Today I've done a couple of fairly light, feel good jobs.
First up was the boot struts which need replacing. They had been weak for a while, but had recently completely failed meaning I had to hold the boot up myself (which is surprisingly heavy!). You have to be careful when buying boot struts as quite often, aftermarket ones (even from good manufacturers) can be way too powerful and launch the boot open. This could obviously cause damage to the body where they attach. The important thing to do is to make sure they are the same force as the factory ones, which is measured in Newtons, and usually stamped on the strut.
The Genuine Mini (made by Stabilus) are £90 for a pair from the dealer, but I managed to get the OEM Stabilus ones for £26 delivered - so a great saving. The Genuine ones even say "Stabilus Lift-o-Mat" on them so it just demonstrates again how much manufacturers make in part sales. The struts are 330N (not 310N as listed on RealOEM) and the Stabilus part number is 0746VC.
(Old Genuine ones at the bottom, new OEM ones at the top)
To remove the old ones get a small screw driver and prise off the thin metal retaining clips at each end (watch out, they do ping off and go a long way!). There is no need to remove them. The old ones come with new retaining clips, but leave these alone as the arm just clicks onto the ball joint. If you get rubbish struts you might need to stick some grease in the hole where the ball will sit, but the ones from Stabilus came with a blob of grease already in there.
Next up was the engine mount which had failed as it had spilled all it's hydraulic juice all over the body. You need to get the car on jack stands for this, put a jack and a block of wood under the engine block and lift it slightly to take some of the strain off the mounts. Then undo the mounting bracket (four 16mm bolts + 13mm earth strap bolt) and a couple of vacuum hoses. The engine mount is now accessible - give the bolt a wiggle. If you are able to move it with your hand fairly easily - it has failed.
You now need to remove the 16mm bolt from the body to the bracket and you need an E12 inverted socket with a couple of long extensions to undo the E12 bolt from underneath. It's fairly tight so get an breaker bar if you have to. As soon as I undid the long E12 bolt, more hydraulic fluid spilled out so get a rag ready so you don't spoil your driveway.
Compare your new mount you have with the old one to make sure you have the right part.
I got a Lemforder 29901 which was suitable for facelifted R53's. In fact, again, Lemforder are the obviously the OEM supplier to Mini for these as can be seen below where they have just covered up the "MINI" branding!
Old Genuine part - £105
New OEM Lemforder Part - £41
Then just bolt everything back up to torque value 68Nm (E12 bolt, 16mm bolt bracket to body, 16mm's bracket to block and 18mm nut bracket to mount). You might have to wiggle the engine block around a bit to get the bolts in, or simply jack the engine up a very small amount to allow the bolts to relocate into the holes on the block, get them hand tight, remove the jack, then tighten them up fully, followed by torquing them up properly.
So there you have it, two jobs done in about an hour and half from start to finish with Genuine Mini parts. The total labour cost at a garage using genuine parts would have been approximately £250 (£70 labour - £180 parts). It cost me £67 using the exact same parts and less than a couple of hours of my time. Great success!
I'll give it a drive in a bit to see if there is any obvious difference from the new mount.
