up top nuts and put it back.

Needless to say, I was very frustrated at some point fighting against the rattles. Now after everything torqued down properly, the suspension is completely quiet and smooth.

If you experience suspension noise, the rattles mostly come from:

- Sway bar bushings lack of lubrication
- Sway bar endlinks loose
- Strut top nut loose
- Rear control arm bolts loose

 

After the alignment was done, the slight front shaking when over 130km/h was gone and the car felt nice and smooth and planted.

Also the torque steer was gone after the toe was aligned back to 0.15 from 0.

I removed the previous Ireland Engineering Fixed Camber Plates and replaced it with new OEM front strut mount because the IE plates broke when I was tightening the strut mount nuts.

I was trying to torque them to 25 lb-ft as according to the Bentley manual. However one snapped, probably due to the weak weld. The plates were only used for 10k miles.

Overall, I am very happy with the results! MINI feels brand new again and I love Koni Yellow's slow dampen but fast rebound. Making it very sportive and yet comfortable to drive on streets.

 

nice work! surprised to hear the camber plates broke btw

 

The three front strut mount bolts on IE plates are welded by modifying OEM strut mounts and are therefore weaker.

I emailed IE and they told me that 16-18 lb-ft is enough, and 25 lb-ft by OEM spec is too high. They should have stated it in the installation manual.

Just FYI.

 

I think your "Final" toe values are much too high. That's quite a bit of toe-in and I would be concerned with excessive tire wear (as well as understeer).

- andrew

 

Any recommended final toe values? I thought mine fell within the manufacture spec.

 

Honestly I like at or very close to 0 toe front and rear. A tiny bit of toe in for stability is okay, but maybe not even needed since you're not running a lot of camber anyway.

- andrew

 

Yes, I had close to 0 toe and -1.5 camber before. However the car had significant torque steer whenever driving on uneven surfaces and can swivel sideways for more than tire width.

Probably the rear 22mm sway bar and the Cusco LSD also contributed to this factor.

I'll drive a bit and see how it goes. Since the camber plates are out, I might align to 0 toe next time.

 

Nice work! If you ever need any other assistance with DIY work on your car you can use our tech articles here as a helpful reference. Happy modding!

-Luccia

 

Thank you! I've been a long time customer with Pelican Parts, spending probably a lot more than I should. Anyway, it's nice to see that my vendor reads here too.

 

Well, fabulous! That is good to hear. Do let us know if you need anything and keep up the awesome DIY work.

-Luccia