I'm still having problems trying to get my front cones out of my clubman. I'm reading my Haynes manual over and over, and it says to pull out the top suspension arm, and now I'm confusing myself.

Questions
1. I definitely need to pull out the suspension arm right? I've been trying (stupidly) to pull the cone out and it won't come out. It doesn't just 'drop out'

2. In order to pull the arm out, will I need to release it from the swivel hub? (I'm assuming that is the assembly that's got the brakes and where the wheel bolts on)

3. Once that's done, i should be able to crank the cone compressor and take out the trumpet, which means the cone is still stuck inside the strut tower.

4. The pin that holds the top arm has 1 large nut at the back, and 1 large nut and 2 smaller bolts at the front. To remove the pin, do I need to undo the two smaller bolts, or if I take out both front and back nuts, will I be able to slide it out? How do I slide the pin out?

This is hurting my brain. I was hoping cone replacement was going to be easier than this :\

Sorry just re read your post -

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David L


My greatest fear in life is that when I die my wife will sell my Mini and tools for the price I told her I paid for them!

Follow what you wrote - pull the trumpet out then unscrew the rubber donut from the compressor and it needs to be turned sideways to get it out of the sub frame

_________________
David L


My greatest fear in life is that when I die my wife will sell my Mini and tools for the price I told her I paid for them!

As long as the trumpet hasn't welded itself to the cone like mine had

If it has then you are in for fun......

Ask mini bill hes the cone expert lol

Dont know how people recently are having trouble with cones i must have been lucky with mine was a simple two day job day for front next day was back

Haha thanks beam ....... a hugely pain in the butt job . i totally stripped all the front suspension off and still had a hell of a time , so BFH and a Crowbar and an Angle grinder " with a cutting blade " as mine were rusted together.

Cheers Bill

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Success is so much sweeter after the struggle

LOL maybe its cause i have many different manuals and they all say different things for doing the same jobs

Oh I've got the whole trumpet stuck to old cone - i don't even want to start with the story I have with that.

So just confirming - the top suspension arm has to come out?

In your case yes lol

Soak them in a bit of Coca Cola overnight.

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The pin will only come out the front after the small plate with the 2 small bots are removed.

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1969 Cooper "S"
1967 Mini Deluxe
1973 Clubman Van (the fleet spare)
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2019 MINI F55 Cooper S

I was contemplating dremel-ing out the cone so that it would come out, however I don't think that the cone will actually come out because of the metal part of the cone, rather than just the rubber being out of shape.

Also putting a new cone in looks like it won't fit if I left that arm in.

Is it standard practise to always have to remove the top arm while replacing cones?

New trumpets are available at karcraft

Definitely had to remove top arms on my mini to remove old cones and they were really sagged, the problem is that the cones will only come out of the subframe on their side. Once you get started it's not that hard to remove top arm, just access is a bit limited, I had to cut a slot in inner wing panel on drivers side to get the top arm bolt out, which made it much easier

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