17 replies to this topic

[mikey72]

Ours had a real bad judder.
Failed the mot on discs, ball joints and track rod ends. I replaced them all for about £80, and the judder went away.

[GTIAlex06]

Mine had a judder and pulling brakes.

turned out it was a mixutre of warped disks on the way to the welsh seaside and messed up hub nuts.

[Brams96]

I'd check that the dreaded previous owner hasn't also fitted poly to the bottom arms, possibly the worst place to use it on a Mini. It just deforms plasticly very rapidly and then isn't doing anything. Fitting rubber to half of the tie bar bushings is a good start but since you don't know the grade of the orange poly, and given that contrary to popular belief poly has a very short service life on a car in certain locations (which is one of the many sensible reasons that manufacturers don't use it for suspension bushes) I'd be tempted to swap it all out. Mini Spares sell a pack that is ideal for the bushes of a road car which has a harder than standard rubber bush for the outside and a softer than normal poly (still harder than rubber) for the inside. You might well find this will solve the braking judder. You might also find that the ends of the bars snap off when you go to undo them so don't do it when you need to use the car shortly after!

LOL, funny you should say that . . . there are poly bushes on the lower arms as well. I did suspect warped discs at the start too, but they will be the first thing I check once the motor goes back in. I will be checking out all other bushes, swivels etc when I reassemble everything.