The Independent American Magazine for all Mini Owners
Issue link: http://mc2.epubxp.com/i/33538
R By Jeff Zurschmeide photos by the author and Dan Bryant emember last fall when you thought about the upgrades you’d like to make to your MINI to get a little bit more performance for this year’s track days, autocrosses, or just for a little more zoom on the street? If you’re like most people, your MINI is still pretty much the same as it was last September, and now the new sports car season is pretty much upon us. But don’t despair, whether you own the most basic R50 Cooper or the latest JCW Cooper S, there’s always something easy that you can do in a single weekend to boost your MINI’s performance without breaking the budget. Here’s five things you can do to improve your MINI’s performance: Align Your Priorities One of the easiest things you can do to get a little more out of your car is to make sure your wheel alignment is where you want it. On MINIs, this is pretty basic stuff, and it should cost less than $100 to have an alignment shop set you up. The factory alignment settings are optimized to reduce noise, vibration, and harshness, and to maximize your fuel economy and tire life. They result in stable, confident steering, but there’s a tradeoff – your car has increased rolling resistance and it doesn’t turn as well as it might. This is critical stuff for autocrossers, but you can feel the difference in any venue. For R50, R52, and R53 MINIs, the only thing you can really align is toe. Camber and caster are set by the 32 MC2 Magazine www.mc2magazine.com suspension geometry. With R56-based cars, you can also get a little bit of valuable camber change with a simple little adjustment: All MINIs are factory-specified with about 1/8th of an inch of front wheel toe-in – that means that the forward faces of the tires are about 1/8th of an inch closer together than the rear faces. Similarly, the rear wheels are designed with about 1/8th inch of toe-in. The practical effect of this setting is that your wheels are always driving a little bit towards the center of the car. This gives your car a nice solid feeling on the road, but it also means you have increased the rolling resistance of your tires. Toe-in also means you have to turn the steering wheel farther to get both front tires pointed into a turn, and the inside tire won’t ever be pointed as far into the turn as the outside tire. To maximize handling, ask your alignment shop to give you about 1/16th to 1/8th of an inch of toe-out in the front and to set the rear tires up with zero toe to 1/16th of an inch of toe-in. That means that the front wheels will be driving away from the car’s centerline, making your MINI more eager to turn, and the rear wheels will be exactly parallel to reduce rolling resistance – but the tradeoff for quicker steering is reduced stability on the road. So if you are looking for maximum straight-line speed, set your MINI up with zero toe all the way around. If you have a 2007 or later R56-based MINI, you can also adjust in about half a degree of negative front camber. There is a screw or plastic pin at the top of the strut tower, F niv c m e t a h i t n e w i s yu gho u cre ot b a k n do t a i o ie b g n m t pa h rn o v e pc k a c er f o .rt u - o n Performance On A Budget