2nd Gen R55 Clubman Most liked posts in thread: Alignment Problem

Toe-in means that the fronts of your tires are closer together. Top view would be something like this / \ (obviously that's a pretty extreme example )

Toe-out means that the fronts of your tires are farther apart. Top view would be this \ /

0 toe is when the tires are pefectly parallel. ||

Toe in can add stability. Toe out can help the car turn and rotate easier. It's often used for atuo-x cars (but not always).

Both have much more of an affect on the rate of tire wear than camber. I generally recommend 0 toe for the best compromise, especially for the street. Sometimes a little toe-in is okay, and for auto-x cars a little toe-out is fine too. Some of it is driver preference and 0 toe is just what I go with.

My old boss would say that a lot of toe out will make the car feel faster, but it takes a lot more effort and you end up with a laptime close to what you would have gotten anyway. But it's car, set-up, and driver specific.

- Andrew

 

Thanks Andrew... I knew what toe in and toe out was, I just wasn't sure how it affected the dynamics of the vehicle. And in the case of the MINI, does 0 toe make it twitcher?

In the "Old Days" I would set up my toe at 0 on my Mercury Capri (the sexy european). I did it with a wooden dowel rod inside a short length of copper tubing. I would locate the same level position on the inside wheel rim and extend my contraption to the opposite wheel. Make a mark on the wood dowel and for the front and back point on the rim. The distance between the two marks was the toe in or toe out. I would adjust the control arm accordingly until the two lines became one. All the while keeping the steering wheel centered. Took a few trips under the car, but it worked.

 

0 toe on the Mini doesn't make it overly twitchy, at least not on mine... 2cents

 

^ Agreed. It's still pretty darn stable with 0 toe. But I don't have a 32mm solid swaybar on full stiff like many people. :lol:

 

I do have the competition H-sport on full stiff.....lol

...you can also run a touch of rear toe in to help it track straight on the long bits or highway..

 

I wasn't aware you could adjust rear toe. I thought the only stock adjustment was a very minor camber adjustment with those elongated cam bolts. How do you adjust rear toe?

 

Post 7 in this thread shows the correct part where toe is adjusted in the rear.

 

^ There.

 

Sheeesh.... I guess I should read the whole thread..... Sorry
Still learned something new today........

 

No sweat.... About an 1/8" of overall toe works pretty good for me.

 

I have a 19mm rear sway bar, and zero toe front and back works well for me. If I toe'd in the rear, the car would never rotate.

 

After replacing lower control arm bushings, lower ball joints, left front wheel hub bearing assembly, and installing Ireland Engineering fixed front camber plates, I took the 04 r53 in for a much needed alignment. Here are my settings: caster left +3.60/right +3.45; camber left -1.93/right -1.87. Was told the camber needs to come up 1.50 degrees and that there is no camber adjustment except toe. Have a new set of tires from Tire Rack and want to avoid excessive wear. The shop did not know who made Mini and their computer didn't list Mini. After searching through a booklet, specs were found. I decided against proceeding with an alignment attempt and left without any adjustments being made. Had tried the local Firestone dealer recently and their longtime alignment person had quit the previous day. Not sure if I want to try their new guy who was pulled from tire installation to the alignment machine. There are several alignment shops recommended by Mini owners in Dallas but I am concerned the 3 hour drive will really wear the tires. Advice?

 

I'm confused.... When they said "camber needs to come up 1.5 degrees" what do you think they meant? That you needed more or less camber?

That's what the IE plates do - add about 1.5 degrees of camber. Technically that makes your car about 1.5 degrees OVER "standard spec". That's GOOD. They're not adjustable by design. Whatever you get is what you get. It's OK that left and right are a little different.

Find a GOOD performance suspension shop that does custom alignments for track cars. They'll know what they're doing with a non-standard suspension setup. Everyone else is just going by the book - which no longer applies to your car.

It's worth a three hour drive. Which shouldn't destroy your tires.

 

Great discussion on alignments, also wanted throw in/add the importance of adding weight during the alignments. I just had a shop that I had used before, automatically open all the doors and started adding sand for additional weight. I then remembered a discussion from an earlier post on MA...so thank you!

 

Since I have a R56 which has the oblong holes in the strut towers, Chad at DT was able to "normalize" my settings and balance out the camber practically the same on both struts when he did my alignment (one side was -1.86 the other side -1.85). It depends on the alignment shop, but most "National" shops won't adjust outside factory specifications (I guess for liability reasons). I'm super happy with my custom settings......

 

Keep in mind when on the road alignment settings become dynamic. Small static discrepancies between sides like <.05 degree toe and <.3 degree negative camber will have little to no affect on handling. Placing driver's weight equivalent in the driving seat is an OK (but unnecessary) starting point during wheel alignment on stock struts. Weighting all seats during alignment when the MINI is seldom fully loaded is unrealistic. However close the setting accounts for high dynamic G forces on one side by static max occupancy weighting initially, it places the real world unweighted side in a high G corner way out of spec. Weight transfer will be different between left and right turns unless vehicle weight is balanced at the same time, which is not possible with OEM struts. Even after corner weighting with adjustable struts, ballast, and average full fill, dynamic alignment perfection is seldom achieved.

 

They were trying to give me less camber. Thanks for the information.

 

They were trying to get you to the factory settings and the IE camber plates wouldn't let them.

 

Exactly. OEM spec alignment monkeys. :frown2:

 

^ THIS!

Simple version of what everyone meant. What you need.