Gauges for 2009 Clubman

[Da Coup]

Anyone know who has and will install nice looking Gauges for a 2009 Clubman-thinking Oil Pres & Water Temp, also upper strut support and sway?

[tvrgeek]

Anyone know who has and will install nice looking Gauges for a 2009 Clubman-thinking Oil Pres & Water Temp, also upper strut support and sway?

 

I want a voltmeter too.

 

Upper strut bars are useless. In a modern car, the unibody is plenty stiff. In a race car with solid bushings and stiff springs they do work, but then again a race car would weld in a full cage anyway. Go back to my 66 Mustang or even my 79 VW, and yes, they needed the support. Not modern cars. I do hear tale the top of the strut mount is a bit bendy. I do not see how bolting a plate on TOP will help much.

 

You are looking for a front sway bar first? Have you already increased the rear that much?

[Da Coup]

I am looking for suggestions, the upper was a recommend? I don't do a ton of racing but lots of road miles and occasional twisty/turny run.

[LV2CRNR]

JCW and M7 tuning make nice ones. As for gauges I'm looking also for oil pressure, water temp, boost gauge. I will let you know if I find anything.

 

Jason

[Brian0758]

Here are the Strut Tower Plates I used on my 05 Cooper S. I installed them because of the mushrooming that occurs on the strut towers if you hit any potholes. Here is the link for the Cravenspeed.

 

http://www.cravenspeed.com/index.php?productID=104

 

I am assuming the clubman also has this issue.

 

Here is a link to the Minspeed site that I purchased my rear sway bar.

 

http://www.minspeed.net/products.php?cat=47

 

There are many other sites but they were quick to ship and easy to deal with.

 

Hope this helps, Brian

[cmcveay]

A quick trip (or online order) from Mach V will get the Strut Plates and a rear sway bar for you. I installed the M7 plates and added the strut bar and intalled the NM engineering 22mm rear sway bar. The strut plates and strut bar were just for my own "comfort" factor after reading about the mushrooming problem. All I can say about the rear sway bar is "wow"! I have access to a lift and pneumatic tools so the install was much easier than it would be working on a floor jack and hand tools but it only took about an hour. The front strut plates are a 30 minute job with very basic hand tools.

[tvrgeek]

Here are the Strut Tower Plates I used on my 05 Cooper S. I installed them because of the mushrooming that occurs on the strut towers if you hit any potholes. Here is the link for the Cravenspeed.

 

http://www.cravenspeed.com/index.php?productID=104

 

I am assuming the clubman also has this issue.

 

Here is a link to the Minspeed site that I purchased my rear sway bar.

 

http://www.minspeed.net/products.php?cat=47

 

There are many other sites but they were quick to ship and easy to deal with.

 

Hope this helps, Brian

I see Craven has steel plates for under the tower. Now THAT makes sense.

of course, a lot harder to install.

[e30r56]

Mini just came out with some new dealer installed gauges. I think 3 options are for coolant temp, oil temp, and a g-force gauge.

 

I'm sure I could figure out how to install them with out too many problems.

[Maxicooper]

a g-force gauge.

 

 

The g-force gauge would be really cool. :top:

[D-Unit]

FWIW I noticed a huge difference the first time I yanked the wheel after getting the M7 strut brace installed.

[MINI_Voyager]

Mini just came out with some new dealer installed gauges. I think 3 options are for coolant temp, oil temp, and a g-force gauge.

 

I'm sure I could figure out how to install them with out too many problems.

 

Interesting--the MINI web site only said coolant, g-force and relative torque were available. I'm real surprised that's all the options they have. :hmmmm: The coolant gauge would be cool (even almost mandated), but I'm surprised they didn't have gauges for oil temp, volts, that sort of thing (although I'm sure the other two available are cool, just didn't seem as useful as oil temp, etc).

 

Hopefully MINI will come out with more gauges--otherwise maybe one would have to go the third-party route.

[Da Coup]

Did you install the M7 strut brace yourself?

[tvrgeek]

Thinking which gauges look about the closest. Autometer ultralights?

[tvrgeek]

FWIW I noticed a huge difference the first time I yanked the wheel after getting the M7 strut brace installed.

 

Unless you have solid bushings, race rubber, and race springs, I suggest the feeling you got was placebo. Sorry. Modern unibody cars are very rigid. The suspension is mounted in rubber. 1/4 mm flex in the body is not going to be felt in the steering wheel. I don't say this to bust your chops, just to encourrage people to go for the parts that actually do make a big difference. Tires, shocks, sway bars, alignment, air pressure adjustments.

 

Strut bars are a hold-over from the 70's when unibodies like my Scirraco were limp as wet noodles. Even then, you had to do some serious mods first. The bright side is they probably don't hurt performance, but I always wonder what they do to the accident crush progression. It is not like the Civic owner who goes from 13 inch wheels to 18's and wonders why he can't accelerate any more.

[e30r56]

Good call Voyager, I guess I was just wishing they had an oil temp gauge lol. The third gauge is a relative torque gauge (which I find almost as useful as the hp gauge on the bugatti veyron).

[Edge]

Here are the Strut Tower Plates I used on my 05 Cooper S. I installed them because of the mushrooming that occurs on the strut towers if you hit any potholes. Here is the link for the Cravenspeed.

 

http://www.cravenspeed.com/index.php?productID=104

 

I am assuming the clubman also has this issue.

I see Craven has steel plates for under the tower. Now THAT makes sense.

of course, a lot harder to install.

I went through a similar determination process earlier this year in wanting to do something to protect my shock towers, as they had started to mushroom. I wanted plates that went under the tower, both because they would stop the force before it gets to the tower, and also because I didn't want to buy something that interfered with or affected my strut brace.

 

The Craven Speed Under Tower Indurators are fine, but I instead ended up buying the MINI-Madness Strut Tower Reinforcement Plates instead. Sure, they cost an extra $25, but they cover the entire surface of the shock tower, spreading the force wider, whereas the Craven Speed ones only appear to cover the shock tower mount. The MINI-Madness solution just seemed like a better design to me. I didn't care much about the red color or the strut tower covers (although the covers help to hide the red).

 

There was actually a really good discussion thread on NAM about this earlier this year. Worth looking at, if the above interests you. It doesn't seem that anyone makes an "under" design for the 2nd Gen MINIs yet, however.

[ZugZugMcD]

My understanding is that the 2nd gen hasn't had the mushrooming problem. That hasn't stopped vendors from making them however.

[cmcveay]

I have to agree with a previous post regarding modern uni-body construction - I drove a '75 Nova without subframe connectors for a while and if you could get it to hook up the rear end at launch, it would twist the body...

 

Regardless, I did go with the M7 brace and strut tower plates (about 20 minutes to install). I won't say I felt any difference because I also installed the Mach V springs and the 22mm NM Engineering rear sway bar the same day (sway bar and springs took about 3 hours total). Now THOSE two things did make a difference! It no longer corners like it's on rails, it now corners like a roller coaster! Last week, I had to jack up the front end for some other work I was doing and I realized how stiff the rear suspension is. Lifting the front left corner with a scissor jack actually lifted both left tires off the ground. The front tire was about 3" off and the rear was about 1.5".

[ZugZugMcD]

Last week, I had to jack up the front end for some other work I was doing and I realized how stiff the rear suspension is. Lifting the front left corner with a scissor jack actually lifted both left tires off the ground. The front tire was about 3" off and the rear was about 1.5".

 

That's an undocumented feature for your convenience :rofl: