I swapped my H&R springs for TSWs last Saturday. I was going to move back to the stockers but made the TSW leap at the last minute. This is on a 2009 MCS with 750 miles on the clock. All fasteners were torqued to spec and the TIS procedures were followed to the letter. This is my 9th vehicle to completely re-do the suspension on (just setting expectations before I get the "check your install" responses).

A creaking noise has developed from the front end now. It started a day or so after the install. It's only audible at low speeds (think pulling out of the driveway) and appears to be coming from the passenger side (although that's not verified).

I read about a lot of different but similar issues but there was no consensus as to the cause and some were fixed with new springs, etc.

There's no 'clearancing' required on the R56 is there? I won't be able to live with this on a new car - any and all thoughts are appreciated.

P.S. The GOOD news is that I got the ride I wanted - they are perfect in that respect. I just wish the MINI had more shock/strut travel so that you could go lower without riding on overly-compressed bumpstops. Yeah, I know about Cross Coilovers..... anyone got $2k to give away?

Thanks!

 

I had a customer with this issue a few weeks ago and here was the reply from TSW;
We have had very few cases where the springs were noisy.
In one case the springs were not properly seated in the upper and lower perch up to the ends of the rubber gaskets. In this case the guy jacked up the wheel to let it drop and rotated the spring to its seating point (up against the stop on the perch and gasket).

In two additional instances we found that the upper spring perch itself was not like normal OEM perches. A normal spring perch should be straight up and down on the part that goes into the spring and curved under smoothly at the bottom. Two people had one normal perch and the other perch had a bulge all the way around the bottom. To check this out we went to our local MINI dealer and looked at several front spring perches. To our surprise we found one with the bulge at the bottom which is causes by over-stamping the part (these are stamped out in production). One guy filed his spring perch off at the point of contact, repainted it and put it back on. The other guy left his alone and the noise went away. In both cases the contact point with the perch was 180 degrees away from the upper cut end of the spring, which is the point the upper coil begins to exit the spring perch.

Hope that helps, Dustin

 

Dustin, thank you very much sir. I'll definitely check it out see what I can surmise. I just wanted to ping the crowd before tearing it apart a third time in two weeks. I did notice that the end of the upper spring coil didn't sit flush against the upper seat. The end of the coil touches but it dips away from the seat and then the coil touches again about 3-4 inches away. I thought that was a little odd. Then again, I might have been imagining things. I'll look again this weekend.

 

Two things to check, the sway bar control arms, be sure they are tight on the upper mount point. A little loose and you will get a creak.

Another thing I had to do was give the upper and lower spring perches a good shot of an automotive spray lubricant. (not WD40, something a bit heavier).

The rubber for some reason on the R56 is dryer.

My install is quiet, but I did have to fuss with it.

 

BlackSaphire,
your noises sound a lot like mine. In my case, stepping up onto a driveway gives me a clunk in the left front like the whole strut is use, and all kinds of creaks and groans as the car moves on the springs. Heading out into the garage now to go check everything again.
I had checked the Alta write-up that Adam did on the H&Rs, and nowhere did it say anything about cutting bump stops. Guess I'll follow the hint above and cut them off the bottom. I've always worried about doing this tho, because using lowering springs on otherwise stock shocks can sometimes lead to having the shock bottom out in it's housing and failing.
More later,
Fig

 

I'm working on a solution with Dustin and locating exactly where this is coming from. I thought it might be my camber plates, but now I see it might be the springs. Dustin and I will be coordinating tomorrow and figuring this out. I had H&Rs previous, and stock springs, and will be comparing them with the TSWs as well to figure out how we can correct this.

 

OK, pulled mine back apart on the front tonight. The problem is that there is no clearance between the top spring perch and the inside edge of the top coils of the springs. Look in my gallery for pics I took. As stated in a post, there was a "bulge" on the lower rolled edge of the perches, both of them. I filed them both and painted them. But, even after putting the strut back together there still is interference. The spring overall fits the indentations perfectly. In one of my pics, you can see where I could not even get a piece of paper between the spring and the perch, even after filing. You can also see in the pics where the spring grinds on the perch as the strut compresses on a bump. There were rub marks on the inside of the spring and on the perch. I also noted rub marks on the OUTER edge of the top of the spring, and don't know where they came from. This fits up inside the strut tower on the car, and I saw no signs of rubbing there, and can't believe that I somehow did this when fitting the strut, so this is a mystery to me. Again, I only have 2 days commute, now about 180 miles total on these. I'll call Dustin tomorow too.
Fig

 

Aaaaahhhh!!! You guys are making me nervous!!! I'm supposed to be ordering mine next week!

Please for the love god post fixes before then, or I may have to hold off.

 

We're working on it Moxie!

Hey Fig, I noticed that one of my springs had rub marks on the outside of the coils before I installed it. So, yours might have been the same deal and you just didn't notice it at the time.

Thanks for the info folks (and the pics fig!). Let's make sure to post our findings in this thread so we can all reference them easily.

Cheers.

 

Hey Guys, I've sent an email to TSW and will be calling them in the morning. Thanks for all your time and work to discover the above data. I'll report back ASAP.

 

Sorry to put the pressure on .

I guess I'll have to take a look at my struts and see if I have "the bulge."

 

I'm a little nervous too moxie... i'm thinking of getting these as soon as i get my tax return check in, which shouldn't be too long now...

 

Glad I'm not alone in my boat.

 

yea, all i read was great things about them...

i mean, this is only one "bad" thing, but i'm sure TSW is going to be quick to come up with a solution.

 

Oh, I hope so. It's the perfect drop and a linear design. I'd hate to have to "slam" my car and settle for progressive rates with H&R's.

But, from what I've experienced thus far, TSW has great customer service! So, I'm trying to stay confident that it will get a fix soon.

 

Well, I hate to say this but I have sent two emails to TSW this week regarding the issue and they haven't so much as acknolwedged them - nada. I know they are receiving them because the one that they did respond to was when I sent them money. Sorry, that just doesn't sit well with me. I even said in my email that I am asking them directly so that they can respond before I resort to posing my question to "the world". Maybe Dustin will have better luck than me.

 

Same here. I emailed them on Wed morning and haven't heard anything at all either.
fig

 

Dustin has been working on this for us as well, he assured me that TX speed is generally very prompt in fixing things like this. I bought my stuff from him and he's been super helpful.

A little more patience!

 

Curious, are you folks late build 07s and 08/09 R56s?

I wonder if MINI changed the stamping on the upper perch plates after TSW designed.

I did have rub on one spring, I had two new ones sent up from TSW, swapped and all is good. This was after their posting they had noted a clearance problem.

I got the rev-2 springs and still had one out of spec in my set. So, you might check with Dustin if he had early springs or rev-2 springs.

As I said, after I swapped, lubed and fixed my upper end link, all is golden. Going on 1K miles.

FYI: TSW was excellent to work with on the exchanges and helping with my issues.


Don

 

Received an email from them today:

"We have discovered there are a few R56 front upper spring perches out there that have a bulge at the bottom. Since our wire diameter is larger than the OEM spring it can contact the perch slightly until the spring settles in. We had only 3 of these cases but in each case the noise went away after a few hundred miles and did not return."

FYI - Mine is a '09 MCS with a build date of 11/08. It's obvious what the problem is. I just have to decide if I'm comfortable with a high end coil spring system having to achieve sufficient wear until there is adequate clearance to make it quiet. I'm not totally comfortable with that engineering model to be honest with you.

 

This is making me very sad.

I guess I may have to wait or look around for another spring option. I wouldn't be comfortable with that either.

 

This is similar to an issue we have with the R53, late R53's had sheet metal in places that early one's didn't that caused the springs to rub. Since we can't control MINI QC we can't account for it in design of our parts. I know it's not the answer we wanted, but it's the one that has been found to work.

 

I got that one too. I don't buy it. My car had H&Rs for 20k+ miles, no noise no nothing. Now, I have a lot of noise and the car is WAY too high in front (vs stock or vs rear, either or). I think the previous problem of the upper coil being too tight still exists- at least on my car. We'll see how it goes from here...

 

Any fixes on this yet? If not, I think I'm going to take the plunge into some H&R coilovers.

 

TSW and AXC are working with our customers to resolve the issues and insure it doesn't happen again.