wow..
It can be pretty obvious eh?
Thank you all for ur quick answerings!!

 

my pic...

 

Good picture of the M7 plates, but I would have thought they would have a tighter fit to the top of the strut tower....

I hope they have some benefit, cause I just ordered them a couple of days ago.

In the picture the plate looks a little deformed, but I'm sure it isn't.

 

That's also what I thought. My plates do not sit perfectly flat either.

 

The plates should lie flat on the strut tower and not wobble, if it does wobble your tower might have mushroomed albeit slightly.

retroom

 

so how easy is it to install M7 Plates on the shock towers?? do u just unscreww the bolts on top of the towers and slip the plates over and then put the nuts and screw them back on with the same bolts??

 

Oui

 

They are an easy install, but slightly more complicated if you already have mushrooming. If you've driven your MINI a few thousand miles, you probably do already have at least some mushrooming.

Basically start by checking to see if there is mushrooming by removing the 3 nuts from each of the strut towers and seeing how the plates sit. Then:

case 1) IF the plate sits on the strut tower completely flat and you can properly torque the nuts (25 foot/pounds) back on as is, your done. You didn't have any appreciable mushrooming

case 2) IF the plate sits on the strut tower with so little mushrooming that you can still thread the nuts onto the strut bolts over the plate, lift the car at that side (the wheel off the ground) and torque the plates down. The plates will flatten the strut tower as you torque it down, without having to hammer it, so you don't get a lot of sheet metal stress on the strut tower.

case 3) IF the plate doesn't sit flat and won't even come close to being able to thread the nuts, you'll need to jack up that side of the car, put a piece of 2x4 over the flat areas of the strut tower and whack the 2x4 with a hammer until the tower is flat enough at the top that the plate will sit there and allow the nuts to be threaded. Once the nuts can be threaded, torque the plates down. The plates will flatten the strut tower as you torque it down, without having to hammer it anymore, so you can stil avoid a lot of sheet metal stress on the strut tower.

With either case 2 or case 3, it is important to lift the side of the car off the ground enough that the wheel is off the ground, so that the pressure will be removed from the strut tower as you hammer and/or torque down the plates.

Once done, lower the car to the ground as needed and drive it around for a bit and then when back, recheck the torque of the nuts.

 

I had no wobble on either side. The local shop (Miniworks) looked at my strut towers before the installation, and all looked cool.

I think this is just a goofy camera angle. Everything married up just fine. Now I'm thinking about going with the IE Cambers as an added measure. Of course, lighter 17" wheels and after market struts can help with the mushrooming... Damn, if it wasn't for the money....

 

The IE adj. camber plates have more thread on them than the stock things so there is plenty of threads left above the bolts with the M7 plates.

 

VBG in regards to your case #2, I just installed my plates and before putting the nuts on I noticed an ever so slight bit of wobbling - probably no more than 1/16" or so. Certainly not enough to prevent the nuts from screwing well on the the studs. The interesting thing that I noticed after torqueing down the nuts to 25 foot/lbs is that the plates are what "gave" rather than the top of the strut tower so that when I put a straight edge on top of the plates, they have bowed so that now there is about 1/16" gap under the end of the straight edge.

Is that going to be a problem?

 

Have you pounded down the towers with a 2x4 and heavy hammer. I had the same problem and decided to flatten my tower before I placed the plates down. I now have straight and flat towers. Not too hard. Just take your time with doing the pounding. This is what the dealer does when ask to fix the mushrooming.

 

I used a small block of wood with a 2lb sledge and pounded on the "flat" part of the towers around the studs and around the round part of the tower. I guess I need to get a bigger hammer and put a block of wood across the hole of the tower and pound on that?

 

Your plates gave instead of the strut towers when torquing down?

 

Yup