[craig_mcs]

The bearing in the bracket comes out really easily and moves up and down the shaft. I guess that’s the fault with this one. That bearing should be holding that shaft into the box.

That is the only other way it could move but if the bracket is loose on the shaft on a new part that's pretty poor.

 

[Horney]

Yup. The bearing comes out of the bracket and the bearing moves freely up and down the shaft.

I think I’ve sourced some used OE shafts off a mate to get it roadworthy again. I also picked up two brand new gearbox seals from mini to be in the safe side.

 

[Zeno]

026 is cooper s, best thing to do to check is undo the three bolts on the bracket and see if the shaft is fully in

This is how it looks if it doesn't line up (this is the 036)

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I just tried fitting a J&R N/S shaft on my 2005 MCS with LSD. It did not fit and the bracket is about 3 mm off the holes in the engine (too far away). I measured against the original shaft and there is approx 3 mm difference in the distance between the bracket holes and the end of the shaft.

The bracket is stamped 037 on the new J&R shaft - the original is stamped 026. Has the shaft been assembled with the wrong bracket? It is the correct J&R part number for the whole package, meaning driveshaft for gen 1 MCS, so for the most part it seems to be correct.

 

[CarsOrBikes]

seems to be a thing with JR shafts

 

[Alski]

Did this a long time ago but I think I got new jr shafts after oem boot split, thought why not upgrade to new whole assembly……but ended up just getting a new boot kit from memory as less faff in the end, cups were different profiles so could not cleanly make a hybrid
Oem shafts never died with lots and lots of miles and power ( disclaimers if you find a different story here 10 years ago or so 🤣)

 

[Zeno]

Tried to explain the problem to J&R a couple of times, but getting nowhere. Their response is that “this is the only option we do”, meaning they claim what they have sent is correct. Again, the shaft was ordered is for Gen 1 MCS and is labeled for such on the site, but the distance between gearbox end of shaft and support bracket is too great, and this is compared to the BMW original I took off the car. It has not been possible to have a conversation about brackets and stamped numbers, and that type of thing, so feels like they are not consulting with anyone that might know something internally. Disappointing.

I’m gonna take the 026 bracket off the old shaft and compare to the 037 on the new shaft - if they are obviously different, I will just put the 026 onto the new shaft.

 

[Alski]

Ps just for clarifcation mine was July 05 facelift with oem diff, lowered about 25mm